Re: Treasure Trove Permits (long reply - extra coffee alert...
Greetings,
JScottWood wrote:
The fact that the bones aren't human would suggest that what you have there is not the nephew's or anybody else's burial which would indicate that it would be a waste of time to investigate that location further.
I have to agree with Scott - as he points out, even if it WERE the nephew of Jacob Waltz, there is no reason to think there would be any treasure buried there.
Blindbowman wrote:
The Mine With The Iron Door by Harold bell Wright copy righted 1923 ... is that the iron door legend your talking about ?
Actually yes the same story, not that particular version of it though. Thanks for the offer, might take you up on it some time. The version I have read placed this lost mine in the Santa Catalina mountains, as mentioned earlier, several have seen the door but as far as I know, none have actually entered it. I still had not heard of any Iron Door in the Superstitions however, prior to your mentioning it.
Gollum wrote:
The Iron Door Mine was supposedly found in the seventies. It was not too far from Yuma, near the Mexican Border.
That is news to me - do you remember where you heard of it Mike?
Scott have a great vacation, and hope you and yours have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! See you when you get back.
Blindbowman wrote:
so i will not be posting any more evidence unless i find treasure or prove of treasure ..
May I ask why? Is it because of the skepticism of some of us? I hope that is not the case, and I think you would be skeptical as well if the case were reversed. Quite a few people have claimed to have "found" the Lost Dutchman mine, though the actual number of people who found it is VERY small. Of course if you would rather not discuss this with skeptics like me I will understand. Let me make a statement of 'belief' here, which will perhaps remove some of the "skeptic" flavor?
Personally, I am convinced that Jacob Waltz
did in fact discover a
very rich gold vein in the Superstitions - of the rather rare type known as a "chimney" deposit; these do exist in other places but are fairly rare. He had been prospecting in the area in the 1870s, and by that 'other' version of how he found his mine, there are
NO Spaniards, Mexicans, Peraltas or Jesuits involved - he used good old regular prospecting techniques, panning, using a dry washer and sampling until he managed to follow up the tiny bits of gold he found (and "float" quartz) to the ore vein. He got a partner to help him work the mine (Jacob Weiser, also spelled Weisner, Wiser etc) but unfortunately his partner was attacked by Apaches while Waltz was away, when Waltz returned to the mine to find his partner's bloody shirt, and assumed that Weiser had been killed. In fact Weiser had survived the attack and made it out to a ranch, where he later died of his wounds. The ore found under Waltz's death bed is unlike the gold ore from ANY other known source, and as we all know, gold ore is a bit like fingerprints - no two ore veins are exactly alike. Waltz shipped nearly $300,000 in gold, and sold and traded small amounts in Florence, Tortilla Flat, Phoenix and Pinal. Waltz carefully concealed his mine, and even bragged that you could march an Army pack train over it and never see it. I believe that Waltz told Holmes a complete BS line, to mislead the man he considered a sneak, a claim-jumper, a thief who would probably steal the gold under his bed when he was dead. (Remember Holmes did turn up with the gold, claiming it was "given" to him by Waltz though Julia Thomas felt he had stolen it.) I believe that Waltz sincerely liked his friends Julia Thomas and Reiney Petrasch, who had been good to the old man even though they had not known of his rich gold mine, and that Waltz tried to explain to them out to get to the mine, but they did not pay close enough attention or did not understand his directions. It is a more romantic, dramatic tale to include Jesuits, Spaniards, Peraltas, massacres, solid gold bells and statues etc but there is little to nothing to substantiate any of this claim - we don't NEED to resort to Spaniards, Peraltas, murders and massacres when the admittedly less-exciting version (a version which can be substantiated on many points) still is a tale of a fantastically rich lost gold mine. Waltz was accused of many things, including that his mine was nothing but a rich pocket, but he insisted that there was enough gold remaining in the mine, SHOWING, to make millionaires out of twenty men - with gold at $20.67 per ounce! Unfortunately Jacob Waltz never made up any maps to his mine, which has not prevented more than SIXTY treasure maps from showing up, all showing how to get to the mine! (Gee think they are
all correct?)
So you see, I
am a 'believer' but a believer in
what can be substantiated, not in tales with little that can be proven. I have stated this before, and yes those Spaniards were good prospectors - but they could not hold a candle to the Americans who came later! If those Spanish were SO good, how on earth did they NOT discover the fantastically rich gold fields of California, where there were no wild Apaches attacking and harrying them? The Jesuits (and the Franciscans for that matter) had all kinds of secret codes, secret maps etc but there is no record (that I could find) of
any kind of Jesuit activity in the Superstition mountains; nor for that matter of any Peraltas in there, or other Mexicans (except one, Perilla, which is another story) in any massacre. So many things in the Superstitions have been
mis-interpreted by treasure hunters, such as the "Soldiers Camp" (actually where wood cutting was being done for the Silver King mine, never was a military camp) the concrete dams built by Spanish (actually built by WPA and CCC workers in the Depression years) the aborted roads with wheel ruts (one was intended to be a toll road from Globe to Mesa in the 1880s) the many prospect pits and tunnels dug and blasted out by people hunting for the Lost Dutchman mine (but produced little gold) are thought to be "Mexican" or "Jesuits" or "Spanish" and so on. The Superstitions have a rich history, but some people just are
so enamored of Jesuits and Spanish conquistadors legends that they
WILL not see what is truly there.
In all treasure hunting we have to wade through the various sources of information, and sort out what to believe and what
NOT to believe. In the case of the Lost Dutchman mine, the case is EXTREME - we have had writers embellishing, confabulating and downright lying, mixing in legends and myths from all kinds of sources to what
was really a true tale to the point that we have a tremendous load of BS to filter through to find those 'gems' of truth buried within them, almost a "treasure-hunt within a treasure-hunt"!!! Blindbowman, like many others, has decided to lend credence to the Holmes version, and to support the so-called Peralta stones as valid evidence - my reason for debating these sources with you was intended to save you a lot of time and wasted efforts; however if you (or anyone) wants to follow up on the Holmes version and the Peralta stones, more power to you, good luck and good hunting - I hope you find the treasure that you seek. There are other avenues to follow in the search, though a search for the lost mine of Jacob Waltz, not some legendary Peralta mines, Jesuit treasures in the Superstitions etc - avenues which I believe to be a path with considerably greater promise of success.
Oroblanco
