Lost Dutchmans Mine

Hola amigos,

I am just a wee tad late to join the party here, my apologies for that - a big HOWDY to DJUI and Capn Bill, good to see ya (hope you are still around) and I do have a little I can add to this.

It is always difficult for the skeptics to accept that there could be anything to a lost mine story, especially this one.  I noticed statements about geologists saying no gold could be in the Superstitions, this is false.  Two of the three geologic studies done by the USGS are online, if I can find the linkee and anyone is interested I will post it or you can find them on the USGS publications site.  They did indeed find gold in a number of samples and locations.  In fact you can pan gold in Fish creek on the northern flank, but don't start ordering from the Sears and Roebuck catalog just yet for there is not enough gold there to make you good wages for mining it.  As to mines, well now that is quite another thing!

There are at least thirty mines in the Superstitions, mostly in the eastern and northeastern areas and fringes.  The world famous Silver King mine produced millions in silver in its heyday and is being looked at to reopen it for it never did run out of ore, just the price of silver got too low.  There are copper mines on the eastern fringe area too, some of the best in the world in fact, and in Arizona gold is always associated with copper.  A prospector friend of mine has a personal theory which I have not yet been able to disprove, and it goes that when you have volcanic calderas, <the ring around it, there are three large ones in the Superstitions and a couple minor ones> carry the metallic minerals in a pattern, with gold being the closest to the caldera, silver next farthest out, and copper the farthest.  That pattern seems to hold true in every site I have compared it on.  So we see copper at Superior and Globe, then silver at Silver King, so..... gold by his theory ought to be even closer or more westerly, right in the same area where Jacob Waltz supposedly had his mine.

One of the tests done by the USGS is called the Mercury Vapor test, and it was done by aircraft; the results of that test showed the presence of a rich gold deposit somewhere in the Superstitions, and suggests that it might be deeply buried.  It would be perfectly normal geology for a vein of that same ore to have cropped out at the surface.   Also, just west of what we call the Superstitions today is the Goldfield district with a good dozen gold mines of varying richness, including the famous Mammoth as mentioned earlier, but also the Bulldog, the Black Queen and Bluebird among others.  That area was considered a part of the Superstitions in Jacob Waltz's day, and in fact you can find it described as such in newspapers of his day.

Then there is Waltz himself; he was seen selling two burro loads of very rich gold ore in Florence, and in later years when his friends Julia Thomas and her adopted son Reinhard Petrasch were in deep financial trouble, he came up with thousands of dollars in gold ore to pay off her debt and save her business.  On his death, which occurred in Julia's bakery shop in the back room if memory serves, beneath his deathbed a candlebox was found that contained some 44 (or may have been 48, working from memory so don't take my word as final) pounds of very rich gold ore.  This turned up in the possession of Dick Holmes, who claimed that Waltz had given it to him, while Julia and Reiney claimed he stole it.  Either way, Holmes ended up selling that ore to finance his own search for the mine, keeping only a few pieces that were made into jewelry, including a match box that has appeared on television and book covers for it is quite beautiful. 

The only recent study done on those existing specimens was done by Dr Thomas Glover, and the two geologists he had examine it pronounced it to be mesothermic (a type of hydrothermal) but I would call it hypothermal, the only difference being in the size of the grains in the host minerals and the size is right on the borderline for the two types, however according to the fire assay done by Holmes, Waltz's gold ore was very low in silver compared to the gold content, while almost all mesothermal gold ore has a very high silver to gold ratio - one ounce to one ounce not being at all uncommon or even more, while Waltz's ore had over 300 gold to one of silver which is exactly in keeping with the hypothermal type deposits.

This all does not make a lot of difference except in how the ore body extends, for the most common type of gold deposit in Arizona is of epithermal type; these are formed very near the surface, often form lenses and with quartz usually colored greens, blacks oranges, strong coloring with tiny grain size of the rock.  This type of mine can be very rich in gold and can very easily pinch out.  Mesothermal and hypothermal type deposits are formed deeper and run far deeper, sometimes a mile or more, so are not easy to simply mine it all out.  So I have very strong doubts whenever I hear about someone having found the mine but all the gold was mined out - not very likely unless the mine ran down hundreds and hundreds of feet, and we know that Waltz never mined it any deeper than perhaps 15 feet at most.  In fact the opening was said to be no bigger than a barrel!

Now you may say, that is all well and good, but there is no proof that Waltz ever had a mine, he may have just been stealing the gold.  Several theories have been published on this idea, that Waltz was high-grading from the Vulture mine, or the Bulldog, or the Mammoth, or ___ (fill in the blank) and none of these theories will float, for Helen Corbin searched the employee records of the Vulture and Waltz never worked for them; also, an expert who examined the specimens of Waltz's gold, stated that it does not match the ore from any known source.  Gold ore is a bit like fingerprints, and an expert geologist can tell what mine any specimen came from by comparing with a collection of specimens from all known mines in Arizona. 

Then too, Waltz stood and pointed at the Superstition mountains and told his friends Julia and Reiney, that his mine was in those mountains.  Why would he tell his friends that if it were not there?  These people were his friends, friend enough that he was willing to cough up his own store of gold that he was keeping, to help them out.  It would be the height of cruelty to tell them that, if he had no such mine there.

Now you are certainly free and welcome to any opinion you may prefer, but there is absolutely gold in the Superstition mountains and you do not need to take my word for it, look up the USGS studies and see for yourself.  Heck the Palmer gold mine is in the Superstitions and produced some gold, and is right on the edge of the wilderness area.  Right inside of the Lost Dutchman State Park, a solid vein of gold has been discovered, that runs from the old Mammoth mine right under the highway and into the park - but DON'T try digging that vein out unless you want to be a guest of the State for some years!   The government has made it almost impossible for anyone to get legal claim to the mine, but I did say almost, for there is a possible loophole to pursue if you should happen to find it and I will explain.

Under the Wilderness Act, the government was required to have a geologic study done of the areas proposed to be included within the Wilderness to be thus created; any and all known mineralized areas were legally required to be excluded, which is why the borders of some wilderness areas are so cockeyed and erratic.  Were you so lucky as to find Jacob Waltz's gold mine, the possible route to a legal claim would be to prove (establish) that it is indeed a rich gold mine, and file a lawsuit to have the borders of the wilderness area adjusted to exclude the vein, as all mineralized areas were specificially supposed to be excluded by law from being within any Wilderness Area. 

I have also seen the deep skepticism from the notion that if anyone would have found it, it would be a local, and if it is common knowledge among the locals that there is nothing to it, then there can not be anything to it.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  The big majority of people do not have the slightest clue about what gold ore even looks like, and quite frequently mistake pyrites for gold, hence the name Fools Gold; heck right inside of towns some surprising strikes of rich gold ore have been made including one in Colorado a couple years back when a fellow was working on his basement.  People can be walking right over it for years and years.  Now add in this factor - Jacob Waltz made some considerable effort to conceal the mine!   He laid in a bed of ironwood logs at a depth of six feet, and filled in on top with rocks and earth, blending it in with the countryside so well that he claimed you could drive an Army pack train right over it and never see it!  Then too, he once told young Reiney, quote

"Reiney, you better listen!  That mine is hard to find, even when you know where it is!"

Apparently Reiney never did listen well enough for he never did find it, nor anyone else, except perhaps Walt Gassler, but that is for another post.  Waltz used ironwood for good reason too, for it is highly resistant to rot so his cover is very likely still holding in place, heck with over a century of time, a giant Saguaro could have grown on top of it.  You are NOT going to simply walk in and trip over it, nor are you going to spot it from aerial or satellite photographs (sorry amigos if that offends anyone, but it simply won't work).  It was well hidden and remains well hidden.

Very recently it became known that a certain individual who claimed to be the grandson of the other man in the room with Waltz as he lay dying (Roberts and Holmes were with him) and has provided a great deal of information, has turned out to be a charlatan who tricked a famous Dutchman author into writing a book filled with his falsehoods.  That author has passed away and cannot defend herself, but we are very much back to 'square one' for information, which goes to prove that whenever researching any lost mine or treasure, the oldest sources are generally the most reliable as they are closest to the events and persons.  So for books I would recommend:

The Lost Dutchman Mine by Sims Ely, a bit of a collectors item but "the" source book and first book on the topic; Ely actually interviewed the friends of Waltz which most authors did not or could not do

Curse of the Dutchman's Gold by Helen Corbin, wife of famous AZ former attorney general Robert Corbin, a life-long Dutch hunter

That will do for starters - and before anyone takes offense, no I am not some kind of an "expert" on this topic but have gone hunting the mine and done a fair amount of research on it.  So do not take my word on anything, look into it for yourself, and you may just find your feet trekking into the very beautiful and sometimes dangerous Superstition Mountains of Arizona

Good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco
I don't know if this will work, but it is a photo of the match box made from Jacob Waltz's gold ore


PS (as if this post was not long enough already) I just would add this to anyone feeling discouraged by the severe restrictions imposed by the Wilderness Area - it is quite possible that the mine itself lies outside of the boundaries of the Wilderness Area, and thus would be open to claim legally.  After all, most of the known mines are right around the edges, and the area known as the Superstitions in the time of Jacob Waltz included everything between the Salt and Gila all the way out to Globe-Miami.

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Hardluck wrote

		Quote:			Posted by {author}
	As for your comments about Why would he tell his friends that if it were not there?  These people were his friends, friend enough that he was willing to cough up his own store of gold that he was keeping, to help them out.  It would be the height of cruelty to tell them that, if he had no such mine there. There is another possability that Waltz as an embittered loner by nature used Julia for his own ends .Perhaps the comfort of a women and warm bed got the better of him as he got older? Maybe he saw them all as vultures only hanging around to get the location of the mine off him so he used them for his own ends?

Well perhaps, but there is no indication that Waltz and Julia had anything more than a friendship sort of relationship; one would think that if there were any kind of romantic involvement, that Reiney and the town wags of Phoenix would have spread that about like good news.  That did not prevent Hollywood from portraying it as a love triangle in "Lust for Gold" with Glenn Ford as Waltz however.

Jacob Waltz had filed on a homestead in what is today Phoenix in 1868; later in his life, the terrible flood of ? caught him at home and Reiney along with a neighbor had to go and rescue him.  He was sick and came down with pneumonia, and Julia put him up in a makeshift sick room.   It sure looks that he appreciated their kindly help, and when he learned that Julia was about to lose her bakery shop (her sole source of support since her husband had abandoned her, and she had obtained a divorce) Waltz went to his home and dug up thousands of dollars in gold ore that he had hidden about his place, selling it to pay off her debts.   
Waltz tried to tell Julia and Reiney how to find his remaining cache of rich gold ore, (he and his partner had three originally but he had emptied two) and his mine, but apparently they simply could not get it or he feared that they would not be able to find it so he made one attempt to take them to the mine.  They proceeded by horse and wagon, and the only important point he made to them was to bring along their old clothes for it was very brushy where they were going; they would go by wagon part way and then walk the rest.  The three of them proceeded to the Verde river and made camp for the night, Waltz telling them that they would be at the mine the next day, but during the night his illness grew considerably worse and they had to bring him back.  He died shortly afterward, but if he had not fallen sick there might not be a "lost" Dutchman mine today. 

So one has to wonder, if it were all being done out of mean-ness or to punish his friends, why he would go through the charade in ill health, of traveling through a hostile desert so far? 

Then too, John Mitchell found witnesses who saw Waltz selling the rich gold ore in Florence, so even if we toss out everything associated with Phoenix, there are still witnesses.  The remaining specimens from Waltz do not match any known source - so it had to come from a mine.  Even if Waltz was stealing it from some cache of Peralta gold, that gold still had to come from a mine in the first place.  I do not buy the whole Peralta saga as there is a possible explanation for that story, which does lead to a rich gold mine that is not lost but that is for another post.

Then there is Dick Holmes.  Holmes was beside Waltz as he lay dying, and he pumped the old man for information on how to find the lost mine.  A manuscript has been in public circulation for a while now called the Holmes manuscript, which supposedly tells the directions to the mine as Waltz told to Dick Holmes.  The problems are many with it, for even Brownie Holmes, Dick's son and partner who continued his father's search for decades, disowned the text.  So who wrote it?  We can not know.  But at any rate, by his own admission Dick Holmes tried tracking Waltz back to his mine, and got the surprise of his life when he peered through the brush into the barrel of Waltz's rifle, for old Jake knew he was being trailed and set a trap for him.  Holmes fled back to town and later encountered Waltz, who told him that while he personally like Dick, if he tried to follow him again he would kill him.  This tidbit of information suggests (to me anyway) that whatever directions Waltz may have uttered in his feverish, dying condition to Dick Holmes may well have been a punishment for a dry-gulching claim jumper like Holmes.   Holmes never found the mine, but even in his manuscript, by the directions you are supposed to go to First Water as your first stopping point, yet on the death of Waltz, where did Dick Holmes proceed to?  Hidden Water, which is on the opposite side of the Salt river (and outside of the Wilderness Area) and coincidentally on the same trail that he supposedly trailed Waltz in his attempt to follow him to the mine to steal it. 

Anyway there are two main versions of the Jacob Waltz mine location, the Julia Thomas/Reinhard Petrasch one and the Dick Holmes one, but a third one does exist and is a bit hard to find as it was not widely published; however Tom Kollenborn did write up an article on it not too long ago and Mitchell included it in his book that came out before Sims Ely's, and by this version there are no Peraltas involved and no large battle/massacre by Apaches, yet still is quite a tale.  By this other version, Waltz came into Florence which was then "the" place to go for it had the Arizona land office and all supplies could be purchased there, and hired a carpenter to build him a small portable drywasher.  He then used the drywasher to trace gold colors (tiny specks of gold eroded out of the host rock) back to the vein and thus found his mine.  According to several old timers living in the Pioneer Home whom were interviewed in the Depression (the Federal Writers Project, called the "Pioneer Interviews") it was no big secret that Waltz had a rich gold mine somewhere in a side canyon off of Pinto creek. 

<link to Tom Kollenborn's article>

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Now what is significant about this is that you can indeed pan gold from Pinto creek, in fact several active mining claims are on it today; the creek flows past several very rich copper mines (remember, in Arizona, gold is always associated with copper to some degree) and is very close to a silver district known by several names (Rogers, Randolph, Blue Sky-Hidden Treasure, Pine Grove among others) and in at least two of these silver mines some rich pockets of gold were struck at a certain level.  Not to say that one of these silver mines must have been the Dutchman's gold mine, though that theory has been proposed by some whom are strongly convinced.  But by the geology, that trail does show some promise, especially if you get out the maps and start comparing the known routes used by Waltz like following up the Salt river but on the north side, or being trailed by Holmes to Hidden Water.  Julia and Reiney took that northern route on their second attempt to find the mine too.

Regardless of whether Waltz was stealing gold from a Peralta cache or other Spanish treasure or he had simply found his rich ledge by the age-old methods of prospecting, the gold he sold was in the form of ore and that ore does not match any known source; this means there is a deposit of gold ore somewhere there that matches what he had, in other words a lost gold mine and that is what the legend is all about. 

One other point that you did not raise but I noticed in another thread, one frequently pointed to by the skeptics; that is if Waltz truly had a rich gold mine as he claimed, why then was he not living like a millionaire?  Why was he living on a fairly modest homestead, raising chickens and selling eggs?   That is not hard to figure out though many people think of treasure in terms of getting just as much as they could ever possibly get, not everyone thinks that way.  Many people are happy just to have "enough" - and some put away for hard times, which is just what it looks that Waltz was doing.  He had his own place close to town, he could go visit his friends at the bakery and swap some fresh eggs for bread, and converse with them in his native language, German.  He had a stock of gold put away for emergency, as did many old time prospectors and miners for there was no such thing as Social Security in those days.  He even made a compact with his neighbor (Starrar) to care for him and in the event of his death, would then inherit the homestead, but things went awry in that agreement.  Then too, up until 1886, to go off prospecting in the wilderness was to risk your life to the Apaches whom were still on the warpath, and Waltz lost his own partner to a surprise Indian attack.  So there was very real danger that we do not have an equivalent today.  If you have enough money for your old age and are able to live comfortably, why would you run the chance of being killed and scalped just to add more to the pile?  Perhaps some would, but not all people think that way, for money is not everything. 

So was Jacob Waltz a pathetic loner, a vicious murderer who killed seven men to get and keep his gold mine, <including his own nephew> a man that would send city-born friends that had helped him in the last days of his life off on a wild goose chase where they could very easily die, or was he something else?   There is no solid evidence of his supposed murders.  He could have easily shot Holmes dead and claimed self defense but he didn't pull the trigger.  No one who knew him doubted that he could be dangerous.  And the same man went and dug up his own 'pension fund' to help save his friends from bankruptcy.   

Sorry for getting carried away again,  good luck and good hunting amigos, I hope you find the treasures that you seek.
Oroblanco

 


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Thank you oroblanco for reviving this thread. I needed something to really get my rusty old blood pumping. I, too, would be willing to give it a go to find the old mine, but, I am near crippled with bad knees, out of shape, and having had a minor heat stroke, not too keen on the high heat of the area in the summer months, so, would be almost useless as a laborer, lol. (This is how my work resumes look also, lol) And, like several of you have mentioned in so many words, it's the dream that keeps some of us going. What else is there, but the dreams, lol. And, hardluck, it seems like, I had read on this site, several threads or whatever saying it had been found, but, it didn't make the major headlines you would think it would, so, my dreams live on. (of course I am not a thief or bad person, but maybe, I would not tell anyone, unless I could file a legal claim, get book and movie rights, etc. and I am sure most others wouldn't either.)

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FlowerOfTheSea (Flor Do Mar)

Wow! Oro, you _have_ done your homework!! I think the above is the best 'synopsis' I have ever seen on the whole LDM! I believe a li'l round of applause is in order!

Now - you mentioned the Waggoner's ledge somewhere - that is a story that has always fascinated me. Somehow, its presence seems to be a lot more narrowed down than the LDM, though it is certainly in the same general area - somewhere between Needle Canyon and LaBarge - maybe slightly south of the needle ...? I know that many thinks it's the LDM, but most definitely, the waggoner's gold was in rose quartz (OK, I have the reference to that somewhere - just can't find it at the moment). It might perhaps be worthwhile to start a topic on that alone - it doesn't have the same kind of 'ballast' as the Waltz story ...

Actually some of the references in link below could be a good starting point ...

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Loke

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Hello loke welcome to thunting. Pleased to see you have enjoyed the posts.

Hello Oroblanco

Some interesting points you made especially about the flood that happened in 1891. That as you infered perhaps change the terrain considerbly. Regardless of truth behind the legend I do not think it is a bad thing and region or town profiteering from a legend. Many towns would shiveled up and died with out them. That is what tourism is all about daring people to dream what if?

I agree with your interesting point that there are many other treasure lost mine stories attributed to the Dutchman story.

 Thanks for the lost wagoner story. Good idea for clarity I will post a new thread for that story in treasure legends. So have fun with that story too.

Happy hunting.

Hardluck





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