Thanks Randy. If Tom Hilton never gave Von Mueller any credit for the LUE story, he probably wouldn't have given him credit for the 40 acre comment. The mention of Fort Knox, Black Lake and the 40 acre comment would indicate knowledge of where the map led, according to my mapping. However. in order to connect the correct points, you would have to have a map that showed you great circle segments and they didn't have google earth, back in those days. A flat map wouldn't have worked.Karl first mentioned the 105 degree 12.5 latitude parallel in the Treasure of the Valley of Secrets. I believe Tom Hilton might have been the first to publish this detail, however. Karl would refer to this clue repeatedly throughout his writing on the LUE over the years. Tom Hilton, interestingly, published this in a magazine article deeply critical of the LUE but would later write an article about the Beale treasure, where he makes a case for the mine Beale and co. dug their gold and silver being on the same parallel. I found his insistence on using the same clue with a completely different treasure interesting.
Tom Hilton was alleged by Karl in the NPG to have come to the Exanimo shop frequently during the height of the LUE craze and inferred that Hilton was prone to nagging for information and went as far as to camp in the mountains and spy on folks who were looking for LUE caches. It's worth noting that Long John Latham, who owned and published True Treasure and Treasure World published the Hilton article and repeatedly took shots at Karl in his editorials without naming Karl outright. Similarly, Hilton never credited Karl one bit with any aspect of the LUE story or as a source of information.
Karl did indicated multiple individuals recovered gold at Black Lake (near Eagle's Nest) New Mexico, but publicly I don't think he ever indicated he was one of them. Privately is another story. There were rumors for years that Karl did make that recovery and I have a letter Karl wrote himself admitting that he and Hardrock Hammond make a recovery in 1958. Karl mentions at least 6 other places where recoveries were made as well and speculated other locations were yet to be made.
One other thing about the 40 acres. The Black Lake caches were spread out over an indeterminate area in what Karl referred to as "pots." As I read it, many pots (implied to be roughly 100 pounds of ore or unrefined gold) were spread out over the area, relatively close to the surface...less than a foot deep if memory serves me correct. One can surmise these pots were buried in some sort of discernable configuration. Roy Roush speculated a KGC alignment with pots being laid out at regular intervals if one knew how to calibrate an overlay. My sense is that Karl did not have an overlay but rather found the area through the LUE map and used a metal detector to locate some of the smaller, individual pots. He complained a number of times about how the mineralization in the soil made operating a detector quite difficult and felt that was a large part of why Tom Hilton failed in locating any remaining treasure in the area.