Roy,
OK, you win! Waltz did ship $250,000 in gold to the U.S. Mint in Sacramento California. He shipped it on Wells Fargo coaches from 1881-1889 from Arizona. I was wrong.
Take care,
Joe
Is that what I said? Or was it just that the stories of Waltz having shipped ore (valuable, with that $250,000 figure bandied about) was
POSSIBLE?
You on the other hand have repeatedly insisted that it "debunked" and
could never have happened, because Dr Chandler said they had no records, and Terry's facts are not 100% accurate. Something convinced the Petrasches to keep hunting for the mine.
TH I have no ill will toward AZDave35, just some differences of opinions. He is welcome to his. He thinks that all I know came from books but does not know a thing about me.
To all:
I am not going to post a personal bio every time I want to post something just to satisfy someone that lives in Apache Jct. I DO post things from books
because some people will not listen to anything from someone just on their word. I have made a living at prospecting and at mining, and have been in a lot of mines over the years in a lot of places not just Arizona. Books can be wrong too but many people put a lot of faith in something from a book, while not willing to grant any credence to someone saying the very same things. You can not make a living prospecting or mining in books.
To TRY to get back on topic, so far we have this much in favor of Waltz having a real gold mine:
He was an experienced prospector, had found or helped discover at least three good gold mines in the Bradshaws. Here is a photo of the Big Rebel mine which he filed claim to in the Walnut Grove mining district of Arizona on Jan 8, 1865.
So Waltz was certainly CAPABLE of finding a rich gold mine. IMHO this is important, although others have found rich mines with no prospecting experience whatsoever, the Superstition mountains area is a most unpromising LOOKING area.
Next - Waltz had a respectable amount of rich gold ore which he used to help Julia Thomas. Something around $1500, and also had some left over which was kept in a candle box under his bed. This gold ore came from a mine, not a bunch of gold coins or bars, and not placer gold. Several witnesses saw Waltz sell two burro loads of ore in Tucson for $500, which may not seem like a fortune but in todays money that would be more like $30,000. Many prospectors would be happy to sell two burro loads of rocks for that much. We don't know about the Wells Fargo shipments, but it is POSSIBLE. Not proven OR disproven. Here is another ad for accepting Wells Fargo Express shipments, run in the Tucson Arizona Citizen paper
This dates from
1877 - and note that
they ship from Florence, three times per week. Florence is a key point, more below.
Next - All three of the people linked to Waltz in his last days, went looking for that mine and a remaining cache of ore he said was stored near it. Certainly all of them believed he had a mine or they would not have done this.
Next - several people attempted to trail Waltz to his mine, Holmes by the route north of the Salt to the flank of Four peaks and then across the river and up Tortilla creek before getting caught, and Poston and others up Queen creek losing Waltz near the old Whitlow ranch.
Next - Waltz was fairly well known in Florence as a successful prospector, and his having a rich mine was at that time not a big secret in that place.
And - we have the story from Tom Weedin, which he stated was from Dr John Walker, of a parallel story with a prospector named Weisner (or Wiser, Wisner, Weiser etc) that certainly appears to be the very same mine. It is a point of interest that Weiser's story had his partner go to Adams Mill (near Florence) for supplies to replace what the errant mule destroyed, and Waltz's story also had him going to the very same place for the very same reason. Both Weiser and Waltz assumed the other partner were killed by the Indians.
We have the facts of geology, that right across the Apache Trail highway from the Superstitions, are several good gold mines that produced millions in gold, and one of them even has a vein of gold that runs under the highway and into the boundaries of the Lost Dutchman state park - proving that gold does exist even in the most unpromising part of the Superstition mountains, the western end. There are several other gold mines like the Palmer or the Blue Bird which are not across the highway, and the over 30 silver mines in the Randolph/Rogers district, not to mention the silver mines around Silver King to the east. In Pinto Creek you can pan gold, as you can in Fish creek, Tortilla creek and several other places in the Superstitions including right inside the Wilderness Area. Even the USGS mineral studies got a positive result in one test (the mercury vapor test) which points to a large gold deposit in the Superstitions, though it may be deeply buried. All this is good evidence that one or more gold mines may be in the Superstition mountains because there are mines almost in a ring around them, and you can find gold in some of the canyons and creeks.
Jacob Waltz was a real person, an immigrant from Germany. Julia Thomas, Reinhardt Petrasch, Dick Holmes were all real people too. This is not a tale made up from whole cloth.
We also have a regular mountain of stories, clues and maps (and hundreds of books and articles) that have been published since. I contend that a great deal of mixing of other lost mine stories has been going on. It is not impossible to sort this out.
For many this is not enough, they want hard records and other absolute proof. It is a lost mine
legend, these kinds of evidence are not going to turn up. I contend that in many other lost mine legends, we have
far less evidence than we have in the LDM. The lost Breyfogle (mentioned several times already and I am sure some people are sick of hearing it) we don't even have a piece of the ore or a PHOTO of the ore to do any comparison, but thankfully one was able to be compared to the Amargosa mine ore and settles the question that it is a real mine and we do not have to spend any time hunting for it. Breyfogle was not even an experienced prospector, and had no previous record of having discovered gold mines or mines of any kind previous to his stumbling onto his now famous gold.
Good luck and good hunting to you all, I hope you find the treasures that you seek. Apologies for the distraction earlier.
Oroblanco
Join the crowd.
why not every one have a double shot and some iced 
