Have any of you been to Apache Tears, or Hayden Arizona? Been to the Superstitions? I spent a month out there in the late 80s. Nice place LOL! A little dangerous, and that was before all the illegals and cartels wandering around. I met several new rattlesnakes and spent some time dodging a range bull around a cactus, but the most unfriendly thing I came accross was a wounded cougar. Nasty disposition. I had to send him home to meet the lord.
Anyway, my partner, Glenn Dunn, and I wasted a bunch of time and only came up with $2200 in gold to split for a month effort. Certainly not a strike it rich location. There are so many hot rocks, one sweep of a detector will get you 7 or 8 signals. So you have to dry pan as there is no water. Glenn ran a small dry washer. LMAO! He looked like a dust booger
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We would go up the washes and try to find black sand deposits with detectors around the boulders and dry pan those out. This was around Thanksgiving. I can't imagine being out there in July or August!
I got news, there is no Lost Dutchman mine! Never was! I have been there, walked that territory for 30 days, and there is nothing to indicate a vein of anything, much less gold! Back then Glenn and I were pretty good at gold hunting and we didn't even make wages! Thinking the Dutchman stumbled onto some lost Mexican mine is "wishful" on a good day. If he told that story, he lied
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Let me tell you what I believe is the truth.
There are 3 kinds of gold. Hard rock, placer, and pocket. Pockets are formed when veins weather slowly and sink into the ground creating very rich pockets no more that 3 to 10 feet down. The Dutch were experts at loaming and finding these pockets. They were very closed mouth about it. They came into a gold field after all had left as they were not interested in placer or hard rock and worked out the pockets! I believe he found indications he was near a pocket and merely loamed it out, ran it down, and dug it out! If he shoveled the dirt back in after he cleaned it, you would find absolutely nothing, especially in a hundred years.
Get yourself the book, "Loaming for Gold", memorize it, then study the history of the Dutch miners, and go out to the superstitions. Keep an eye out for large cactus in case that range bull shows up
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