Hola amigos and a special howdy to Springfield and Cactusjumper,
Looks like the conversation went somewhat downhill since my last visit here, sorry that this has occurred and hope that things can be again friendly. As to fighting, I have found that no amount of beating up an opponent will help change his mind, other than what he thinks of you. No profit in it.
Springfield wrote
I'll go you one better. My old shift boss from the Idarado Mine, Louie Girado, could identify the origins of dozens of samples of gold-bearing ore from numerous stopes in the mine from just looking at it. Why? Because he worked those stopes himself and was familiar with the idiosyncracies of the samples, which varied greatly. The idarado had 360 miles of tunnels and drifts in it. Your geologist friends may also recognize certain ores they were familiar with, sure, but I'd definitely bet against their ability to recognize picture rock from the 1000 level at the Idarado - unless, of course, they'd been there.
The point is, claiming 'the matchbox ore didn't come from any known mine' is patently absurd unless you had a sample from every known mine to compare it with. The deal-breaker is that our usable database of verified ore samples probably excludes 90% or more of historical possibilities, which makes proving a negative result ('it didn't come from xxx') impossible. <snip>
All well and good, we have gone round about this topic of being able to ID ore from a mine before, versus the variations within a single ore body or mine. I respecffully disagree that the ore from any mine will match the ore from any other mine to the degree that an expert geologist would be fooled. On the other hand, I could be fooled as I do not pretend to be an expert geologist nor an assayer with many years experience. I will include a few extracts, not my own words:
Each geologist and nongeologist is as unique as his fingerprints; likewise are the ore bodies for which he searches and sometimes finds
. <Surface Mining, pp 28>
Hmm my second attempt at an extract did not work, but the variations in ore are used in locating original sources for ancient artifacts as well for the unique characteristics in the gold and ore.
Every mineral deposit, like every fingerprint, is different from every other in some finite way.
USGS circular 960 pp 320
As to those who prefer to believe that there is and never was any Lost Dutchman, or that it was just highgraded ore stolen from ____ (fill in the blank, Vulture, Bulldog, etc) there are still enough factors remaining to leave such theories short. I will list some here for our skeptics to ponder:
*First, not only was there a real Jacob Waltz, but he was a real pioneer prospector and a highly successful one at that. He found or helped find and develop several quite rich gold mines in the Bradshaw mountains of Arizona, and had worked in other gold mines in Grass Valley in CA so was not just an old man pretending to be a prospector.
*Second, Waltz was seen selling off small amounts of gold in various places, and in a couple of cases rather large amounts - one example being two burro loads he sold at Tucson to Charlie Myers for $1600. <1882< Colonel Poston, George McClarty and Charles Brown saw the ore and tried to follow him back to the mine but lost him near Whitlow's ranch. When Julia Thomas got into financial trouble, Waltz was able to come up with something like $7000 in gold to help her save her business as they were friends. The candle box under his bed contained some forty four pounds of rich ore, and according to people with more expertise than I have, this gold ore does not match any known source. Match box or not, Waltz had a very good gold mine somewhere, and clearly not the mines he had sold previous to 1868 when he moved to a homestead in what is now Phoenix. When these stories of witnesses to Waltz selling rich ore were first published, the named witnesses were still living and could easily have controverted such claims, instead they too went in search of the ore, just as the carpenter named Frank in Florence did.
*Third, if Waltz were just making up stories to keep his friends/helpers helping him in his old age, why would he have pointed at the Superstition mountains and told them that the mine is up there? To get them killed? Not a very friendly thing to do. That he also made at least one attempt to take them to the mine in person also supports the factual existence of a mine rather than a fiction, for surely he could have found plenty of excuses not to ever even try to take them there.
*Fourth, certainly Waltz's friends were utterly convinced that he had a rich gold mine and that it was somewhere in or near the Superstition mountains; Julia and Reiney went in person to hunt for it, even though neither of them had the slightest experience in prospecting much less desert survival, Dick Holmes spent the remainder of his life in the quest and this quest was continued on by his son Brownie and his partner Clay Wurst. If anyone should have been convinced that it was all a pack of lies, it should have been those closest to Waltz and knew him best. Yet all of these people were convinced that he was telling the truth.
*Fifth, geologically the Superstitions may well not be the very best sort of place for a rich gold mine to hide, and yet it has enough evidence of hydrothermal activity to support that one or several such mines may well exist even within the official boundaries of the Wilderness Area. If we add in the adjoining areas to the north, west and east, there are dozens of very rich gold and silver mines in the very same geological settings as you find in the Wilderness Area, indicating that the possibility is very real and very good.
Now Tom Kollenborn and Bob Corbin have been brought in to bolster both that the mine is real and that they now believe it never existed, but we all are subject to change our views on anything as we get new information. It is only wise practice, just as stepping in a pile of fresh cow pie once is enough to let you know what it is like. Certainly the experience of over forty years of numerous people telling them the LDM never existed and trying to convince them has had some effect. I find it a little sad that they feel this way now, having spent so many years in the quest, as if they had wasted their lives on it, especially when there is certainly enough evidence to warrant a search for the lost mine. Waltz had rich gold ore, that came from somewhere, he indicated to his closest friends at the end of his life that mine was located in the Superstitions and a great deal of BS has been piled on top of the original facts since that 1891 deathbed scene. The fact that we have people deliberately blending in false information today and for the last several decades really, along with the excellent gold found at the so-called Pit mine which is not the mine of Waltz and cannot be, have helped to discourage these two famous and capable treasure hunters. It did not help that they were also betrayed by a person they considered a close friend, but I will bet you this - if both men were only to go back to the basics, the source materials ONLY and ignore everything added on since, they would not be so convinced that the mine never existed. As much as I do respect both Tom K and Bob C. I do not judge whether a lost mine exists based on their opinions.
Side thingie here but no one, not even the successful prospectors who mined a rich vein in the Pit mine, has ever brought out of the Superstitions the amount of gold which is supposed to be remaining in the Lost Dutchman mine. I know this will not be agreeable to the folks whom are convinced that the Pit mine is the LDM, but Waltz himself is supposed to have said there was enough gold remaining in his mine, showing, to make millionaires of twenty men, when the price of gold was some $20.67 per ounce. Phipps, the man who supposedly stole some gold from the mine, told several cowboys that mine was the 'richest gold mine on Earth" from what he had seen. Jacob Weiser, also on his deathbed, told Doc Walker that the mine was very rich. While the gold brought out by various persons in several claim of having found the mine is indeed impressive, it is nothing to fit the original. Waltz claimed there was a million ounces of gold showing in the mine when he left it - no one has brought out a million ounces from any mine in the Superstitions, period. Assuming the mine exists, and I am convinced that it does, most if not all of that million ounces left in sight when Waltz left it, remain in the mine.
I think I have prattled on enough for one post - my apologies if anything I said was offensive to anyone, no offense was intended. Good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco
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