Garry! I was hoping you'd come and be a part of this thread. Thanks again for allowing me to use your work as part of my video - I really enjoyed the analysis you did on the handwriting.
Let's see if I can answer some of your questions.
First - let's take a look at this map from google earth. When you and I spoke, I told you about an old "rest stop / restaurant" not too far away from the Tumlinson site where frank and I stopped to shoot our video. The building is now abandoned - as it was on the "old" US-60. As you can see from this map - the new 60 and the old 60 converge not too far away from where we parked. I am told that the area where the bridge is, is the same as before. Perhaps the bridge was retrofitted - but I haven't seen any evidence of an entirely new bridge built at a new location. Like I mentioned to you on the phone, I did see what looked like pieces of old road - broken in chunks - around the bridge area. It's possible that the bridge was resurfaced - but the "frame" of the bridge stayed. Does anyone have anything contrary to this? I am not able to find anything online about that particular bridge. Where it gets confusing is there is a fairly large bridge that also covers queen creek, but much further away - headed towards Globe / Miami - that is also on the US 60
View attachment 1166856
Concerning the history of the area, outside of Tumlinson, I am told by an "old timer" that this area was excavated within the past 20-ish(?) years - and quite a bit of artifacts were present - that made the researchers believe that exact area was perhaps a trading post dating back quite a long time ago. I will see if I can get more information on that.
My impression - I've been there 2x now - and collectively, 3-4 hours - is this:
When I first saw the holes in the ground - I thought they were excavated graves. Even so much so that I laid down in one of them to see if I would fit - in which I did - until frank started kicking rocks on me and pretending to bury me alive! (jerk). Frank even mentions the words "grave sized holes" in our video. I talked to some folks about this, showed them my footage, all before editing what you guys saw on YouTube. Everyone I talked to said - there is no way those are graves - no one would dig in that dirt - its way too hard, like digging in cement to bury someone. So I said - well clearly the holes are there, so someone thought they were looking for "something". We can all agree on that.
Concerning the area where Tumlinson claims to found these - there are not a bunch of pot holes all over the ground - or areas where it looks like people were digging, at least recently. The 3 areas that you see on the video, those stand out like a sore thumb. To be honest, Im pretty shocked no one has ever posted those "holes" - or even talked about them. It's a big part of the Tumlinson story!
Also - I really take issue with Tumlinson saying he "tripped on a rock" out there, and that rock happened to be one of the stone maps. That entire area, just like everywhere else in the superstitions is littered with rocks....big / small and house sized. In my opinion - that is a complete lie out of Tomlinson's mouth. If he was tripping over rocks, he wouldn't have made it more than 5 feet from his car without landing face first. There are rocks EVERYWHERE out there.
2nd - Weaver's needle. I mentioned this 2x in my video. Weaver's needle, according to GE, is roughly 12 miles away from that site. Its hidden by the Superstition Range. Also, the human eye will start to be tricked by the curvature in the earth past 3.5 miles. Then you take into account dust / pollution / power lines / heat waves / etc - there is no way Tumlinson was at that site to get a "better view" of weaver's needle....its too far away and hidden. Frank is telling me that on our next trip, he believes that you may be able to see the very tip-top peak of Weaver's needle from that site - I have scoured over all my images and I cannot see it, but will report back.
Garry - when was the "treasure chest" map carved by Tumlinson? Any idea? I believe you are the only one, outside of family, that has seen it in person and talked to the folks behind it. Also, to clarify, isn't it also true that Tumlinson's own family says Tumlinson carved the Stone Maps?
Here are more photos, for anyone interested, in the rock that Frank found at the Tumlinson Site.
Sorry this post is so long - whew!