Hello Gregory,
Yes, I looked into this some years back and it is itself another unexplained mystery involving some of the same people involved in the Adolph Ruth disappearance.
On April 5,1931 Ray Howland and three associates filed claim on a lode gold deposit approximately one half to one mile south of Government Well. A small ore sample was assayed which Howland claimed horned (high end) at $10,000 per ton and low end at several hundred dollars per ton. No one knows exactly how rich the sample was but it was probably not even anywhere near the low end value. This discovery raised some local interest because it was along the same north-south trending veins that ran through the Black Queen and southward down to the Mammoth, Wasp and Bulldog mines.
Howland's three partners were Ivan Davis, a laborer who was in Arizona for his health, Wes Gray who owned a concrete business in Phoenix and Mesa Dentist George Crandall.
Nothing much ever came of the claim, it never produced a paying quantity of ore even though it was worked on and off for a few years by a couple different owners.
The real story and mystery of this mining claim was the fact Dr. Crandall was the sole investor in the mining effort.
As if it wasn't strange enough that both Adolph Ruth and Charles Knickerbocker died mysteriously within 60 days of each other in 1931, Dr. George Crandall, a healthy young man at age 44 suddenly and unexpectedly died in Mesa the evening of September 27, 1931.
Three people Ray Howland knew and had connections with concerning mines all died in less than 100 days.
All three were involved in searches for the Lost Dutchman Goldmine and all three died under strange and unnatural circumstances.
Matthew
