Another windbag of a post, extra coffee alert
Hola amigos - this reply got very long, and is mainly for our mutual amigo Cactusjumper Joe, so please feel free to skip it and I won't be offended. Otherwise I suggest filling your coffee mug now, as this will test your patience, and thank you in advance.
Cactusjumper wrote
Having said that I believe the Pit Mine was the LDM, there is nothing that I have seen that changes my mind. There are so many possibilities as to what the LDM actually is, that the Pit Mine is a pretty good bet. It seems to me that, because of it's richness, the LDM could be something along the lines of the Bully Bueno as well as many other rich gold mines in Arizona, that pinched out at shallow depths.
Given that Waltz never filed a claim on the LDM, it seems possible that the Pit Mine was a worked out silver mine that became a perfect cache for side products of the silver that was being worked in the area.......Like gold. How it worked out that the cache was abandoned is anyone's guess.
Since one of the Feldman boys publicly announced that he believed the Pit Mine was the LDM, you will have to give that statement whatever weight you feel it deserves. I, personally, give it quite a bit of credibility.
In a previous post, actually several, you pointed out a string of the clues which, as you pointed out, fit the story of the LDM. I will point up only one that is a major issue, that the Pit mine has a funnel-shaped shaft or pit, and a tunnel beneath.
First, let us look at where this description originates. Yes it is found in both the Holmes and Julia/Reiney versions, but is absent in the Pioneer interviews. In fact the Pioneer interviews version does not give much of a description, wish I had gotten the exact names of whom was interviewed for future reference, but the only detail I found was that it had an opening no larger than a barrel. No large funnel-shaped pit OR accompanying tunnel.
Consider whether it would be easier to set some logs down into the entrance of a mine shaft no larger than a barrel, or one that is a large funnel shaped pit. Clearly it would be far easier to create a 'cap' for a much smaller shaft opening right?
Now think about how Waltz supposedly emphasized to his friends Julia and Reiney how
difficult it was to find the mine, even when you know where it is. If it were a large open funnel shaped pit, would that be SO difficult to find, if you knew where it was? Waltz is supposed to have hidden the mine well, yet in other accounts (Joe Deering) the mine was open to the sky, with hunks of ore laying around the entrance. See a discrepancy there? Does it make more sense that a mine with an opening the size of a barrel, covered up, might not be much more difficult to find than a large open funnel?
I don't believe the funnel-shaped pit/tunnel mine has a thing to do with the mine of Jacob Waltz. For one thing we can find the very same description in the Peralta/Ludy brothers mine, and one version of that has it as a lost SILVER mine. The Peralta/Ludy story predates Waltz, and somehow morphed into a gold mine instead of silver. Again, it would not be queer for gold to be found in a silver mine, especially a rich silver mine. If a mine has that characteristic funnel-shaped pit and tunnel, in my opinion that does not fit with the Pioneer interviews version at all.
Then there is the ore itself - the Pit ore looks to me to be epithermal in nature, not meso- or hypothermal, which only really relates to the depth at which it was formed. The Waltz ore assay done for Dick Holmes came back very low in silver, comparatively, to the high gold values, which is a characteristic I have noticed in most hypothermal deposits but the opposite case for epithermal or mesothermal types.
I have great respect for the Feldmans and do not wish to cast aspersions on them; I was aware that at least one of the Feldmans had expressed an opinion that the Pit mine was the LDM, but can't agree with that opinion. In fact I believe they have found the lost Peralta or Ludy brothers mine, perhaps one and the same with Joe Deering's mine.
If the ore from the Bully Bueno, the Big Rebel or any other mine was a match for the matchbox, don't you think that someone would have tried to make that case by now? People do occasionally propose some mine as the LDM, like the Vulture, the Bulldog, etc but no expert in geology has ever supported such contentions. The Bully Bueno was epithermal, which is why it pinched out, as that is common for epithermal type deposits. My bet would be that it had quite a fair amount of silver in the ore in a ratio to the gold too.
I have a problem with "cleaned out caches" for how would anyone ever know what was in a hole in the ground? I have another issue with a known cache of very rich ore, being left deliberately by a discoverer. Why would anyone leave a cache of rich gold ore, which would not require any of the hard and dangerous work of cracking it out of the host rock in a deep mine? Unless the ore was of such a low grade as to make the effort of packing it out not worth it, I can not buy that.
What about the sheer depth of the Pit mine shaft? Over 80 feet as I understand it; when the mine of Waltz is not supposed to be excavated to a depth much more than a dozen feet. Doesn't that discrepancy indicate some question for you? Do we explain it away as the work of someone who found the mine without letting anyone know, worked it out to that depth and then abandoned it? If you think that people will keep such a secret, look at the people whom worked the Pit mine - they could not keep it secret either even though it was illegal for them to be mining it when they were. It is something to be proud of, having found a rich mine and gained new wealth by hard and dangerous labor, especially a lost mine so widely coveted and of such fame as the Lost Dutchman. I don't think anyone, despite what people will say on the treasure forums, could keep it a secret to the grave, if they found something like the Lost Dutchman mine. Why should they?
We are bracing for the deep freeze, which the Huskies seem to be very much enthusiastic about; we have no way to burn wood but hopefully by next year that situation will change. In the meantime, my splitter needs very little warming up, as it is this type:
I never worry about freezing to death in the bunk for we always have warm Huskies to curl up with.
Good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco
