Treasure Trove Permits

OK, I’ve been reading the posts coming into the “played for fools” thread since last I was here and I have come to several conclusions. The first is that there are a lot of responsible people out there who want to be able to pursue their interest/obsession but at the same time want to do so responsibly within the law and without damage to the land. I also got the feeling that many of these same people would like to have a more cordial working relationship with the people charged with managing public lands and would like to know the best way to present their cases when it comes time to apply for treasure trove permits. Those are good things.

I also noted that there is a little confusion about exactly what the process of historic preservation entails and why we (the agencies) do some of the things we do. While not necessarily a bad thing, it’s something we can talk about. In fact, let’s start there.

I know that many of you feel discriminated against by the land management agencies. I won’t necessarily defend my brethren in this, but I will offer a little explanation. Mostly, the feeling amongst agency officials is not discrimination per se but frustration. I have to tell you that the number of times that I have dealt with people as lucid and reasonable as most of y’all over the last 30 years can be counted on one hand. By and large the people we get to deal with are rank amateurs who read one article in a treasure magazine, drive past the Superstitions, look up and see shapes in the rocks and convince themselves that they, out of the thousands of people who have searched the area for a century, have solved the mystery. We also get the outright delusional obsessives who won’t believe even their own eyes. Over the years we have had treasure hunters dynamite cliffs into rubble, dig holes all over the place (often into solid rock), build little rockhouse shanties in the wilderness, carve and paint fake petroglyphs and pictographs and deface real ones, shoot at people (including me – and that was before I had even talked to any of them…), and destroy irreplaceable archaeological sites. Not that many years ago we arrested and deported an “international traveler” who was working for an infamous Dutchman hunter. He was working in a rockshelter in the Superstitions that contained several meters of cultural fill – the remains of occupations ranging from the Middle Archaic (ca 5,000 years ago) to the Apache and Yavapai. In the space of a few weeks he had shoveled nearly all of this material over the cliff, destroying the site; why? Because some idiot had written “1847” in charcoal on a rock ledge inside the shelter. Was there a tunnel or adit or a cache of bullion or plate hidden under that 5,000 year old midden? Of course not.

We also have to deal with the truly delusional, people like the guy who swore that Bluff Springs Mountain was hollow and that it contained a population of Aztecs who were still there protecting “Montezuma’s” treasure and sacrificing runaway teenagers on a pyramid they had built underground, or the infamous Chuck Kenworthy, with his contradictory dictionary of signs, saguaro topiary, and giant “carved” pigs and poodles. And then there are the Jesuit/Peralta people with their stone “maps” made with anachronistic epigraphy, magic symbols, 1940’s Disneyesque cartoon illustrations on a type of sandstone that can’t be found anywhere closer than 100 miles north of the Superstitions. To a reasonable person, most of this stuff is laughable, but we can’t just tell these people to go away without at least hearing them out (although some managers have finally gotten to that point). And it seems that the loonier they are the more prone they are to threaten us with lawsuits (never happens) and going to the press (happens a lot, and guess who gets to look like the bad guy?). So, I would say that, for the most part, it isn’t so much discrimination as frustration. Most of the treasure hunters we deal with are not the kind of people y’all would probably want in the Treasure Net Hall of Fame….. and dealing with them takes time away from real resource management, which is harder and harder to do nowadays as agency personnel are drained away and funding for the stewardship of America’s public lands is siphoned off to pay for solving other peoples’ problems in other countries.

As a corollary, we don’t often have contact with responsible treasure hunters. The closest that most agency people get (especially those without legendary lost mines and such in their jurisdiction) is through law enforcement – busting people who use metal detectors to turn publicly owned historic sites into prairie dog towns and bombing ranges in order to steal artifacts for their own amusement or monetary gain (we’ll come back to this). So, while I am not making excuses for those of my brethren who slight and dismiss y’all and treat you like criminals without making any effort to reach out and work with you, maybe this will help you to understand why they feel the way they do.

Why, then, do you ask, am I here? Obviously, I have the same frustrations as my colleagues – more so than most, actually, because no other Forest in the country has anything like the treasure draw created by the Lost Dutchman. A couple of reasons.
First of all, as several of you have noted, evaluating the merit of treasure claims is part of my job (though I must tell you that my District Rangers – the people who actually manage the Forest and issue the permits – don’t always see it that way). That job is easier the more that I can understand where y’all are coming from and vice versa.

Second, I happen to have a fairly old-fashioned idea about access to the National Forests. I still feel that any American taxpayer has the right of access to public land. Many agency archaeologists nowadays, out of fear of pothunters, don’t like people to have access to archaeological and historic sites on public land. I look at it the other way and encourage people to get out there and enjoy that same thrill of discovery that an archaeologist has when finding a site for the first time. Now, that doesn’t mean that I like the idea of people making new roads and trails everywhere or violating the wilderness laws or spewing their trash and brass all over the countryside or taking artifacts away or digging in sites; the point is for everyone to have the opportunity to feel the same thrill that you did and that can’t happen if you wreck the place and take away all the neat stuff. I have been burned by this attitude, of course, since there’s always that 5-10% of visitors that really don’t care about anyone but themselves, and sites have been damaged as a result, mostly by having all their artifacts walk off and end up in peoples’ trash cans after they get tired of moving and dusting them. In the long run, though, I like to think that open access helps to foster a feeling of ownership and responsibility.

This brings up something that Beth (?) - mrs. oroblanco – brought up and that Mike (gollum) asked me about as well, namely the idea that finding something “brings in the archaeologists” and all of a sudden places become “off-limits” and the archaeologists take everything for themselves or shove it into some museum basement, never to see the light of day again. This is actually an issue of some importance in the archaeological community as well. Basically, archaeology in this country (at least as regards Federal land) works under several laws designed to protect sites and their contents as the property of the Federal government as agent for the people of the US. Because of this, it is illegal to take stuff from a site as that damages its integrity and makes it all that much more difficult to study and interpret – not to mention tainting the feeling of discovery. On the other hand, when we excavate sites as mitigation for their imminent destruction by a construction project, the lack of money available nowadays usually means that we only dig a sample of any given site; the rest, which remains under the same protection of the law that prevents people from taking stuff from it, is then destroyed by the project. Afterwards, aside from what might be published in the excavation report, the artifacts are then, again, by law, held in a repository and, realistically, are almost never seen again. This has become an enormous problem in archaeology, since we are actually running out of places to put the stuff. The one thing that doesn’t happen is for the material to end up in private collections; with the sole exception of human remains, if it came off of or out of Federal property, it remains Federal property. The other thing that doesn’t happen, at least on Federal land, is that unless a site is doomed to destruction by some project, it doesn’t get dug. There is far too much demand for mitigation and far too little money for research for the luxury of digging up sites just because we want to. With the exception of an occasional University field school, that just doesn’t happen all that often on public land any more.

While there are many avenues for public participation in this process, it is easy to understand why many people feel left out. It’s also obvious that the system will be changing over the course of the next 10-20 years. How it will change will depend on who is involved in making the decisions. If y’all want it to change in your favor, you’ll need to get involved. In the meantime, don’t be afraid to talk to agency archaeologists or report your findings. Sure, many times you’ll get told not to go back out there or not to dig anything else up, but the more interaction you have with these people, the more opportunity you’ll have to change their attitudes and make your concerns known. One thing I will tell you will probably never change, though, and that is the ownership of artifacts from Federal lands. There are proposals being evaluated for short and long term loans of various kinds of material to private individuals under certain circumstances as a way to reduce pressure on the repositories, but I doubt that it will ever get to the point that finding it on Federal property automatically makes it yours.

The third thing is something else that Beth brought up (those darn oroblancos!) – the idea that having someone like me “with an interest in the subject can help to bridge the divide between us.” While I hope that can happen, I feel that I need to clarify my “interest in the subject.”

I am not a treasure hunter, at least not in the sense that most of you are. I gave up looking for the Lost Dutchman 35 years ago when I figured out that the whole town of Goldfield had beat me to it. I have over the years accumulated a little knowledge and studied the folklore patterns of treasure stories, largely because I have had to. I am an archaeologist. My obsession with the past lies in learning about how people lived and developed here in Arizona and in several other parts of the world in which I have an interest. The tools we use are similar, however, starting from historic research and an understanding of the landscape and finally reaching down to the point of using metal detectors to identify, map, and study historic Army/Apache battle sites or mining camps. From that perspective, we are not so different, and on that basis, hopefully, we can begin to understand one another.

And y’all thought Roy was long winded!

Next post: advice on obtaining a treasure trove permit from the US Forest Service.

Or if your interested in finding out information about a treasure trove permit in the Tonto National Forest, Superstition Wilderness area, you could contact the USDA National Forest Service, Tonto National Forest at 2324 E. McDowell Road in Phoenix at (602) 225-5200 or the Mesa Ranger District #3 office at 5140 E. Ingram Street Mesa (480) 610-3300. Or e-mail them at  vipicard@fs.fed.us 
They will give you the straight story on how to apply for and obtain a treasure trove permit as well as provide you with all the necessary information and forms.

Say you heard about it on the Treasure Net Forum.

CuMiner,

You've anticipated my next post!

The McDowell Road address you gave is where my office is located and the phone number that of our front desk; they will transfer you to me. The e-mail address you gave belongs to our information officer; any inquiry about treasure troves will get forwarded to me. I'm probably going to regret this (though the info is already available in my profile), but...
my direct line is 602 225-5231 and e-mail is swood01@fs.fed.us.

As you said, y'all can also contact the Mesa District directly; ultimately the District Ranger will be the one to issue the permit, either on the basis of his own review of your application or on my recommendation. We used to have an archaeologist on the Mesa District who was just getting familiar with treasure troves, but he ran screaming, er, I mean transfered to the Coconino and will not be replaced in the foreseeable future.

More tomorrow - it's getting late and I still have work to do tonight.

Scott

nice post i agree   i would like more money put into   arc --old stuff   i love archaeologicia news   this stuff should be done proprly   maybe more money would stop the delays in what is found and when it is reported   as a demon lord give me patiece - but hurry well stated scott   i can talk the one fingered typing kills me

Or if your interested in finding out information about a treasure trove permit in the Tonto National Forest, Superstition Wilderness area, you could contact the USDA National Forest Service, Tonto National Forest at 2324 E. McDowell Road in Phoenix at (602) 225-5200 or the Mesa Ranger District #3 office at 5140 E. Ingram Street Mesa (480) 610-3300. Or e-mail them at  vipicard@fs.fed.us 
They will give you the straight story on how to apply for and obtain a treasure trove permit as well as provide you with all the necessary information and forms.

Say you heard about it on the Treasure Net Forum.

Hey CUMiner,

I don't know if you've been keeping up, but Scott is the Chief Archaeologist for Tonto National Forest. Just in case you hadn't seen that part yet (in another thread). He is the man to answer ANY questions you may have regarding that subject.

I know this is something many of you already know, but there may be some who don't, so I will say it. If you are hiking out in a State or National Park, and come across something, like Indian pot shards (or whole pots), DON'T dig them up and take them to the Ranger Station! I will say it again. DON'T DIG THEM UP! Leave them exactly where you find them. If you have GPS, mark the spot, if not, put a small stone on top of a larger stone to monument the location. If you have a camera, take pictures of the spot, and what's there.

Like this:



or this:



These are the remains of some Indian Pots I found while up in the mountains (won't post where here, sorry). I already showed them to Scott, and Thanks Scott. I emailed Anza-Borrego Desert State Park about them. Haven't heard back yet.

Best,

Mike

Hola Scott:  an excellent post.  Hopefully by enlightening both sides mutually, you, and your colleague´s  work load may be lightened, and good humor re established all around..

Unfortunately i live in a section of the world where, while they can be extremely efficient, some officials seem to be dedicated to maintaining the popular legend of Mexico being  Manana land

Tropical Tramp

[FOREST SERVICE MANUAL 2700 - SPECIAL USES MANAGEMENT CHAPTER 2720 - SPECIAL USES ADMINISTRATION]

Thanks, Guys.

Today's installment is going to come in two parts; first I'm going to pass on some of the regulatory basis for how treasure troves are handled. In a followup post I'll try to translate all that into practical English. This is what I have to work with:

FOREST SERVICE MANUAL 2700 - SPECIAL USES MANAGEMENT
CHAPTER 2720 - SPECIAL USES ADMINISTRATION (EXCERPTS)
Amendment No.:  2700-2006-1 Effective Date:  April 3, 2006
Duration:  This amendment is effective until superseded or removed.

2724.4 - Cultural Resource and Treasure Trove Uses

This category includes inventory, excavation, or removal of archaeological resources and treasure troves.
The Antiquities Act of June 8, 1906 (16 U.S.C. 431) authorizes most of the existing cultural resource special use permits issued prior to 1979 and all cultural and historic resources less than 100 years of age.  The Archeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (16 U.S.C. 470aa) authorizes all new permits involving land-disturbing cultural resource activity involving resources 100 years old and greater.  The Act of June 4, 1897 (16 U.S.C. 551) authorizes nondisturbing activity and permits for treasure troves.

Allow qualified institutions and individuals to observe, excavate, or remove archaeological resources on National Forest System lands when in the public interest and within the constraints of the various laws and regulations governing the management of archaeological and other natural resources.
For treasure troves, allow persons to search for buried treasure on National Forest System lands, but protect the rights of the public regarding ownership of or claims on any recovered property.

Definitions: Treasure Trove.  A valuable quantity of money, unmounted gems, or precious worked metal in the form of coins, plate, or bullion of unknown ownership, purposely hidden, that does not fall under any of the definitions in 36 CFR 296.3.

2724.44 - Treasure Hunting

This designation includes the search for and recovery of hidden treasure.  It does not include:

1.  Lost or abandoned property that falls under the General Services Administration authority in 40 U.S.C. 310.
2.  Archaeological resources or specimens defined at 36 CFR 296.
3.  Locatable minerals, as defined by the 1872 Mining Act (30 U.S.C. 21-54), or leasable minerals under either the Act of 1920 (30 U.S.C. 181) or the Act of 1947 (30 U.S.C. 351-359).
4.  Recent vintage coins or other small objects of recent age often found with the aid of a metal detector.  No significant excavation is involved.  The search is a recreation pursuit confined to areas with no historic or prehistoric value.

2724.44a - Ownership of Treasure Trove

The permit does not establish any ownership of a trove; it only authorizes the search activity.  In the event the permit holder makes a discovery, the ownership is adjudicated by process of law on a case-by-case basis.  Several factors influence the ownership determination.  These may include the following:

1.  Archaeological resources remain the property of the United States.
2.  The true owner of the trove may come forward.
3.  The Forest Service cannot determine the tax aspects or interests of other Governmental agencies nor is it possible to determine these aspects in advance.
4.  Resolution may include negotiation between the finder and the United States (as landowner) for any nonarchaeological portion of the trove.

Permits shall provide only for search and, if there is a discovery, for removal to a repository for safekeeping until determination of ownership.  The recovered treasure shall remain in escrow for one year to allow all claimants to come forward and to arrive at legally acceptable settlements.

2724.44b - Relation to Mining Claims

Treasure trove search under the guise of prospecting or mining is trespass (FSM 5330).  A trove found on an unpatented mining claim, even if the claim is prospectively valuable for minerals under the 1872 Mining Act (30 U.S.C. 21-54), does not automatically become the property of the mineral claimant.  The United States owns the land, and determination of the treasure ownership is as set out in FSM 2724.44a.

Title 36 Code of Federal Regulations, Part 296
(excerpt referenced in FSM 2724.44)

§ 296.3   Definitions.

As used for purposes of this part:

(a) Archaeological resource means any material remains of human life or activities which are at least 100 years of age, and which are of archaeological interest.
    (1) Of archaeological interest means capable of providing scientific or humanistic understandings of past human behavior, cultural adaptation, and related topics through the application of scientific or scholarly techniques such as controlled observation, contextual measurement, controlled collection, analysis, interpretation and explanation.
    (2) Material remains means physical evidence of human habitation, occupation, use, or activity, including the site, location, or context in which such evidence is situated.
    (3) The following classes of material remains (and illustrative examples), if they are at least 100 years of age, are of archaeological interest and shall be considered archaeological resources unless determined otherwise pursuant to paragraph (a)(4) or (a)(5) of this section:
      (i) Surface or subsurface structures, shelters, facilities, or features (including, but not limited to, domestic structures, storage structures, cooking structures, ceremonial structures, artificial mounds, earthworks, fortifications, canals, reservoirs, horticultural/agricultural gardens or fields, bedrock mortars or grinding surfaces, rock alignments, cairns, trails, borrow pits, cooking pits, refuse pits, burial pits or graves, hearths, kilns, post molds, wall trenches, middens);
      (ii) Surface or subsurface artifact concentrations or scatters;
      (iii) Whole or fragmentary tools, implements, containers, weapons and weapon projectiles, clothing, and ornaments (including, but not limited to, pottery and other ceramics, cordage, basketry and other weaving, bottles and other glassware, bone, ivory, shell, metal, wood, hide, feathers, pigments, and flaked, ground, or pecked stone);
      (iv) By-products, waste products, or debris resulting from manufacture or use of human-made or natural materials;
      (v) Organic waste (including, but not limited to, vegetal and animal remains, coprolites);
      (vi) Human remains (including, but not limited to, bone, teeth, mummified flesh, burials, cremations);
      (vii) Rock carvings, rock paintings, intaglios and other works of artistic or symbolic representation;
      (viii) Rockshelters and caves or portions thereof containing any of the above material remains;
      (ix) All portions of shipwrecks (including, but not limited to, armaments, apparel, tackle, cargo);
      (x) Any portion or piece of any of the foregoing.
   (4) The following material remains shall not be considered of archaeological interest, and shall not be considered to be archaeological resources for purposes of the Act and this part, unless found in a direct physical relationship with archaeological resources as defined in this section:
      (i) Paleontological remains;
      (ii) Coins, bullets, and unworked minerals and rocks.
   (5) The Federal land manager may determine that certain material remains, in specified areas under the Federal land manager's jurisdiction, and under specified circumstances, are not or are no longer of archaeological interest and are not to be considered archaeological resources under this part. Any determination made pursuant to this subparagraph shall be documented. Such determination shall in no way affect the Federal land manager's obligations under other applicable laws or regulations.
   (6) For the disposition following lawful removal or excavations of Native American human remains and “cultural items”, as defined by the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA; Pub. L. 101–601; 104 Stat. 3050; 25 U.S.C. 3001–13), the Federal land manager is referred to NAGPRA and its implementing regulations.

(b) Arrowhead means any projectile point which appears to have been designed for use with an arrow.

(c) Federal land manager means:

(1) With respect to any public lands, the secretary of the department, or the head of any other agency or instrumentality of the United States, having primary management authority over such lands, including persons to whom such management authority has been officially delegated;
(2) In the case of Indian lands, or any public lands with respect to which no department, agency or instrumentality has primary management authority, such term means the Secretary of the Interior;
(3) The Secretary of the Interior, when the head of any other agency or instrumentality has, pursuant to section 3(2) of the Act and with the consent of the Secretary of the Interior, delegated to the Secretary of the Interior the responsibilities (in whole or in part) in this part.

(d) Public lands means:

   (1) Lands which are owned and administered by the United States as part of the national park system, the national wildlife refuge system, or the national forest system; and
   (2) All other lands the fee title to which is held by the United States, except lands on the Outer Continental Shelf, lands under the jurisdiction of the Smithsonian Institution, and Indian lands.

(e) Indian lands means lands of Indian tribes, or Indian individuals, which are either held in trust by the United States or subject to a restriction against alienation imposed by the United States, except for subsurface interests not owned or controlled by an Indian tribe or Indian individual.

(f) Indian tribe as defined in the Act means any Indian tribe, band, nation, or other organized group or community, including any Alaska village or regional or village corporation as defined in, or established pursuant to, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (85 Stat. 688). In order to clarify this statutory definition for purposes of this part, Indian tribe means:

   (1) Any tribal entity which is included in the annual list of recognized tribes published in the Federal Register by the Secretary of the Interior pursuant to 25 CFR part 54;
   (2) Any other tribal entity acknowledged by the Secretary of the Interior pursuant to 25 CFR part 54 since the most recent publication of the annual list; and
   (3) Any Alaska Native village or regional or village corporation as defined in or established pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (85 Stat. 688), and any Alaska Native village or tribe which is recognized by the Secretary of the Interior as eligible for services provided by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

(g) Person means an individual, corporation, partnership, trust, institution, association, or any other private entity, or any officer, employee, agent, department, or instrumentality of the United States, or of any Indian tribe, or of any State or political subdivision thereof.

(h) State means any of the fifty states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Virgin Islands.

(i) Act means the Archaeological Resources Protection Act of 1979 (16 U.S.C. 470aa–mm).

[49 FR 1027, Jan. 6, 1984; 49 FR 5923, Feb. 16, 1984; 60 FR 5260, Jan. 26, 1995]
 

So you want to look for treasure on the National Forest? No problem - looking is free, as long as you abide by the laws protecting archaeological and historic sites and artifacts. Recovering treasure, now that’s another story….  However, if that is your heart’s desire, I can tell y’all a few things that might make your application for a treasure trove permit a little less traumatic for some and, I suppose, really frustrating for others.

DISCLAIMER: nothing that I am about to tell you should be taken as an endorsement or encouragement of treasure hunting on the Forest; I already have enough work to do (including myself, I have three archaeologists to deal with three million acres on the Tonto – I think you get the picture). Though the Regs I posted a few minutes ago apply generally to all National Forests, they specifically do not apply to State or BLM, and certainly do not apply to Park Service land, although all the Federal land managing agencies have their own version of 36 CFR 296 which only differs by the number in the title. What I am about to tell you interprets these regulations into the way we do things here on the Tonto NF; I wouldn't necessarily expect you'll find the same details on other Forests, but the basics should be familiar...

First of all, the treasure trove permit is discretionary and the authority for its issuance in the Forest Service is delegated down to the District Ranger level. There is no necessity for us to issue such a permit if we don’t want to, no matter how compelling an argument the applicant makes. What that means is that there is no set checklist of information or activities and no standardized method for evaluating proposals. The only real standard established for the evaluation of a treasure trove permit is the “reasonable man” standard. This is usually taken to mean that the proposal must be logical, flow from verifiable historic sources, and have physical evidence to back it up.

The process of application is relatively simple – you can contact your friendly, if somewhat jaded and sarcastic Forest Archaeologist to talk over your theories or you can go straight to the Ranger District where you plan to search and attempt to obtain a permit application from the Ranger. There is a $200 non-refundable fee that will be due when you submit your application. If you plan on searching in several non-contiguous area, that might mean $200 for each separate area depending on the discretion of the District Ranger.

In your application you must disclose the exact location of your search area/discovery and what you expect to find there and explain exactly why you expect to find it, ie. the evidence that led you to that particular place. Once you have disclosed the location (on current USGS topographic maps, preferably with UTM coordinates on the NAD 27 CONUS datum), we are obligated under the National Historic Preservation Act to examine this location for the presence of historic or prehistoric artifacts and/or features. As you might imagine, given the workload we already have from planned activities on the Forest, treasure trove permits don’t get a very high priority – it can take weeks or months to schedule the time for this. Of course, you do have the option of hiring a qualified archaeologist to conduct a survey; they would then submit their report directly to us or you could include it in your application if you have it done beforehand. This costs money, of course, and you have to hire someone who holds a permit to conduct this kind of work on the Forest.

If we determine on the basis of either our own inspection or that of your contractor that there is nothing man-made or modified at your search location, that it is nothing more than, say, fortuitously suggestive erosion or just an intact natural landscape with no evidence of any of the activities specified in your application, we can do one of two things – issue the permit because we know that there is nothing there that will be disturbed (aka “archaeological clearance”); in other words, if we prove that there is nothing there we may issue you a permit to search there (Catch-22). On the other hand, we can always choose not to issue it because we don’t wish to have that natural landscape disturbed by your search and recovery activities. If we choose not to issue, you’re out your $200. If we do find evidence of prehistoric/historic activity at your location, you’ll need to prepare a plan for our approval that will allow you to conduct your search is such a way as to avoid disturbing or destroying any artifacts, buildings, ruins, or other man-made features. If this is even possible and you have provided sufficient evidence from historic documentation or other sources that we agree is valid, we may then issue the permit. Under these circumstances, however, there will be additional requirements to protect these resources from your search activities. We may require mitigation for any disturbance to archaeological or historic resources, including scientific excavations and other studies to be done prior to your search and/or requiring that a professional archaeologist be on hand to monitor your work and stop it if anything archaeological comes to light to ensure that no damage is done to any historic features or artifacts. Depending on your proposal, we may also require restrictions to protect certain plants (e.g. saguaro cacti) and animal habitats. The plan for conducting all of this activity will require consultation with the State Historic Preservation Officer and in some cases with those Tribes having historical connections to or interests in the area, a process that generally takes a couple of months to complete. Patience is a valuable asset in this process.

For the most part, if there is something historic or archaeological there, we usually just don’t issue the permit. The only time that we have gone through this entire process within the last couple of decades was for Ron Feldman’s treasure trove permit at Rogers’ Trough last year. It cost him a bunch of money and all he could claim for it was the confirmation of what we already suspected was a horizontal well that provided water to the mining camp and mill located just downslope.

Assuming that you have made it through this gauntlet and spent wads of cash on your search and you do actually find something that qualifies as a treasure trove, it is entirely possible that you may not be able to keep much or any of it. Basically, the only ‘treasure’ that you can keep would be a portion of any bullion, plate, coins, or unmounted gems, assuming that it clears escrow without any other claims of ownership. Any and all other artifacts are and will remain the property of the United States. Your portion of the trove would be determined as part of a negotiated settlement with the Federal Government. You would also have to declare this as taxable income.

Obviously, the process is not designed to encourage people to submit applications….

So, assuming that you want to go through with all of this, how can you maximize your chances of being taken seriously and getting a permit?

My first bit of advice is to be selective and do your homework (and fieldwork). Quite frankly, if someone comes in telling us that they deciphered some allegedly authentic treasure map they saw in a book or bought in a bar in Apache Junction and figured out right where the treasure ought to be but haven’t been there yet and so are asking for some huge search area to go fishing in, the chances that their proposal will be sarcastically dismissed and end up in the shredder are quite high.

My second bit of advice extends from the first and basically applies to all other parts of the process and this is: make sure that your research is unimpeachable. If you are looking for lost mines, learn the geology of your search area and the technology of mining. If you are basing your proposal on an historic incident, make sure that it really happened; provide original documentation from authentic historical sources and don’t fall for the idea that “every legend has a grain of truth in it.” For example, here in the Southwest many treasure legends are predicated on the idea that the Jesuit Order came rampaging through Sonora and Arizona locating and operating hundreds of mines that they worked for the sole purpose of accumulating wealth and that they were thrown out of the New World because of it. Yes, I know that this has become an almost mainstream assumption in Arizona history by virtue of constant repetition, but when you look at the real history, that dog won’t hunt. The truth is that the Jesuits – and there were never more than a handful operating in this area at any given time – came to convert the Indios. They established missions, taught the Indians how to farm European crops and raise cattle, and fought to prevent the virtual enslavement and actual mistreatment of the native population by Spanish colonists. They were dirt poor and built their missions almost invariable out of mud. The only recorded association between Jesuits and mining has to do with a campaign to stop the brutal treatment the Indians received while working at many of the mines in Sonora. The reason they were tossed out in 1767 had, in fact, nothing to do with anything they did here – it was the result of a political “disagreement” they had with the kings of France and Spain back in Europe. They explored the Southwest (well, a couple of them did) but never made it north of the Gila River. So, any treasure story based on the idea that the secretive and avaricious Jesuits had mines or hid treasure anywhere in Arizona is nothing but a myth and isn’t going to be an easy sell if your proposal is based on it. Pretty much the same goes for the so-called “Peralta” Stone “Maps” (see parallel thread in this forum) which neither mention the name Peralta nor contain any overt indication that they constitute a map. “Evidence” based on an interpretation of a fake map or a false history is hardly the basis for a valid claim - and yet I know that nothing I just said will matter to some people. The Jesuit/Peralta Myths will probably never go away no matter what I do or say and I’ll be hearing about “18 locations” and witches and hearts and churches buried by earthquakes until I wise up and retire from this job).

In addition to making sure that your story has some actual historical basis and providing the documentation to prove it, bring in some physical evidence to back up your identification. Now, by this I don’t mean that you should bring in artifacts that you find. For one thing, this would be illegal, not that I have ever busted anybody for bringing me artifacts. If you do, however, remember that I can’t give them back to you; they are the property of the US and so have to stay here. In these days of relatively cheap autofocusing digital cameras it’s actually easier to take a lot of photos. Just remember to take overviews with skylines and details/closeups with scales.

Actually, that’s pretty much it – Documented historical evidence, a logical story, and enough photography of the place you want to work to recover your trove that it can be recognized as something other than natural, and you will stand a much better chance of being taken seriously and maybe even getting that permit. Independent wealth is also a good idea considering that it will cost you money up front and may net you nothing on the other end even if you find something.

Anyway, that’s about it for now; I have to get back to work. Reports are stacking up on my desk even as we speak…

Scott,

That is probably one of the most informative posts I have seen here. Ever. Not only the actual Title and Reg, but an explanation as to what it means in the real world.

Thanks!

Mike

Mr. Wood,

 Please understand right up front that the statements I make below are not a personal attack on you. I admire your willingness to make yourself available for this kind of confrontation, and appreciate your right to totally ignore it if you so choose. My main complaint is with the highest level of management at the Forest Service whom are probably sitting behind a desk and drawing a huge salary in Washington D.C. I am only directing this post to you in reply to some of your personal  comments and because you have opened the door for open communication and are within my reach through this medium.


I understand your concern about things that went on in the past like “Crazy” Jake blasting a large portion of the side of Malapais Mountain into Peter’s Canyon, or Celest Jones blasting parts of Weaver’s Needle all over the canyons below, but that is all 40+ year old history and does not happen anymore. To insinuate that it is a current concern seems a little misleading and big exaggeration about more immediate concerns. 

I also understand your concern about people with metal detectors leaving little holes all over. But my experience in metal detecting is that most items found with a metal detector are found within 1 – 2 inches of the surface and that most people take their foot and sweep the loose dirt back where it came from. In cases where they don’t, the small disturbance is erased by the next monsoon.

Like you, I would like to see everyone cover their little holes and leave no trace that they had been there, but I do not agree that since not everyone does, the legal rights of everyone else need to be stepped on. Since metal detecting is one of the most non-destructive forms of Prospecting, and there are existing Federal Laws written and approved by the Congress of the United States, concerning individual rights for prospecting in Wilderness Areas these individual rights cannot be taken away just because you or I are offended by trivial acts performed by a few inconsiderate people.

In reference to:  Act of September 3, 1964 (P.L. 99-577. 78 Stat. 890; 16 U.S.C. 1121; 1131-1136 cited as the “Wilderness Act”.

As specified in this document under “Limitation of Use and Activities” Section 4.  (D) (2),

NOTHING IS THIS ACT SHALL PREVENT within national forest wilderness areas any activity, INCLUDING PROSPECTING, for the purpose of gathering information about mineral or other resources, if such activity is carried on in a manner compatible with the preservation of the wilderness. Furthermore, in accordance with such program as the Secretary of the Interior shall develop and conduct in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture, such areas shall be SURVEYED ON A PLANNED, RECURRING BASIS consistent with the concept of wilderness preservation by the Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines TO DETERMINE THE MINERAL VALUES, if any, that may be present; AND THE RESULTS OF SUCH SURVEYS SHALL BE MADE AVAILABLE TO THE PUBLIC AND SUBMITTED TO THE PRESIDENT AND CONGRESS.
(All capitalizations by myself)

Section 3. “Previously Classified Areas” - Specifies That Maps and Legal descriptions of a Wilderness Area shall be made available to the public.


Section 7 “Report to Congress” - Specifies that the surveys described in Sec. 4. (D) (2) shall be submitted to the President for transmission to Congress at the opening of each session to Congress.



Re: Sec.4. (D) (2)
I realize that your department has a certain amount of latitude afforded you by the words “if such activity is carried on in a manner compatible with the preservation of the wilderness“ but I think that latitude is all too often stretched beyond the original intentions of the United States Congress when this document was written and approved. A case in point took place in 1998 when A&E applied for a permit to film the Documentary “The Lost Dutchman Mine” on location in the Superstition mountains, and someone in your department told them that under no circumstances would that be allowed AND THE PERMIT WOULD not BE ISSUED! I attended that meeting and heard the words myself. It was not until Senator John McCain got involved and explained the original intent of the Congress and himself (Since he co-authored the bill with Senator Morris Udal to include the Superstitions into the Wilderness Act) that the permit was granted to A&E to film the documentary. It should not have been necessary to go all the way to Senator McCain to get a permit to film this documentary, and would not have been necessary if your department was not in the habit of stretching the meaning of “in a manner compatible with the preservation of the wilderness” way beyond the original intentions of the Wilderness Act as approved by the U. S. Congress.


Re: Sec. 3. The Wilderness Act requires that the Forest Service provide Maps and legal descriptions of the Wilderness boundaries within 10 years of an area becoming designated a Wilderness Area. It now being over 20 years since the Superstition Mountains were made a Wilderness Area, the general public has still not been provided with an accurate map or legal description of the Superstition Wilderness Area Boundaries. The BLM does not even know where the exact boundaries are! This is a requirement of Federal Law for an area to become and continue to be designated as a Wilderness Area. Are we going to have to get the attention of our Senators again to ensure that the Forest Service complies with the Federal requirements and provides the public with the required maps and legal descriptions? Or should we just contest the validity of the Superstition Wilderness Area all together based on the Forest Service failure to meet the Federal Requirements?

Re: Sec.4. (D) (2) and Sec. 7 – These sections deal with the requirement for annual mineral surveys to be performed and reported to the U.S. Congress on an annual basis.
These annual surveys should be public records and available to the public upon request, but every time I have tried to acquire copies of these annual mineral surveys I have been told that there are no funds available for performing these surveys. These surveys also are a Federal requirement for all Wilderness Areas. Maybe we should contest the validity of the Superstition Wilderness Area based on this violation of the Wilderness Act by the Forest Service.

If I were a public servant working for the Forest Service. I would be ashamed to attempt to enforce some of the self serving rules you come up with for ensuring public activities are “ carried on in a manner compatible with the preservation of the wilderness” when the Forest Service itself is in such violation of the Federal requirements for this area being considered a Wilderness Area in the first place.

Now, I will admit that I am not an attorney, and I do not have a lot of experience with Federal Documents, and there are a lot of “weasel” words and phrases in the Wilderness Act that I do not understand. But I can read and understand plain English and have tried to limit this post to parts of the Wilderness Act that I can understand. If I am incorrect about any of the Federal requirements I believe the Forest Service to be in violation of, I welcome your corrections as necessary.

If you do have accurate and up to date maps of the Superstition Wilderness boundaries, (as required by Federal Law) and a complete file of annual mineral surveys performed in the Superstition Wilderness Area, (also as required by Federal Law) I would be very grateful if you could tell me where I can get copies of them, and I will in the future, refrain from complaining about anything but the Forest Service’s self-serving and ever changing definition  of “in a manner compatible with the preservation of the wilderness”.


Blazer

evening Scot:  You may be quite correct in Jesuit activities in Arizona, but I can assure you that south of the present border, in Sonora,  it was different.   They  'were' involved as the historical research  book and paper that I am writing for the Explorers club will eventually show.

I have discussed this a little in here, obviously I will not reveal the final data/proof  until my paper is accepted or the book is published.

Of course I could ask why the resident Jesuit Priest in Yecora was so agitated when he saw my decal - as shown on the left as my Avatar. He also asked me to come to Yecora, where  he had a huge pot of coffee and we would have a fine session talking all  night long??? 

Or why was the Jesuit priest climbing around my Tayopa and fell to his death  in the late 1800's- there was only one Indian ranch in the vicinity.?

Possibly why different Kings of Spain issued orders for them to desist from mining, I agree that this could have been fomented by jealous court intrigue rather than facts, but the orders were issued.

Keep posting my friend I enjoy them.

Tropical Tramp

Blazer,

Whew! How shall I respond to that?

First of all, I agree that we haven't had a dynamiting incident in a while (although several citizens actually reported one near Siphon Draw only a month or two ago and I haven't heard back from the District about it, which probably means that it was an auditory hallucination), but we do still get people digging holes. On the other hand, I wasn't trying to insinuate that it was still going on, nor was I exaggerating the types and levels of damage that we have incurred - I merely listed a number of things that have happened over the years to illustrate why we have concerns.

I was also not trying to denigrate metal detecting, per se. We use them ourselves. The problem is that we are plagued by people using them illegally and without regard for anything or anyone else. There is a certain etiquette to using them on public land (maybe I should work up a post on that as well...) that far too many people don't know about or don't care. They are like ATVs - they're sold to anybody with the money without any training in their proper use. As a result, ATVs are destroying large parts of the granite desert around Phoenix and detectorists (along with bottle hunters) have ravaged several very important historic sites on the Forest; they have essentially erased several Army/Apache battle sites, torn up an historic mill town that I have been trying to develop for interpretation, taken everything that wasn't nailed down from our only military post, and even desecrated historic Apache cemeteries to steal pocket watches and gold teeth. As you say, most detectorists aren't like that, but, alas, there are too few of us (FS) to manage that kind of use except through restrictive regulation. All that I ask of anyone using a detector is that they act responsibly, show a little concern for the land and the next taxpayer that wants to enjoy it, don't take anything that isn't prohibited under the laws and regulations, and that whenever they find anything interesting on the Forest they let me know about it (OK, the last one is optional, but I can use all the help I can get).

The wilderness stuff you mentioned is a little harder to understand. Off the top, I know nothing about what happened regarding the commercial filming permit, so I won't go there. Given the number of times that Mesa District has issued such permits, I have to think that they had a very specific reason, but I don't know what it may have been. As for the other stuff...

I'll start off by saying that I am ambivalent about Wilderness areas within the Forests. I understand and support the need for preserving places that the average person considers "pristine," but most of the ones on the Tonto aren't all that "untrammeled by man," unless you don't consider the Indians, prehistoric and historic, that lived there, built there, and terraformed large parts of them for agriculture to be human. Wilderness status can help to protect these landscapes, but it can also get in the way, as it does whenever I need to do some stabilization on our cliff dwellings. Oh well.

I don't know why you say that we haven't published accurate maps of the Wilderness boundary; we sell maps to the public that show it and it is accurately depicted on the USGS topo maps. What more do you think we need to do?

OK, I'm not absolutely sure about the USGS maps available commercially - I haven't used them in many years. The ones we use are made especially for us by USGS and include things not available on the commercial maps that are related to FS administrative needs for management. I do know that the wilderness boundaries are shown on those maps and that they were updated less than 10 years ago and haven't changed since.

I can tell you why there are no "annual mineral surveys" of the Superstition Wilderness - it's been closed to mineral entry for the last couple of decades (I don't remember the exact date, but I think it was in the '80s - don't quote me, though, since my memory regarding such things is less than optimal these days, especially when I'm not in my office). The fact that there is no money and no personnel to do it is, therefore, moot. I have to say, though, that there are a whole lot of what we call "unfunded mandates" that have been showered on us by Congress. For instance, the Forests were supposed to have completed inventorying all their archaeological and historic sites many years ago, both by executive order and by law, but Congress has never approprated any money for that activity. As a result, in the 31 years that we have had an archaeological program on the Tonto we have managed to survey less than 7% of our 3 million acres (and on that 7% we have recorded 9,000 sites...). You can always yell at us for not fulfilling these sorts of obligations, but the sad truth is that we've never been given the funding or personnel to do so. If you want to sue the Forest Service to make us finish our archaeological inventory, be my guest - I could really use the extra money and my grandkids could use the job security....

I don't know if any of that alleviated your concerns, but wilderness isn't really part of my charter as an archaeologist in the Forest Service. If you still have questions and concerns regarding access or obtaining maps, you could try talking to the wilderness ranger at Mesa RD (480 610-3300). I'd tell you to call the wilderness guy at my office, but he retired and died last year and we have not yet been able to fill in behind him.

Cheers,
Scott

keep posting this is good   thank you scott

Scott,
Thanks for posting the code - very informative.  You've laid out a clear and demanding protocol for those who feel they have located a 'treasure trove' on NFS land and desire to recover it via 'legal' channels.  And thanks for posting your personal perspectives, as an insider, on the process - pertinent food for thought for the avid seekers who linger here.
 
Your opinions as an archaeologist/historian, while predictably dogmatic, could be quite an obstacle for a claimant who has a contrary view of events from days gone by.  This is troubling, but those of us who have dealt with the personal biases of first/second-level bureaucrats for decades know the game quite well - there is always a code that can be interpreted by those in authority as a reason to say "no" if he sees fit.  This always frustrates the naive, but it's the game we are forced to play.

Scott, you are obviously a savvy, friendly and helpful spokesman - as they say, "da kinda guy you'd like ta have a beer with". 

Advice (take it or leave it) to those of you who think you've located a 'treasure trove': Remember this - if you're successful and your recovery becomes public record, there will surface a prior claimant to your recovery.  You will be in court for years and the lawyers will feast on you.

Advice (take it or leave it) to American citizens in general: Never trust the government.

Hey, Springfield,

That's pretty funny - you say "never trust the government" but I'm the one that's dogmatic!

Don't worry, I get to hear that all the time. It usually goes something like this: somebody comes to me making a claim based on, let's just say, the popular notion that those nasty, avaricious Jesuits were building hidden churches and working secret mines in the middle of a non-mineralized volcanic caldera.  As his evidence he trots out articles from treasure magazines and a 4th generation xerox of Kenworthy's signs and monuments. I counter with professional geological surveys of the area in question that all agree that there is no gold there, and a review of the history of Jesuit activities in northern Sonora  that totally belies every thing he had to say and tell him he'll have to do better than that if he wants to go digging holes in public land. I am then accused of being dogmatic and having a personal bias because I don't believe his story. But is that the end of it? For a lot of land managers, it is, but let me tell you another story or two.

There are a couple of Dutch hunters that I have known for 25 and 10 years, respectively. Both are dogged seekers after the treasures of the legends and neither claims to be in it for the money, but to preserve the history of the Southwest. One of them we actually gave a trove permit to in the late 1970s. We let him dig and he proved without a doubt that there was nothing at his search location. He comes in periodically every few years with a new location based on revisions to his original theory and we go over his new evidence. This last year he changed his theory considerably and I waded through a stack of his evidence - which, curiously enough, kept pointing to the same area he'd always been interested in. the evidence was weak and poorly researched and the places he wanted to look had already been investigated years ago and found to be wanting. He's now working on another revision and I'm sure I'll see him again next year.

The other one started off looking for the LDM but he had an almost unique approach; he turned one of the famous maps upside down and became convinced that the mine was nowhere near the Superstitions. He has since covered a lot of ground north and west of there and is curently searching west of the Verde River. He has added some new flavors to his studies - Peraltas and Jesuits (imagine that) - and chases out roads and cannon positions and forts in addition to mines, caches and camps. So far he has located a number of actual historic sites (all late 19th century), a bunch of prehistoric sites, and even some Apache sites. We periodically go out and visit his new discoveries and record some of the new sites he has found, but to date every one of his 'sure thing' locations for the LDM has turned out to be a natural outcrop or erosional feature. Right now, he's trying to make a bunchof late historic drystone stock fences into Spanish defenses and figure out why he can't find the remains of the walls of the Jesuit church that he is sure that he has found. As soon as I have the time, I'll go look at this stuff with him (some of which I've already seen) and then he'll come up with a new correction to his map interpretation and we'll start all over again. Hell of a nice guy; we've been doing this for years. He's never had a permit.

So what was the point to all of that? Only this:  just because I base my evaluations on scientific evidence and method and historic documentation doesn't make those evaluations dogmatic nor does it make the process exclusionary. If you come to us with a theory, we'll listen. Sure, I like to just kick the real nutters out the door and tell 'em to stay the hell off my Forest or we'll sic the Aztec assassins on 'em - who wouldn't? - but if you come to us with something even remotely resembling researched evidence and a sense of humor, we'll listen. At least once. You may not get a permit, and we might still hand you over to the Aztecs or maybe the Apaches, but it won't be on account of any bias.

Anyway, keep up the fight, Springfield - just remember: the more you distrust your government, the more your government will distrust you!

Cheers,
Scott

Mr Wood,

I can see that this topic has the potential of growing into a lot of different areas that can and probably will before to long. In the interest of keeping this post on one subject I will limit it to Wilderness Area Boundaries and Federal Requirments and budgets for maintenance of Wilderness Areas.

I have to take exception to a lot of your comments.
It is obvious that you think your word is the LAW and supercedes any Law written by the United States Congress. Your attitude towards blowing off your responsibilities for meeting mandated laws because your department places higher priorities on things that are easier to do and feed your personal egos more is disgusting and typical of the attitudes I have seen in Forest Service employees!

Although there is room for disputing all of your comments concerning the Wilderness Boundaries, I will limit my dispute to the Northern Boundary. Per a recent conversation with engineers at the BLM, the original northern boundary of the Superstition Wilderness area was done decades ago by the Meets and Bounds method rather than an actual official survey as we use the term today. This method uses landmarks such as Trees, Boulders, and washes which no longer exist today. The end result being that the “Official” boundaries submitted to Congress defining the boundaries of the Wilderness Area is no longer valid and has never been updated and reported to Congress, fulfilling the requirements for this area to be set aside as a Wilderness Area.

As a private citizen it should not be my responsibility to inform you that being a Federal Entity does not excuse your department from compliance with Federal Laws.

Sec 1. of the Wilderness Act clearly states that “No appropriation shall be available for the payment of expenses or salaries for the administration of the National Wilderness Preservation System as a separate unit nor shall any appropriations be available for the purpose of managing or administering areas solely because they are included within the National Wilderness Preservation System”.

I understand this to mean that it is the Forest Service’s responsibility to fulfill the requirements mandated by Congress in order to maintain the status of a designated Wilderness Area using the annual budget provided by the Congress for salaries, equipment and  buildings provided in that budget.

If the Forest Service chooses to use those funds provided by that budget to enforce their self-serving policies and harass the general public attempting to use a designated Wilderness Area as it was intended by Congress, rather than ensuring that they (The Forest Service) are in full compliance with the mandated laws that are prerequisite for the existence of a Wilderness Area in the first place, then I believe that someone needs to take a hard look at the people that are responsible for determining how this budget is spent.

As American Citizens we all have the right to expect that our government agencies are in full compliance with it’s own Federal Regulations before they try to force us to comply with those same regulations.

I am not against the Wilderness Act in any way, and I applaud Senator McCain for his efforts to include the Superstition Mountain Range into the Wilderness Act and preserve the area for future generations to enjoy. But I do expect this to be done in compliance with ALL Federal Laws approved by the Congress of the United States and NOT by some Ranger’s opinion of how he thinks it should be done and according to his own personal priorities!

I am digging deeper into the mechanics of the Wilderness Act every day, and I wouldn’t be surprised if many other private citizens are too. I expect this topic in this forum will grow to many pages in the coming months, as more of us become enraged over the way our Public Servants are misusing the funds appropriated for legally maintaining our Wilderness Areas. I do not understand how any money could be spent on anything in the way of Enforcing Public compliance with Wilderness Area requirements BEFORE the Forest Service has complied with the Federal Requirements for the Wilderness Area to exist.

I appreciate your straight forward response in admitting that the Forest Service cannot meet the Federal Requirements for maintaining the Wilderness Area. It will make my voice much louder when or if I decide to approach Senators McCain and Kyl myself with my complaints.

Blazer

JEEEZ Blazer! Why all the ill will? If you want to go after a dept of the federal government for not doing it's job (regardless of funding shortfalls), why not beat up on the Border Patrol? Granted, they do the best they can, with what theyve got, but by your definition they should be held accountable for their shortcomings.

I'm not a federal employee. I sell cars, but I spent my military career under the command of Ronald Reagan and GHW Bush. I had cost of living raises of between 11 and 14 percent. We NEVER lacked for funds to train all over the world. We never turned down a mission (3rd Ranger Battalion) because of funding. Everything changed when Clinton came into office. bases started closing en masse. When I left the Rangers, I went to the 82nd Airborne Division. I saw it go from a force of about 16,000 down to 12,000 due to military budget cuts. We couldn't train our troops like we believed was necessary. We couldn't afford to do many live fire excercizes, because we couldn't afford the ammo! Do you REALLY think 12,000 men could do the job of 16,000 men? OF COURSE NOT!

I went through all that rigamarole to help explain Scott's position. Your argument is with the Federal Government. Without proper funding and staffing, it is nigh impossible to accomplish a task as large as that. Look at it like this: If you had a job that required you to do something that was impossible based on normal working hours, but the job would not pay overtime. Would you work for free to try and accomplish your task? I wouldn't. If they REALLY want the job done, then pay what it takes to do the job right!

Best,

Mike

HIO  I understand where both stand and why, I appreciate both views, but -----------5th------------!

Tropical Tramp

(Gollum now you know why I was a gentleman, weasely, comes naturally.   ehehehe)

Mike

I understand your position on the Border Patrol and agree with it, but it doesn't really fit the topic here does it?
I already stretched it from Treasure Trove Permits to Federal Requirements for Wilderness Areas. In a way they are tied together at the very top, so I didn't stretch it too far.

I guess the root of my problem with the Federal Government is the way they take public land especially public land where there might be a Treasure Trove involved, and place it under some type of "Protected Land" (Wilderness Area or Military Base etc) in order to make a Federal Claim to anything that might be there.

In the case of the Superstition Mountains they used the Wilderness Act. When originally written the Wilderness Act included a lot of prerequisites for the land that had to be met before it could be included into the Wilderness Act. Things like it had to be a Primitive Area with no roads, it could not contain any mineable metals ect. ect. ect. Before the Superstition Mountains could be included in the Wilderness Act, they had to do a Mineral Survey and verify that there were no mineable minerals in the area to be included in the Act. There was also a requirement that annual mineral surveys had to be made for minerals to reassure that there were still no known mineable minerals in the area. They were also required to to determine the boundaries of the area and make them known to the public via maps and legal descriptions so the public would have no doubt about where these boundaries were so they could comply with the new Wilderness Area Requirements in that area.

All these prerequisite requirements were written in to get the required vote by Congress to get the Act passed.

The initial Mineral Survey performed in the Superstition Mountains to verify that there was no mineable mineral in them was carefully done so as not to find any mineable minerals,if you know what I mean. People have been bringing placer gold out of La Barge canyon, Tortilla Creek and Peter's canyon for 50 years or more. Of course these areas were not sampled or carelessly sampled. OK, so they missed it in the initial survey, reported to Congress that there was no mineable minerals in the Superstitions and got it included into the Wilderness Act, and began to restrict what could be done there accordingly. There are a LOT of areas in the Superstitions where there IS mineable mineral. But, now that it is a Wilderness Area, there are restrictions for access to those areas, making it impossible to mine them at a profit, and difficult at best to even prospect in the Wilderness Area. As I pointed out in my first post, the Wilderness Act states that even tho an area is covered by the Act, Prospecting is still supposed to be allowed and SHALL NOT be prevented. Consistant with the prerequisite requirements that had to be met for an area to be included in the Act, Congress wanted annual surveys for mineral to be done and reported to them to ensure that the area still met the prerequisite requirements and they backed that up by allowing prospecting by the public to support the annual reports submitted by the F.S.

My whole agenda, is to show that the F.S. has failed over and over to meet the federal requirements for establishing a Wilderness Area by manipulating reports and completely failing to perform others that could possibly result in having to remove the Superstition Mountains from the protection of the Wilderness Act.

The Laws mandated by Congress are NOT optional based on funding! I am sure Congress expects those mandates to be complied with BEFORE any funds are spent by the F. S. doing anything else, or at least I would hope that is the case. It is my position that the prerequisite requirements for the Superstition Mountains to be included in the Wilderness Act have never been met and as a result of this, the restrictions imposed on the public for activities within the range are being ILLEGALY imposed.

This whole thing spirals off into a lot of debatable arguments over what the F. S. is doing to enforce Wilderness Area requirements in the Superstition Wilderness Area, and it chaps my ass that they have not even met the requirements of it to be Wilderness area in the first place!

There IS gold out there. There is lots of gold. The Government knows this and is doing everything they can to prevent anyone from finding it's source! There is also the possibility of one or more very large Treasure Troves to be found out there, and the government wants to be sure that if there are, and anyone ever finds one or more of them, the government will get it all! And it is all being done in violation of the wording and intent initially voted on and approved by the United States Congress!

Just take a look at what happened at Victoria Peak in New Mexico, and a lot of other places. It's the same old crap! The government or people running it want it ALL! The difference is... In the case of the Superstition Wilderness Area, we have grounds for reversing some of the illegal actions being performed by the government to ensure that the public (or the finder) gets screwed out of it all if anything of value is ever found!

We need a very loud public outcry for the government to comply with it's own Federal Laws before requiring the public to comply with them.

Does that give you a better idea of where I am coming from and where I am going?

I want to see the F.S. do what ever is necessary for them to comply with their part of the Federal Laws! If it takes their entire budget to do it and they have no resources left to drive around in their government vehicles and harass the public, I'm sorry, but Federal Laws are more important than their Office Policies and Procedures!

If the government cannot comply with it's own requirements for maintaining a designated Wilderness Area in accordance with ALL the requirements of the Wilderness Act, then that area should be REMOVED from the requirements established in the Wilderness Act. Someone corect me if I am wrong.

Blazer

Blazer, I know you are right about the N boundry not being defined. Several maps I have say "undetermined boundary" along the N border of the wilderness area.  20 years should have been long enough for the F S to comply with the requirements. It looks like the gov't bit off more than they could chew when the made the sup's a wilderness. I hope your crusade catches a lot of interest. You are right. If the gov't cannot afford to maintain it, they should give it back. Nothing I would like to see more than the Sup's opened back up for mining claims. I seriously doubt that it would ever happen but who knows. They may have so much on their plates right now that they would rather give it back instead of approving more funds to keep it. Could you imagine the president trying to get something like that through the congress right now? I guess they could just order the Greensuits to drop everything else until they met the requirements.

Keifer

Hey Blazer,

It actually applies very well! I think Keifer said it best. The Feds should not have bitten off more than they could chew. Either fund the FS well enough to do the job they want done, or make the land public. Your fight isn't with the FS. It's with the Feds who took all that land and made it Wilderness Areas.

As Scott stated in his post, he would be MORE than happy for you to call attention to this with the Feds. Remember, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Politicians want to do what their constituents want (or at least appear so). In the mid 1990s, Clinton understood that the American Public wanted to stop industry from destroying our Public Lands, so he added imensely to the size of many of our National Parks and Forests. It was great press, and made him a shiny apple in the eyes of the Tree Hugging Crowd. Did Slick Willie properly fund the Forest Service so they could fulfill the laws already on the books regarding boundaries and mineral reports? Doesn't sound like it according to the Chief Archaeologist for one of our National Forests!?! Bush cares not for our wilderness areas (other than oil drilling access for his buddies). Think he is going to up the funding for the Forest Service to do their job properly while the US is operating at a huge deficit, and he is allocating a couple of BILLION DOLLARS per MONTH for actions in Iraq? I highly doubt the US Forest Service is a very high priority for him.

If you could get enough people to call, email, and write to their representatives, angrily explaining why proper funding for the US Forest Service is as important as the war in Iraq, then you may get some of the things you wanted done. Look how well it worked for the Mexican Border! NOBODY and I mean NOBODY wanted to do anything about our porous Southern Border. The Democrats want open borders so we can help out the needy of the world, while Republicans want open borders so we can exploit all the cheap labor. It wasn't until Talk Radio got everybody fired up about the subject, and everybody started calling and threatening their Representatives Jobs', that anybody other than Tom Tancredo and Dana Rohrbacher did anything about it. Now do you see the relationship between my post and the subject at hand?

You can yell at Scott all day long, but it is a fact of life, that he can't do any more than he can do, with what he's got. You get enough people to yell at the Feds, and they can give him more money to do the jobs they want him to do.

Best,

Mike

No "Christmas"  gollum ??  coward!     CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS CHRISTMAS !

Great scot, lets give SCOTT a  merry CHRISTMAS! not  scotch him personally.

Tropical Tramp

Merry CHRISTMAS  SCOTT & all of my friends in here.  I sent this from Guadalcanal in 1942.

Tropical Tramp

nice post mrs.  please don't shoot scott   just getting to like him

First, let me get a few things out of the way.

Hey Mike,

Thanks for the support, buddy! I can see that you understand what we’ve been going through. If I ever get my hands on the guy who coined the phrase “do more with less” I’m going to kill him. Slowly. And Painfully. Because I won’t have the funding or personnel necessary to do it quickly and humanely.

Your overtime analogy was a good one. The only people in the FS who get OT are fire fighters (which nobody begrudges) and clerks (which we have been steadily getting rid of for the last decade). I belong to a class of employees labeled “exempt.” When I first heard that, I thought it meant that we were something elite and got to avoid certain kinds of unsavory work; after all, that class is made up of all the professionals and ‘ologists. Imagine my surprise when I found out that it meant that we were exempt from overtime… The problem is that there actually are a lot of people in the FS that believe in what we are doing and end up donating a lot of time to try to get the job done (fool that I am, I generally end up donating anywhere from one to two months a year). That used to work, but not any more; there simply aren’t enough of us.

Jose,

Now that’s what I call a Christmas card! Thanks.

Beth and Demon,

Thanks for not wanting to shoot me! Curiously enough, the last time anybody shot at me it was in the Superstition Wilderness (as opposed to over the Superstition Wilderness). And thanks, Beth, for the excellent discussion of unfunded mandates, the Forest Service way of life.

OK, between Mike and Beth I think that Blazer’s issues have been pretty well covered, but there are a couple of things he said that I would still like to straighten out/clarify before, hopefully, we can let this Wilderness thing go.

Blazer said: <<Sec 1. of the Wilderness Act clearly states that “No appropriation shall be available for the payment of expenses or salaries for the administration of the National Wilderness Preservation System as a separate unit nor shall any appropriations be available for the purpose of managing or administering areas solely because they are included within the National Wilderness Preservation System”.>> and then went on to say that he understood this to mean “that it is the Forest Service’s responsibility to fulfill the requirements mandated by Congress in order to maintain the status of a designated Wilderness Area using the annual budget provided by the Congress for salaries, equipment and  buildings provided in that budget.”

That isn’t what it means at all. It means that Congress did not set aside any money specifically to manage any wilderness as a separate entity apart from the administrative units in which they are located, in this case, the National Forest. In other words, funds for managing Wilderness have to come out of the appropriated funds for the entire Forest and are therefore subject to the budget prioritization process.

He followed this up with “The Laws mandated by Congress are NOT optional based on funding!”  Well, having worked for the Government for 30 years, you could have fooled me! As Beth so eloquently noted, “unfunded mandates” have become the norm in Congress. Just about every law directing any Federal land management activity over the last 30 years has been stymied by this. In fact, many of these “mandates” have a clause in their enabling legislation that says “nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the expenditure of funds beyond those already allocated to the Agency (or words to that effect).” Nice, huh?

Blazer said that he has a  problem with the way that the Federal Government “take public land especially public land where there might be a Treasure Trove involved, and place it under some type of "Protected Land" (Wilderness Area or Military Base etc) in order to make a Federal Claim to anything that might be there.” I kind of get the feeling that others feel a little the same way, but there may be a slight misunderstanding about what designations like Wilderness really mean when it comes to land status.

The land currently designated as the Tonto National Forest, including the Superstition Wilderness, has been Federal property from the time that we signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 when we got it from Mexico. Parts of the Tonto National Forest were designated as Forest Reserve as early as 1898 and it became a National Forest in 1905 with some parts being added in 1908. The Superstition Wilderness was designated by the Forest Service as a Primitive Area in 1939 and a Wilderness in 1940; it became part of the National Wilderness Preservation System in 1964. It was “protected land” long before that, long before any American ever prospected in it and long before anyone ever started looking for treasure troves there. We’ve never had to do anything “make a Federal claim to anything;” whatever’s out there has been Federal property for the last 158 years.

He said that “The initial Mineral Survey performed in the Superstition Mountains to verify that there was no mineable mineral in them was carefully done so as not to find any mineable minerals,if you know what I mean.”
While that is a nice sarcastic remark, it simply isn’t true. But if he won’t believe that one, there are plenty of other geological studies of the Superstitions that say the same thing – no mineralization, no locatable minerals. Go to any bookstore. The western part of the range is nothing but an eroded volcanic caldera blanketed with dacitic ash. Typical of such formations, there is mineralization around the edges, evidence for which is plentiful at Goldfield, the old tungsten/manganese (sorry, I forget which) mines near Burns Ranch, and the silver and copper mining districts centered on Rogers’ Trough and Silver King/Superior – all of which are outside the Wilderness. All of these mines were originally developed prior to the designation of the Forest; if there was anything locatable inside the area we now call wilderness, there was nothing to stop anybody from claiming and developing it at that time. Nobody ever did; gold mines up the wazoo at Goldfield, nothing in the adjacent caldera.

He said “People have been bringing placer gold out of La Barge canyon, Tortilla Creek and Peter's canyon for 50 years or more.” And “There IS gold out there. There is lots of gold. The Government knows this and is doing everything they can to prevent anyone from finding it's source! There is also the possibility of one or more very large Treasure Troves to be found out there, and the government wants to be sure that if there are, and anyone ever finds one or more of them, the government will get it all!”

First of all, those “placer gold” stories are apochryphal. Have you seen any of it, Blazer? Has anyone other than the people who claim to have found it? Assertion is not evidence. There’s a story going around that Chuck Kenworthy took $13.5 M in gold out of the Superstitions, but we surveyed every one of his claim areas. Do you have any idea how much waste rock that would produce or how big a hole? Guess what? Didn’t happen.

Second, didn’t I specify in an earlier post the provisions in the treasure trove process that allow the finder to keep some portion of any trove that he/she might find? Not all of it, of course – since it is already Government property in the first place by virtue of having been abandoned on Federal land – but some portion. You can quibble over the percentage, but you can’t say that the Fed takes it all.

I gather from some of the other things he and others have said that some (a few? a lot?) of you think that people should be allowed to prospect in the Superstitions to find all this gold Blazer says we are hiding because the Wilderness Act says that’s OK. Forgive me if I don’t take sides here, but I do want to go back to something  that I mentioned earlier – it’s been closed to mineral entry (not the same thing as the “patent moratorium,” which is a whole other topic I’d rather not get caught up in at the moment).

Now I can see where some folks might see this as evidence of a Federal conspiracy, so there will probably be people out there who won’t believe me when I tell why we did that. The reason was simple – people had been prospecting it for decades, digging and blasting holes all over the place, destroying archaeological sites, and harassing recreationists. We closed it to mineral entry not because it was full of gold but because 100 years of prospecting had shown that it wasn’t but that fact did not stop people from tearing the place up looking for it. When Anglos first started settling in Arizona Territory it only took a couple of years for a relative handful of prospectors to find and develop nearly every gold mine ever discovered in the Bradshaw Mountains. Does it seem reasonable that anyone should expect to find gold in a place of about the same size that has had hundreds, if not thousands, of people looking all over it for a century without finding anything?

Anyway, it’s late and I’ve said about all that I can coherently say about this at 3 AM. If anybody wants to pursue this topic with the FS, I would suggest that you might want to talk to someone in wilderness management at the Regional or Washington Office. I can give you names and addresses if you’d like (but not now, since I’m not in my office).

Cheers,
Scott

Scott,

First I would like to thank you for your pleasant and professional response to my irate and argumentative ramblings!

I believe I have made it clear that my frustration is not with you personally. Right from the start and I have tried to keep that thought in mind as I vent my frustrations with the federal government. Looking back at some of my own words, even I can see that I have lost sight of that a time or two and I appreciate you overlooking that.

Yes Scott, I have seen some of the gold that was brought out of the areas I mentioned that placer has been recovered in. I even have some of it in a bottle sitting in front of me on my desk as I type. I can testify to where that came from because I pulled it out of the ground myself.

To take it a step further I can quote from an article by Jim Hatt on another website http://www.desertusa.com/ldm-1/peralta.html where he states that a Land and Mineral Officer (Larry Soehlig) for the Tonto National Forest verified that a man named Bilbrey found a depost of gold in the Wilderness Area "in sufficient quantity to validate the filing of a mining claim"

QUOTED FROM MR HATT'S ARTICLE

"On March 10, 1983, Michael Bilbrey, then 32 years old and already a thirteen-year veteran in the search for the Lost Dutchman Mine, filed a mining claim, LD8, in an area where he believed that the Peralta Stone Maps led to.  In an article in The Arizona Republic on Tuesday, February 1, 1983, Charles Kelly reported that Bilbrey stated he had assay reports on samples taken from his claim that showed a gold content in sufficient quantity to validate the filing of a mining claim. In the same article, Larry Soehlig, a Lands and Mineral Officer for the Tonto National Forest, is quoted as saying, “Based on what Mr. Bilbrey’s proposed he’d like to do, there’s probably enough (gold) there to let him continue with that little (mining) process.” Michael Bilbrey did find gold there."

Even if you choose not to believe what I have said about the placer I have found in La barge Canyon a short distance downstream for Squaw Box, how can you dispute the verification of the presence of gold in quantity sufficient to warrent a valid mining claim made be Mr. Soehlig?

Regarding the Superstitions always having been a "protected" area. If this is true in the sense you present it, why was it necessary to add to the protection afforded by the Wilderness Act? The way you guys have been fencing off the National Forest and increasing the restrictions in it, there is becomming less and less difference between a Wilderness Area and a National Forest every year anyway.

I still insist that since the government failed to fulfill the requirements for a designated Wilderness Area within the time alloted by the Wilderness Act (because of the lack of funding or whatever), results in the invalidation of the inclusion of the Supertition Mountain range into the protection of the Wilderness Act and I will continue to harp on this until the government meets the requirements or redesignates the Superstitions as just a part of the Tonto National Forest as it should be. 

Are you aware that a person can enter Tortilla Creek at Tortilla Flat and follow it all the way to where it ends in the area of Tortilla Pass about a mile north of the J.F. Ranch and never see a boundary fence or posting that you are entering a Wilderness Area?

Another problem I have with the northern boundary is that the government ignored the prerequisite that a Wilderness area cannot be designated in an area that has existing roads. When they drew the proposed northern boundary on the map they drew a line around the existing road that goes back to Tortilla Ranch and posted the boundary about a mile southeast of the ranch (by the way, that road was driveable at least another mile, maybe even two, back into the 5 springs area as late as 1966) then brought it back north of the ranch almost to the Apache trail. If they intended to comply with the prerequisite requirements instead of circumvententing them, they would have placed the northern boundary in the 5 springs area, and it would extend east and west to the east/west boundaries from that point!

I have also noticed that the new maps no longer show the road going back to Reavis Ranch and the exclusion of that road from the area claimed by the Wilderness Boundary. Is there a hidden agenda to errase that road and then claim it never existed and include that area into the description of the Wilderness Area too?

I do not believe that our Congressional Representatives pay a lot of attention to revisions to the Wilderness Area boundaries that are presented to them on a regular basis and do much of an evaluation of the proposals with respect to existing laws that govern them when they approve or deny them. This makes it easier for the F.S. to slip things in on them and get them approved when they should have been denied and would have been if our representatives were cognizant of of the requirements of the governing documents. That is not the end of the story. It is always possible to go back and correct mistakes once they are identified! Elected Officials are much more sensitive to public opinion than most employees of the F.S. are.

I am currently digging into the specifics of the Act of June 4, 1897 (30 Stat. 11) which is referenced in the Wilderness Act  "Limitations of Use and Activities" Sec. 4. (a) (1) where it says that "Nothing in this Act shall be deemed to be in interference with the purpose for which National Forests are established as set forth in the Act of June 4, 1897....." I don't think our representatives pay much attention to this Act when they approve or deny proposed revisions to existing Wilderness Areas either. Heaven only knows what I will find to whine about in that document! I repeat, "It is always possible to go back and correct mistakes once they are identified".


Again Scott, I thank you for your pleasant and professional responses and I will make every effort (within the limits of my patience) to keep mine on the same level.

There is only one thing that I can remember Bill Clinton saying while he was our President that I agreed with; "Some things are worth getting angry about"


Blazer

Blazer

Again you have shown that you have more than the average amount of “Savoy” for understanding federal regulations and how they can be and are abused. Keep digging, I like the kind of things you are finding and bringing to the table!

I believe like you that our elected officials are not behind the problems that you are complaining about, and they have been DUPED and misled by FS recommendations for management and control of wilderness areas. Congressional representatives often change on a regular basis but some FS employees hang on for decades until they retire and have the long range opportunity to implement hidden agendas over extended periods of time. What they cannot get passed in one session of congress may easily slide thru another when the representatives change and before the new members have time to wise up to hidden agendas. I also agree that when past errors are identified and brought to the attention of the right people, THEY CAN BE CORRECTED! It is just a matter of making our current elected officials aware of them, and you are on the right track for doing that. I would love to see an in depth investigation into what has been going on and a bunch of upper echelon Arizona FS employees transferred to manage the Nat’l Forests areas of Alaska!

Re: Gov’t misdeeds and cover-ups and conspiracies. Does anyone know why select areas of the Sup’s are blurred out on the aerial photos available at Goggle Earth? Who would have the horsepower and the will to accomplish that if not the federal Gov’t? I can understand there desire to block views of Area 51 and other sensitive military installations, but why the Superstition Mountains, unless they are afraid that someone might see something in the way of old trails or mining areas that might lead them to something the FS is trying to keep secret?

I agree with you, the northern boundrie of the Sup. Wilderness should be somewhere around the 5 springs area and run west all the way to where it intersects the Apache Trail  somewhere around Gov’t Wells to be in concert with the rules and regulations in existence at the time the wilderness act was approved. Everything north of that area should be open to mining claims under the rules of the Nat’l Forest.

The existing road ended there in 1964 when the Sup’s were included in the wilderness act and as you have shown, there are know deposits of gold north of that area.

Keifer

Scott and Blazer,

I know Jim Hatt fairly well. I know that nobody has, but I will nip this possibility in the bud. He is an honest and a good guy. If he tells me something, I will take him at his word. He has never embellished the truth.

Also, I don't know any of the specifics, but there is a picture of a chunk of gold in quartz that the owner said came from the Superstitions. He didn't say exactly when or where it was found, but it was quite large, and well endowed with Au. It's possible he might have not told me the true origin of the ore, but like with Jim Hatt, I have no reason to doubt what I was told.

Best,

Mike

Beth come to Mexico, the state and federal gov'ts  actually enourage and help the small miners since they recognize that the mineral industry is the backbone of the economy, NO manufactureing can take place without it... the US formerly did. ... However.       Mexico does not have a patent process to my knowledge...  But titles are issued for a period of 50 years, renewable for another.

Tropical Tramp

they recognize that the mineral industry is the backbone of the economy

Tropical Tramp

Hey Jose,

Not to change the subject, but the greater part of the "backbone" of the Mexican Economy is the 9-10 Billion Dollars per year the Mexican Citizens (legal and illegal) send home every year!

Best,

Mike

It helps  Gollum, it helps.  However it's metal production also contributes  hehehe.

Tropical Tramp

HI BETH oro:  You can now own 100%, providing you form a Mexican company  and agree to abide strictly by Mexican laws, not too unusual a proposition. In effect you and the property are Mexican and under their jurisdiction, a no too unusual  situation.

.However, they are not as silly or as stupid as we are,  they do not change their laws to suit the gringo.

Tropical Tramp

AND CANADIAN  --I HOPE  snicker

Tropical Tramp

enjoying this very much, please keep the post coming.    whitt459

AND CANADIAN  --I HOPE  snicker

Tropical Tramp

Where did you get the idea that there ARE any Canadian companies?  They are owned by American (70+%) and European (20+%) CORPORATIONS!
Gord

so any one that wants a permit can, not just post a statement like this one ! ( " under a shelving rock where the dirt was soft ,i dug a grave and buried him ") and than post a photo of the real grave site and the bones of his nephew ... like this , and prove that all the BS about find the grave site in the past was total   Bs, because this is the real grave site of the nephew of the dutchman  ....undisturbed ...taken the 7th of Decmeber 2006 by the blindbowman ....take a good look , thats as close as you are ever going to get to this grave site ... you should have beleaved me to start with .. now its to late ...i found this site threw perfection and hard work and i am sorry to say my 3 sites yelded nothing but going into the mts and in 3 days i found this grave site ....now i just dont feel like playing anymore ....and lol i did find the real stone house and i did get photos as well...

scott let me know when i got enough evidiences to get a permit ... i guest where that site would be found with in 10ft of where it was found ...,and you havent seen nothing yet !

lol you got to be jokeing , for one i was not alone when the bones were found . secound , untill a doctor tells me they are human i have no idea if this is in fact a true grave ... and i need not report all bones found unless they are proven human .by a doctor... Roy you email me again and i will report you to the mods of this .......

IMHO these are the bones or the nephew for a few common factors that can be proved , for one the place they were found . for two the type of bones and there placement . and if you look you can see that the dirt has not been detrubed at all ...

if you trolls dont stop your BS i will leave the site and just directly work with tonto national forstry  and other law enforcement ....and you will not know or see any of my reseach at all ....

and by the way . ask over 70 year old jim floyd that has hiked the mt for over 30 years . he was in fact with me and my brother that day in the mts  when the pictures were taken .... he guided us and let us take his picture for my up comeing book ....so you are in fact wrong the pictures are not staged at all ...

Where did you get the idea that there ARE any Canadian companies?

Hey! Give our northern neighbors some credit - at least where GOLD is concerned.  There were at least 271 mining companies listed in the Toronto Stock Exchange last I looked, and they are very competitive!  If you've ever seen their boys & girls fly past you in a helicopter as you slog your way through half-thawed muskeg on their way to stake out mining claims and beat you to it, you will know what I mean!  They don't fool around, and are danged good at the game.

Thanks for the info Tropical Tramp, now to find out about forming a Mexican company, legally....   Maybe we can meet sooner rather later my friend!

If those are human remains Blindbowman it is worth reporting to the authorities - one never knows what you will find; may be just what you suspect it is, or it could be some other unfortunate.  I hope you will let us know when your book is available?

Thanks Scott for posting the information on Treasure trove permits too - very helpful!  If ever I should locate a trove of treasure, I now know the process of how to apply for the correct permit.

Oroblanco

[my]

...Sure, I like to just kick the real nutters out the door and tell 'em to stay the hell off my Forest....
Scott

[emphasis added.]


Scott, this type of statement is all too typical of FS, BLM, and PS personnel.  The fact of the matter is all of you are stewards of the public lands.  As such, it is no more nor less your land than it is mine.  You may have made the above statement partially in jest, but I have personally experienced this same attitude from many of the government employees I've met -- although I have never met you.  

I am not interested in YOUR national forest, I'm interested in another one that "belongs" to some other government employees.  But from one forest, park, or rangeland to another, the mindset seems to be similar.  And that mindset seems to be that the government employees are not merely stewards of the land FOR THE PUBLIC'S BENEFIT, but that those same employees feel that the public lands are to be "protected" FROM THE PUBLIC.  Although it is a fact that there is a faction of the public that would destroy anything and everything if given half a chance, the same should not be ASSUMED of the ENTIRE population.  In a court of law, a defendant is considered innocent unless/until proven guilty.  However, when it comes to public lands, too many of us are treated as if we were guilty of something just by virtue of being there.  

Scott, you seem as if you are a dedicated employee and for that I respect you.  However, when you make statements about laughing at some people or about shredding their applications, such statements lessen your credibility with me and also lessen my respect for the job you do.  ALL people willing to take the time to file a Treasure Trove permit should be given some respect because they went to the trouble of filling out the forms.  Their reasons and documentation may be laughable to you, but at least they are trying to abide by the rules. Government rules are difficult to interpret and to follow, as we all know from firsthand knowledge in our daily lives (whether the rules pertain to tax forms, mining claims, treasure trove permits, etc.), and therefore anyone and everyone attempting to do "the right thing" should be given respect.  I'm sure you get many crackpots, but apparently even some of them are attempting to adhere to the laws.  Do they not deserve respect, or at least some credit, for doing so?  

I'm sure you have a difficult job to do, and I'm sure you'd like to have a larger budget with which to work.  Perhaps priorities need to be re-evaluated.  Perhaps your own input to your superiors could affect those priorities.  Why preserve public lands when the public is denied access or when the public is treated all to often like the enemy?  We're not all money-hungry, gold-at-any-cost people...we're often more closely related to mystery solvers and history buffs, and that isn't too different from archaeologists.  

If I sound bitter, I am.  I'm tired of the double standards, I'm sick of being treated like an inconvenience when I visit a FS office, and I'm frustrated that the things I enjoy doing are becoming increasingly regulated and restricted.  (I remember when owning a gun was legal and owning a pot plant wasn't!)  I remember when picking up a pretty rock in the national forest wouldn't bring the wrath of the federal government down on me.  And I remember when somebody in a green vehicle was an ally and not an adversary.  I miss those days.

Mike in California

I applaud Treasure Trails for that Post.....That is why Outdoor Enthusiasts whether they be Miners, Dirt Bike Riders, Campers, Treasure Hunters and All Alike that Love the Outdoors for the varied reasons group together and form COALITIONS to FIGHT the SCOUNDRELS at the Highest Court Levels.........IT'S OUR COUNTRY TOO and MANY OF US HAVE DEEP ROOTS IN IT..........Happy Trails

"If those are human remains Blindbowman it is worth reporting to the authorities - one never knows what you will find; may be just what you suspect it is, or it could be some other unfortunate.  I hope you will let us know when your book is available?"

in fact i contacted the authorities and i have been asked to report this to the authorities of the location they were found in ASAP .. and yes i do agree they do look like human remains yet untill they are proven human . i have not broken any laws as of yet ...and i will give the locations to the pinal county sheiffs office before the day is out ..

what can i say about the site and the bones . they do look to be very old and over a 75 -120 years . i do not beleave they are older than 120 years . the site is about 6 ft long and the shevling rock about 8 ft long ...and yes we can see what looks like more bones sticking up from the dirt .the ground around the rock is unlike that under the shevling . the soil is dug and not conpacked like the rest of the area around the rock ...

we can not be sure as of yet but we do see what looks to be iron stains on the surfences of the dirt . that look to be a chain link pattern ....but yet un proven , that is our Opioion from our prespective of the photos ...

and yes i did say photos ....

there is far more to this than i can state at this time . we judged that the 70 year dutchman could have only draged the body of a 140-160 man about 200 ft down hill . this site was found around 225 ft from where we beleaved the starting point was ...

. the dutchman could have only went in one direction down hill and we note that this is a large rock and not a long ledge of a mt ... as defind by the dutchman him self to dick holmes ...

you may ask how did we know where to look and where the starting point would be . i can not explan this in detail now . but i will in my book . unless the treasure troves become public before hand ...

i can only state that i am not a treasure hunter i am nagational specalist . nor do i focus on old bones or graves ..


. i hope you all under stand what this find will mean if it is in fact the nephews remains ....one if it is human remains they need be respected in the right way ...this would prove the dutchman was a murder.....and that he did in fact give dick holmes the gold under his bed ... within reasonable logic .....i tryed to talk to scott woods about these sites yet he needs photos of all evidence yet as i reported the frist time i went to the mts . near 1/3 of the pictures taken failed to stay on the camera after passing a given area ... they are no longer on the cameras merrory chip .... and yes we did record the areas that this did take place ...

. if the tunnle is the tayopa we can only guess and wait to see what it is .. but i looked right at what looks to be a tunnle opening ....
very hiden and not where anyone will ever find it ....i walked by the remains  within 10ft 3 times before i spoted them ...

and yes we are awaiting 800 fs film (66 pictures ) of the area of the tunnle and sites 1,2,4,and 5....and the stone house ...

i will be talking to scott soon and the others .. ask anything you want i will try to answer if i can ...

Whoa - what happened to my last post? I guess tha'll teach me not to mess with the fonts...

One last visit to the Wilderness discussion. I have a couple of responses to Blazer and Keifer and then I’m going to drop out of this particular discussion. You guys need to be talking to somebody other than me if you want to pursue any desire to alter or eliminate a Wilderness. FYI the Wilderness lobby has a hell of a lot more support and money than you will ever have. Why do you think we added all those new wildernesses during that last go-round? It wasn’t because we wanted them… However, for all the power that the wilderness lobby has over Congress and the land managing agencies, they seem to lose interest when it comes to maintaining them. I was just talking to one our wilderness guys today and they are in the same boat as I am – funding cut, personnel reduced, unable to maintain trails or signs or trailheads, etc. But that’s Congress for you – they love to attend ribbon cuttings but never stick around to clean up the discarded ribbon afterwards.

To Blazer:

You said that you had some placer gold that you yourself “pulled out of the ground”  as proof that there is gold  inside the Wilderness. OK, I have no reason to doubt your veracity but I think that the issue is not about occasional placer recoveries. The issue is whether or not there are locatable amounts of lode gold in there. You can go into lower Pinto Creek above the SR188 bridge and find placer on a fairly regular basis. It’s downstream from one of the largest copper mining developments in the area. People have made claims in there and even tried working it but it’s a non-sustainable deposit with no clear origin, pretty much like what’s been reported from the Supers.

You noted the case of Mike Bilbrey (as cited by Jim Hatt) as a demonstration of the presence of gold in the wilderness, based on Larry Soehlig’s quote that “there’s probably enough (gold) there to let him continue with that little (mining) process.” Despite the fact that Larry never really knew that much about mining (he was a realty specialist), the statement was based on Bilbrey’s assay report, which came with no verification that the samples came from his claim area. Also, the “process” that Larry mentioned as not mining, it was exploration. What’s really telling about this is the part that’s not mentioned – Bilbrey’s claims were made before the closure deadline but he never proved up. Instead, he joined the stone tablet parade and came up with a couple of carved “Latin crosses” to complement the “Peralta” stones.

In fact, in the last years before the closure we conducted field reviews of about 17 mining claims throughout the western Superstitions, all of which were looking for the LDM (4 of them had as their express purpose “uncovering an old shaft”), and 7 treasure trove applications. Not one of the mining claims ever held up to a mineral exam nor were any ever proved up by their claimants nor did any of the claimants ever do any annual assessment work. They dug their holes, found nothing, and left, leaving us – at your (taxpayer) expense, of course - to do the reclamation years later. One of these “mining claims” was located in a prehistorically occupied rockshelter. It already had two adits driven into the back of it and had nearly all of the archaeological contents shoveled out. By the time I saw it, the site was destroyed. We had a similar incident some years later at a different rockshelter where at least 5,000 years worth of archaeological deposits – one of the most important sites ever found in the Superstitions – were destroyed by an illegal excavation seeking another “covered shaft” that wasn’t there. Likewise, none of the treasure trove excavations ever found a single grain of gold or historic artifact. Anyway, you would think that if there were locatable deposits in there that at least one of these claimants would have found and developed something, especially since by the early ‘80s there were already many dry shafts and prospects scattered around to help people know where not to look. A little bit of float just isn’t all that significant in this context.

You went on to say that you had a problem with wilderness areas that contain existing roads and that “the new maps no longer show the road going back to Reavis Ranch and the exclusion of that road from the area claimed by the Wilderness Boundary. Is there a hidden agenda to erase that road and then claim it never existed and include that area into the description of the Wilderness Area too?”

What can I say – most of the Wildernesses on the Tonto contain historic roads. One of them contains a whole uranium mining complex. And as far as the “untrammeled by man” requirement goes, they all contain human-engineered prehistoric landscapes and archaeological sites, but apparently that doesn’t count. As for the road to Reavis, once upon a time that was a private inholding, like Tortilla Ranch, and by law we are required to provide for access to those. After we acquired the property, that legal need ended and we converted the whole shebang to Wilderness. There was never anything hidden about that. On the other hand, the new Forest maps do show fewer roads than they used to. A large part of the reason for this had to do with the fact that it was our wilderness specialist (a real prince of a guy who liked to burn down historic cabins in the wilderness to the point where there are now none left – he even burned down the single oldest Anglo structure left standing on the Forest, built in the 1870s) was in charge of updating the maps. Not exactly a conspiracy, though, since the rest of us in the outfit were as pissed off about that as you are. In the future, under the new “Travel Management” directive, we will try to show a more accurate rendition of our roads, but at the same time, we will be closing a lot of them for resource protection (rapidly developing gully erosion on large parts of the Forest) so I can’t say that the next generation of maps will have more or fewer roads shown than the current map.

To Keifer

You asked “ Does anyone know why select areas of the Sup’s are blurred out on the aerial photos available at Goggle Earth? Who would have the horsepower and the will to accomplish that if not the federal Gov’t? I can understand there desire to block views of Area 51 and other sensitive military installations, but why the Superstition Mountains, unless they are afraid that someone might see something in the way of old trails or mining areas that might lead them to something the FS is trying to keep secret?”

That was sarcasm, right? You know as well as I do that huge parts of Google’s coverage are made up of low-resolution satellite photos. Do you really think that the government that can’t even keep super-secret CIA operations out of the news  would even think about going to such lengths to hide a couple of roads in a wilderness that swarms with thousands of visitors every year?

To Mike in California;

You took exception to my little joke about wanting to kick the nutters out the door as evidence of insensitive and unresponsive bureaucratism.

Jeez – give me a break! If I wasn’t able to vent a little black humor and joke with my friends in the Forum, I’d probably go postal. Do you have any idea just how crazy and aggressively paranoid some of the people I have to deal with are? What would you call people who threaten you because you tell them that their giant carved poodle pointing the way to the personal treasury of the King of Spain that is being guarded by Aztec troglodytes is just a natural rock outcrop? Ask any one here – or any of the dozens of Dutch hunters I’ve dealt with over the years – whether or not they have been treated with disdain by me (OK, there might be one from last year, but he just got angry and stopped talking to me when I pointed out that different parts of his story contradicted each other and that he had no physical evidence that any human had ever set foot on his particular outcrop of solid rock since the lava had cooled). I may be a little sarcastic from time to time, and more than a little skeptical all of the time, but as much as I might want to (I do have other work to do, after all, which is actually starting to suffer as a result of the time I’ve been spending here lately) I have never lost sight of the fact that the National Forests are public land and I have never dismissed any treasure hunter out of hand no matter how crazy they were. Besides, if I were the kind of dismissive bureaucrat you think I might be, then what am I doing here in this Forum?

By the way, my government vehicle isn’t green – I wish it were, but I don’t have enough money in my budget to buy one of those; I have to rent my plain white “fleet special” from GSA.

But enough about all that - it looks like it's time to talk to our friend the Blindbowman again...

Cheers,
Scott

got 5 bucks on scott  lol

Blindbowman,

Hey Bob, sorry you didn't find everything you were looking for but I'm anxiously awaiting your photographs. The one you posted here appears to look at the bones from a different angle than the ones you sent me at work. Now neither of them look human. I would avoid calling the County Sheriff just yet - let me look at the photos some more, and any others that you have as well. There are two things I want to be sure of first, namely that they are or are not human and second that you haven't stumbled upon an Apache grave.
Talk to you soon, I'm sure, but for now, it's been a long day.
Cheers,
Scott

i agree scott,  i have been ask to take the photos to a speacalist in anthropology at a near by university, even the local coroner could not say ether way if they were human bones or not ...only that they could be .. so i will take the to the university ...

and i hope others here at this site under stand why i did not distrub this site . it is not wish to distrub graves anthropology is best left for anthropolagist . sorry to say i am not one !lol ... i no my lemits ...and this to me is reseach for recovering data and clues .not to distory them ...if the site is human it is a great find if distrubed it could be useless as reseach data ...

even if it is a pain to just photo this site but it is what it is . on photos ... and if the bones are human they say the anthropolagist will know that and can prove it ...

and yes i agree to go into the mts and recover dat and photos takes a lot of hard work and time and it may take months to even cover a area with a over all inspection of the area ....

i under stand it is much like crabing for straws , but this is often treasure hunting basics ....the person that can build a   hay stack  has a chance ...lol

i often run across data i have no idea what it is or if it is even related to the reseach ...


one was a 3 inch wide pure quartz vine that ran some 6o  ft up a hill and had the most beautfull color i have seen in years .almost gem stone quality ..... yet i did take  note that the vane ran up and down the hill vs sideways and this is some 600  ft from where we beleave the stone house is ...almost in line where we beleave the tunnle would run in the same dirrection.. so even if something dose not look usefull only time and perfection and hard work can prove or disprove some data ...

i am going to stop posting my reseach here at the site for good reason yet i may read some of the post and replies  when i can ...

maybe the worse thing anyone can find  out there is them selfs ....

HI My friends SCOTT  &  BOWMAN, I am curious, what lies on the other side of  the wall behind the bones?  You can also see what appears to be a bit of wood in the upper left section of the wall.

Tropical Tramp

K Gentlemen, It  is past time to lay off of Scott as a representative of all that is bad and let's pick his brains for Archaeological data.  We have a gold mine of information locked up in there and we are wasting it by only nit picking on him instead of learning. 

Sheesh. he has absolutely no more control over these things than you do. but he does have information that is valuable to all of us, and for free yet,  just by being normally courteous..

Scott  please do not terminate, give us another chance.  Tell your superiors that you are conducting a spontaneous infomal course in basic Archeology for treasure hunters on how to look, find, and preserve Archaeological sites, data  etc.  This would make your jobs easier and would greatly lessen distruction of the wilderness / national forest areas.

An excellent example is "what is behind what appears to be an adobe brick wall further inside  of Bowman's burial cave".  Obviously if it IS an adobe wall, it is very important to everyone, especially your Archaeological staff. 

If it is an Adobe wall, it would relate to the Spanish era. --Peraltas ??

The Adobe bricks appear to be slighty distorted  by downwards pressure compressing and forcing the top to the right

The piece of wood at the top left could well be part of a lintel no?  It has been forced down on the left side.due to the wall partially collapsing by being displacd to the right. thus lowering the height.

Tropical Tramp  (dying of curiosity.)

i am sorry to have not explaned the photo better but me and scott are talking in emails and this is not a wall .. the shevling rock is just that a rock about 10ft around in size and chest high and just this one side is shevled with this over hang ....,we just dont want people going in and stealing the grave site if thats what it is .. and as of right now i was told the upper bone is a humours of a human arm but at frist sight and the person needs copyies of the photos do prove one way or the other if they are in fact human ...he stated that the other looks like a leg bone . and said often when the body is pushed in to a small space it ends up in the fetist postion makeing the arm and leg bones almost side by side as what is seen in the photo ...we also would have to rememmber that the skin and body parts would most likely mummafi  in the heaT  and the reason the one bone is lighter in color is because it is in the sun more than the other bone .........and yes i agree scott can share lots of good data if we can stop the trolls from playing their games .. we could learn a lot from him !

Hey RT, I'm all for learning from Scott, I just don't want any stones unturned (hahaha, poor little attempt at archaeologically-sensitive site destruction humor).  I mean, I don't want another bureaucrat trying to baffle anybody with bs.  And I certainly am sick and tired of hearing bureaucrats (and politicians--which are the same in my opinion) crying about how much money they don't have to do all that they'd like to do.  NONE OF US HAS ENOUGH MONEY, but we do the BEST we can with what we have.  Being a natural-born skeptic, I'm willing to hear all sides of a story, I just won't fawn over somebody with a title and a government vehicle (rented from GSA or not!!!).  

Now, let's see what we can learn from Scott and what he can learn from us.  Let the debate continue, but don't discount legitimate points as being "nit picking on him" (your own words, RT), but rather as illuminating some of the common traits seen in all-too-much bureaucratic parlance.  

On the thread that seems to have started this interesting discourse ("You're All Being Played for Fools," originated by blindbowman), I was somewhat leaning to Scott's "side" of this debate.  Now I'm leaning back towards the middleground.  I think there are legitimate grievances on both sides of this issue, let's see if we can't reach some type of commonground, even if we can't reach a meeting of the minds on all things.

Trolls, blindbowman, who are the trolls?  This gets interestinger and interestinger all the time.   ;)

lol scott has a hard job already , dont judge him by the level of our evidence .... i have never requested a treasure trove permit in my life and i did not know anything about these matters untill talking with scott and working on the reseach ... so even if the treasure trove permits are screened well it is for the over all good of the mts .and anyone that has step foot in them knows just why ...

even if it makes our job harder .i welcome the over sight after see what and why it is place ....

what good is finding something if you dont find it legally . you get less and almost none of what you find can be athinacated for history . and often cost everyone new leeds at the same time ....


if i find anything i want it to go down in history as well as being proven .....

Well, we seem to have a concensus...we all hope Scott will continue to teach us about the Treasure Trove Permit process and the difficulties he encounters with some folks.  (And we hope Scott will be understanding of some of our bellyaching about the type of treatment some of us have experienced when dealing with bureaucrats.)  There's plenty of anecdotal stories from all, I'm sure, so let's just get on with increasing the learning curve. 

It  is past time to lay off of Scott as a representative of all that is bad and let's pick his brains for Archaeological data.
Ditto- Mr Wood is not "the enemy" we should be going after with our complaints.  I appreciate his being open to even talk with us, when we ARE seen as "the enemy" by the ultra-protectionists who use every opportunity to SUE the Forest Service into complying with their interests.  A game of regulation by lawsuit those groups seem to love.

As Scott has pointed out, it is in the government's interest for you to find a cache of treasure; they get half of it off the top and you still have to pay income taxes so there is not a lot of incentive to STOP you from claiming a treasure, however they have to have it well proven before granting permits or the whole of the Superstitions would be torn up by the overzealous diggers who likely would not be bothered with back-filling and restoring the sites.  Hence the requirements to document your finds (photos, research etc) before any permit is granted.  It may seem unreasonable red tape but without it, consider what the beautiful Superstition mountains might look like!  Government is a highly echeloned heirarchy of bureaucracy, and any treasure trove permits granted will be 'answered for' by the person who granted it to his/her boss, always with an eye to being correct and legal so HAS to be well founded and documented.  These permits cannot be passed out willy-nilly.

Blindbowman, if you should locate a cache of treasure - are you sure you would not have any use for the proceeds?  For instance a treasure worth some $20 million, (not impossible, consider what Mel Fisher got from the Atocha - over $400 million and still producing) after the government cut would likely leave you with a "paltry" four to five MILLION dollars - in my view a tidy sum!  Plus you would have those proceeds absolutely legally, rather a nice feature in my opinion, after all fame is a fleeting thing that fades quickly and so easily lost, while the luster of gold lasts!  ;)

Oroblanco

[ blindbowman ]
i am sorry to have not explaned the photo better but me and scott are talking in emails and this is not a wall .. the shevling rock is just that a rock about 10ft around in size and chest high and just this one side is shevled with this over hang
***********
Curiously enough I have seen old Adobe walls exacty like that. Can you repost it, but much lighter? or perhaps send it to me so that I can lighten it to study it?

Tropical Tramp

A "highly echeloned heirarchy of bureaucracy," eh? I'm gonna have to steal that one, Roy! 

Once again, people, thanks for the support. I'm not here to bend anybody over the red tape dispenser - I'm as bound up in it as any of you. Ah, the stories I could tell you about working with the State Historic Preservation Officer, our Regional and Washington Offices, the ten Tribes we deal with, the pork-addicted AZ congressional delegation, ADOT, FHWA, BOR, COE, etc., etc. - but don't worry, I wouldn't want to cause a flurry of computer related injuries (foreheads suddenly dropping onto keyboards accompanied by snoring and drooling and lawsuits). Nor was it ever my intention to actually become a topic myself, though if I'd thought about it I probably should have seen that coming. Oh well. Just another day at the office - speaking of which, it's bloody 3AM!!! CY'ALL8R
Cheers,
Scott

 high realdetayopa

yes i can and unlike some of trolls i am not trying to missleed anyone ..i am just posting what we have found with out destorying our chance to recover our goal ... the reason i did not post the out picture of the rock it self is because that picture was send to scott for the permit and i felt it would have people destrubing the site ...  but here is a better look at what we are calling the nephew site .

let me add a few things that may give some insight to these to photos . for one we are looking ad the stains on the rock face above and in the back of this site . with under standing if this was a body that those stains could be caused from body fluids as the body decays it cast out ward these fluids and the other thing we took note of was the darker redish stain to the more right side of the photo , if in fact this was the nephews remains . the dutchman stated he had shot the boy in the forhead yet at the angle of this stain we could be in fact looking at the exit wound  at the back of the skull area . if the dirt and skin were covering the suface of the skull ...and that would place what could be stains from a chain near the neck area of the remains these stains of what could be a chain are just to the left of the dark red stain and about 6-7 inches away makeing the boy about 5'10 - 6'  even

we noted if this was a arm bone of the humrous the leght would be around 12-13 inches .when compaired to my own arm at the sight . i am 5' 9" and my arm is 11 1/2  lenght  of the humrous ... if i am right that may have been why the dutchman shot frist  because the boy was in fact taller and bigger than he was at 70 years of age ...

maybe the dutchman's sister sent her biggest son and that in it's self would make logicial sence .....why send a small boy to help ?  the other thing is if these are the boy , he had just come from Germany and his bones would show he was of Germany main land i beleave , un like those born here in the states ...

but the fact remains .not destrubing this site may make it far more valueable to the over all reseach . just as good C.S.I . work uncovers clues and evidences not seen by the naked eye ....

we have no idea if the boy had anything in his pockets or on him . thus destrubing the site these things could be lost ....

wish me luck i hope this is the nephew's grave site ....

HI Bowman, your new pictures clarifies the background, sniff,  so much for my brilliantly conceived Adobe wall  sigh. However difficult as it may seem,  I have been wrong before,  don't talk to my wife OR Or I will talk to Beth.

On the skeleton? since your picture "does" lack detail and perspective, are we looking at a skeleton face down with  a projectile exit on the right posterior parietal area of the skull?  If so, I would assume that it was from a very low velocity projectile since there is very  little evidence of fracturing characteristic of the exit wound of a normal pistol or rifle bullet.

 Since the range of pistol projectile velocities in that period ran only to about 7-800 fps I would assume  that it was actually an entrance wound.  a rifle would have an even more shattering effect.

If by any chance the above is correct, based upon practically no clear evidence or detailed picture,  then I would have to say that if it was the Dutchman's nephew,  that he was shot from behind. -  murder not self defense.

Tropical Tamp   (who would love some clear pictures to clarify his hasty, probably incorrect, deductions)

Shehs Bowman,  I now see a bit of perspective in relation to the upper bone that I missed when I posted, this means that it is not a skeleton face down. sorry & appol.

Tropical Tamp

HI BERTH  AMOR: Ya got it, my picture is so blurry that i was going on imagination as much as anything.  I should have remembered my anatomy better, however I do remember female anatomy fairly well, I keep getting reminders in my em   sheesh..  sigh.

(ORO don't you just hate smart females??)  hehhee gracias gal.

Tropical Tramp

p.s. Two strkes, one more and I will be in my buddy golum's class  snicker

i agree and welcome your guys input .. i work for my brother"s P.I company a few years as a profiler and in  investagation ..... i look threw hunders of picture and i agree these bones can look diffrent from other angles .. as i see it the boys skull is point toward the rock , as if the dutchman would have not wanted to face what he had done . the other thing is he stated he dragg the boy to the rock . thus most of the blood at the time was lost getting there and why the hole was being dug . thus the lack of blood at the site it self ...

the one bone dose look like a humrous the other i just cant say one way or another . the photos give little definement at the angle they were taken ..... but i am learning as i go and this is the frist time i have had to film this kind of a site ...

if the head was faceing away in the grave site and a touch in a downward angle . the wound would be to about the left back side  of the head at almost a stright line from the forhead between the eyes to the left back of the head ,and not to the back of the head in the center ...  the other thing is that we do not know how far they were apart at the time he was shot ...we also do not know if the boy was wearing a hat at the time . i can guess he was  wearing one because of the heat of the sun ....

 the other thing i noted was the diffrence in how tall the dutchman was vs the boy . t6he boy being a little taller yet not knowing where they were standing or at what distence they were apart could change the angle of the shot and its effects on the bone it struck ....

if the boy was walking infront of the dutchman and he hard a click of a hammer of a gun or file he would turn and the angle of the shot would be very close to what we are seeing here if this is what is ...

i can only relate the words of dick holmes acount to the data we are seeing vs what we beleave could be logicially roll played .. they are arguing and the boy tells him he is going to clam the mine and starts to walk away  and than hears the clicK of  the gun and turns to be somewhat faceing the dutchman down . we dont know if the boy had a gun .. maybe it was self definces ,, maybe the boy's gun is in fact in  the grave with him ...?

in fact i will state one other idea i had .. remember the 5 ft long stick i found that was between the starting point and this grave site if thats what it is . what if thats where the boy was shot and the dutchman was dragging the boys body and forgot about the stick the boy was useing as a walking stick ? that wouls explan what the stick was and how it got there ,now if we are to step into the world of unknown logic and missing evidence we can take this one step beyond what we know and do some wild guessing about the data we do know and how it could relate .

my point is if the stick was where the boy was shot and the shot was about 8-10 ft between them . the place where the stick was found vs where the dutchman would have been was about a 1/2 ft higher thus if the boy was 6 ft tall this would have put the line of the shot almost even but behide the boy toward the starting point is a small hill and the shot looks to be a threw and threw , the fact i am makeing is the bulet could be found .. we did not move the stick other than replaceing it after the photo was taken and the photos of the stick could help us replace it to its resting place .. thus what looked like a odd clue could in fact play a roll in the shoting and recovery of the bulet it self ...most bulets in those days were made of lead and it could be found ...

the one site by it self may not make much sence but when a roll play is worked out we can some times see things that we can not see from one point of veiw , this is a good exsample...

the stick was found 100 ft shy of the starting point , makeing the dutchman dragg the boy 125 ft ...down hill , sounds about right for a 70 year old man and a 140-160 lbs body

plus if he had shot the boy and than return to phoenix he would not have wanted to return so soon if he did at all ...if the dutchman already had a walking stick he may have not even noticed the boys was gone after shoting some one i dont think the walking stick would have been frist on his list if it was at all ...

HI my friend, forget looking for the bullet, that is an impossible task. You have no way of being reasonably sure where it's primary impact point would lie after exiting from the skull, nor if it ricocheted after that to who knows where.  Then again tons of talus may now lie on top it's resting site.

At this point all that you can deduct is the entry and exit and go from there.

Do you have  a picture of the skull? I would love to see it for analysis. however mark it  copyrighted  ©  so that it remains your's legally from now on.

In windows, The copyright symbol ©   can be found in start > all programs >accessories, go down to system tools > character map > go to © >click on select > copy > then to insert it, right click > go to paste > left click.

Do this to all of your pictures  and posts,  including the ones already posted, just click on modify, then put the © on it, this  protects them for your book.  Luck

Tropical Tamp
i
opical  Tramp

HI my friend, forget looking for the bullet, that is an impossible task. You have no way of being reasonably sure where it's primary impact point would lie after exiting from the skull, nor if it ricocheted after that to who knows where.  Then again tons of talus may now lie on top it's resting site.

At this point all that you can deduct is the entry and exit and go from there.

Do you have  a picture of the skull? I would love to see it for analysis. however mark it  copyrighted  ©  so that it remains your's legally from now on.

In windows, The copyright symbol ©   can be found in start > all programs >accessories, go down to system tools > character map > go to © >click on select > copy > then to insert it, right click > go to paste > left click.

Do this to all of your pictures  and posts,  including the ones already posted, just click on modify, then put the © on it, this  protects them for your book.  Luck

Tropical Tamp
i
opical  Tramp

  there is no  ( character map)  in my system tools in windows Xp ,where could it be found in windows XP ..

and if i could dig up this site i would hope to find the skull frist ....

however I do remember female anatomy fairly well, I keep getting reminders in my em   sheesh..  sigh.
two strkes, one more and I will be in my buddy golum's class  snicker

You are getting those emails as well? I get those, and the ones offering me the opportunity to increase my breast size. I guess if I spent more time alone in the desert, I might take them up on their offer.

Since when does three strikes allow a person to advance in class?

Best,

Mike

[not]

Greetings Friends,

Tropical Tramp wrote: ORO don't you just hate smart females? 

NO heck where would I be if I didn't manage to find one!     I'd sooner have a smart female around than a smart-arsed one any day!  ;)

Blindbowman I have to ask you, why you choose to put any faith in the Holmes version of the Dutchman's history? Lets think about this a moment.  Dick Holmes was a tracker, known to Waltz in person well before his deathbed.  He had in fact caught Holmes tracking him to the mine on one occasion, in which Holmes reported that he saw Waltz setting up ahead of him with his rifle sights directly on Holmes, so Holmes decided to quit following him.  The next time Waltz met Holmes in town, he told Holmes that if he caught him tracking him again, he would kill him.  No one doubted that he would.

This is some idea of how Waltz viewed Holmes - a tracker, a sneak, a claim-jumper!  A man he directly threated to KILL if he caught him again!  NOT a man that he viewed as any kind of FRIEND but the complete opposite.  So we have a possible motive for Waltz telling Holmes a pack of lies, intended to throw him off the track.

Next if we examine some of the points of fact, we find the Holmes version to be problematic.  For one, there is no record of Jacob Waltz having a nephew at all; did he have a partner, yes - his name was also Jacob, but last name Weiser (also spelled Wiser and several other ways) a man who was only a few years younger than Waltz, not a young teenager.  Waltz tells Holmes about killing a whole pack of people, including some Mexicans (presumed "Peraltas") who "he thought were Apaches working his mine" - hmm well how many Apaches do we know of that were out working in gold mines?  Not impossible, but certainly unlikely.  We also know that Weiser was in fact attacked by Apaches and survived long enough to make it to a ranch where he later died of his wounds - not murdered by Waltz.  Waltz tells Holmes two absolute LIES too, that we can PROVE - he said he was "not a citizen of the United States" and "had no intention of becoming one" as the reasons why he never filed his claim.  Well we know for a fact that Waltz was a naturalized citizen of the United States, and had been one for quite some years by the time of his death. 

So how much faith should we give to the Holmes account, which includes a whole colony of Mexicans in the tale, including sheep, cattle, women and children who all died in the infamous Peralta massacre except for one or two survivors.  We know that Waltz certainly considered Holmes to be a claim-jumper and a sneak thief, and probably saw Holmes hovering around his death bed waiting for his chance to steal the remaining gold ore beneath his bed, as well as to learn the secret of the location of his gold mine.  We know that Waltz did in fact try to explain to his friends (yes friends!) Julia Thomas and Reinhardt "Reiny" Petrasch, even tried to take them to the mine once but his health failed him.  It seems a logical conclusion that Waltz told Holmes a complete fantasy tale, perhaps knowing that his last gold would be stolen by Holmes (Holmes in fact took the gold, telling everyone that Waltz had "given it to him") but Jacob would have the last and best laugh! 

Given this consideration, it seems unlikely that any human remains found in the Superstitions would prove to be a murdered nephew of Jacob Waltz; we know that literally hundreds of people have died in those beautiful and dangerous mountains; the odds are that any human remains found are likely to be some unlucky Dutch-hunter or hiker, perhaps even a murder victim.  I don't think we can tell from the photos whether these bones are in fact human or some other animal, unless of course a skull were seen as well.  I don't know if human blood or other bodily fluids would leave a stain on stone exposed to the elements either - stains in the rock are more likely mineral stains. 

With treasure hunting we need to keep our pants on, particularly when a discovery of some kind of evidence is made.  It is all-too-easy to make an assumption that something which COULD be evidence that "fits" with a theory or legend, MUST then be exactly that.  I am not immune to over-optimism (I remember once finding an old buried "chest" that made my heart leap, only to find it was a buried COUCH!  ) it is best to keep an open mind and a bit of a skeptical eye to all discoveries.  I am not saying that what Blindbowman has found cannot be the nephew of Jacob Waltz, and the Holmes version thus proven true, only that it seems logical that the Holmes version is false and we cannot tell what the bones came from, just by looking at the photos.  It is an interesting find, I hope that Blindbowman will keep us informed as to what this proves to be.

Oroblanco

Absolutely right Oro,

Any blood left anywhere in the open would attract ants, flies, and other insects that would remove it pretty handily in a fairly short time.

Best,

Mike

i agree ... the evidences is unexplan at this point i only offer IMHO what i see and know from my research point of veiw . so let me put in place my prospective for you all ..frist off Oro makes some good points . to the argument if i was looking where most everyone else is . but i am not . in fact i am some 3-4 miles away from the main area ....

and i agree with you Oro in most cases i would think the same of dick holmes acount . but one fact remains it may not fit what others under stand the facts to be yet my locations fit the facts of all known acounts ... even dick holmes but i say this with a few good reason . for i have out right prove that part of that state is in fact true ... as i have stated maybe it was stated and few under stood my statement . so let me clear that matter frist . the starting point , we will call point starting point (A) is real and dose in fact fit the statement to the word ...Jim Floyd agreed and even gave us a statement to this effect as prof . and all of what we are doing is in relation to this data ...
if what the dutchman had told dick holmes was not true than the fact of this statement would not be true to the sites it self . but they are true .. this leeds me to beleave one thing wich i already learn from my own research . that the dutchman gave parts of the location to 3 diffrent people  and this related to the peralta -ruth map and the peralta stones .. and last but not lest my own eye sighting of the what i beleave was the mine ...

i agree the last person we would think he would have gave true clues to is dick holmes . that tells me i am right ....what better way to get even with dick holmes than give him true clues but not enough to find the mine it self ... lol . worked great dick holmes spent his life looking and found nothing .. just what the dutchman knew he would ...

this all goes back to the eye sighting . i saw what i saw and nothing could change that yet when i look at the other clues in the legend i can see how they fit the story . and no one person had enough to find the mine IMHO ...

the other fact that stands out is , that even changeing my site 3 and adding sites 4 and 5 , i note that they are in line as the peralta _ruth map shows them and the dick holmes states are true to the LDM and the Julia Thomas and Reinhardt "Reiny" Petrasch, acounts as well ... i hold alot of trust in the dick holmes acount for a few good reason . one i have proven a few of the statements out right true to my sites and ....and if you note the dutchman never gives him a starting point .....i only learned it because of my own eye sighting .......

and what we found was a cave at one site and than from that site we could see the stone house in clear veiw ....

when i have my permits i will post the picture of the stone house  here at the site ,...

and i know dick holmes had no chance of finding the mine with what the dutchman told him ...

my next trip will in fact cover the site 3 and 4 and 5 . if i had more people to help cover these sites the work would get done faster but we all know where that got me .


but note this we did in fact take photos of the hole area of site 4 and 5 . .. only the true facts and the evidence will speak when this is all done ..

and under stand my logic no one else is hunting where i am for the reasons i am . and they have found very little why i am finding evidence i did not even know was there  or in the area ,, i did think i could find the grave site if thats what it turns out to be , but if i am right than bones is not all i will find .. we felt site 1and 2 would give us some kind of evidence and they have ....

what they turn out to be will take time and hard work .. yet i am biting my nails waiting for the 800fs photos ....

and yes i do agree . evidence can be one of 3 things . related . unrelated . and proven ...

and the grave sight is under the rock shevle and not open fully to the weather ... and even if ants found the site the stains would remain  on the rock if not washed away by the weather ...the stains in the heat could have been baked to the rock it self ...we do not have any test in place that could prove ether way ...

and yes i always keep a open mind , but i also beleave the person that will find the real sites will be looking beyond what they can eye with the naked eye ....

[SWR link=.. Simply adding the copyright symbol does not automatically register you for copyright ownership and/or protection.You can obtain the proper forms to copyright protect you pictures via the internet @ www.copyright.gov/forms
*********************
I agree in essence SWR, but the copyright law now states that you own the rights of an intellectual property at the moment of putting it down in written or intelligible form.  The Internet qualifies for that.  By adding the  ©  on each page or picture, you indicate your specific ownership of it and establishes a legal date if any contest or infringement problems arise.  This goes for published as well as unpublished  materiel.  Of course the big gun of copyright protection  is to register it with the US Government as you suggest, this is especially important for internationally published works. This establishes an unequvocal date.

In the case of Bowman and myself, by simply  ©  it we are establishing a prior right and date.   Later of course, if it is published, the book etc. would be registered.


Tropical Tramp
Tropical Tamp

Sheesh: BETH I answered  SWR as soon as I scrolled down to include his post, only to later find that you already had.

Keep this impressive work up and I will trade my cute mule to ORO for you, maybe even throw in two Hudson Bay 3 1/2 stripped (Beaver Pelt)  blankets and a cast iron Dutch Oven.  Of course you have to agree to not to try to runaway.

Tropical Tramp

Sheesh:  I answered  SWR as soon as I scrolled down to include his post, only to later find that you already had.

Keep this impressive work up and I will trade my cute mule to ORO for you, maybe even throw in two Hudson Bay 3 1/2 stripped (Beaver Pelt)  blankets and a cast iron Dutch Oven.  Of course you have to agree to not to try to runaway.

Tropical Tramp

She will be more expensive though. I bet she eats more than toilet paper!

Best,

Mike

Oro i was thinking about what you said about the nephew ... and this goes to the value of this find . if it is proven that it is the nephew , not only dose it become valueable evidence in the find it self . but it also tells us the dutchman was telling dick holmes the truth at the time ... and veinacates my research as well ....

even thuo i stated we did not find evidence at site 2 or 3 . we did find evidence at site 1 and we know for fact we have found evidence at site 4 ....if the stone house we have found is the real stone house .. remember what the dutchman stated to dick holmes about the mine .. " you will never be able  to find the mine until you frist find  the rock house"  i under stand why he said it like this ....and i agree , no one could find this mine with out finding the stone house frist .

so that would make 4 or 5 statements that he made to dick holmes out right true with respect to my research and what evidence we have found so far ...

besides that Marcos de Niza's journey north i beleave was in code and the cibola on that map was relocated by KIno....

Bowman:   DON"T forget to print the      ©     on any data or pictures that you post in here with details on the Lost Dutchman project!  This way you can download it to your files to prove that YOU originated it years from now.  It is very simple to do, and failry important if you want the credit..

Tropical Tramp

Bowman:   DON"T forget to print the      ©     on any data or pictures that you post in here with details on the Lost Dutchman project!  This way you can download it to your files to prove that YOU originated it years from now.  It is very simple to do, and failry important if you want the credit..

Tropical Tramp

i have not found the character map or list in my systems tools ,, maybe the kids deleted it ..lol

thanks dude that well work alright  ..

i agree 100% and even so i have what could now be a grave site for the nephew and what could be the real stone house . i did not have them before . so i got to go with my gut reaction .. it looks like the truth with the under standing of what i alreay know ,so i will go with it for now and see if this stone house pans out ...the other thing is if my eye sight was the LDM than the dick Holmes acount is true yet i see that the dutchman left him hanging with so much info and no where to start ....

but yes i do see your logic . but from what i am seeing this is not the case here ....


and i played spin the bottle with the gals ...lol

Geeze  Gollum, no-one has seen it to take my  offer to ORO  seriously sniff.   Do you suppose that if I Ihrow in a well used Dutchman map , and one of the Adams diggings also that  it might help?  Tayopa's "X"'s  are out !

As for your question on the three strikes, where else would a disgraced USAF Gentleman go if not downwards to the Army special services - a-la-Gollum??  Similar to the old French Foreign Legion.

TRopical Tramp

p.s.. Bowman I still  do  !

Bowman   


                                                          ©     

                                                       
Tropical Tramp 

i agree Oro , now thing if he was lieing about the being a citizen  at that point and we now he was a citizen than we kow he was in fact telling the truth about some things and not others .. and thats just my point i am trying to make ... think about what i just stated , if this was the nephews grave than he lies about the citizenship than tells the truth about the nephew .. proveing my point ... and even i am confused when he talks about the hideout, stateing hiden camp or hide out  is almost the same game as stone or rock ... if i listed what i beleave is true in this acount only about 1/3 would be true ... and about 1/3 of it is out of order ....one sentences stands out to me ! it tells me the tunnle is the real mine ...the other pit is missleeding at best ...i have yet to look at the stone house in close range to see if it is missleeding or not ... i guess the best 2 out of 3 , and i have all 3 located , not where i thaught they were but all 3 ....©   the blindbowman

Jose,

I was in the Navy as well, don't forget!

I think you have the Scales of Military Evolution Reversed! I was told that if I failed the ASVAB Test, the only job in the military I would be qualified for is Air Force Chief of Staff!

One day, the Secretary of the Army, the Secretary of the Air Force, Commandant of the Marine Corps, and the Secretary of the Navy were playing golf, and got into an argument about whose command had the bravest people. They decided to visit various installations to get the answer.

First, they went to an Air Force Base. The Sec. of the AF spotted an airman standing in front of a running f-15 fighter. The General ordered the airman to leap into the running turbine. The Airman replied "Yes Sir!" and jumped into the jet engine to his death. Everyone agreed, that was a very brave man.

Next, they went to a Navy Base, where the Admiral spotted a sailor neaqr the top of a ship's mast. He yelled to the sailor to jump down to the pier. The sailor replied, "Aye Aye, Sir!" and jumped the 150 feet to his death. They al;l agreed that was very brave indeed.

Next, they went to a Marine Base, where the Commandant saw a young Marine in training. The General ordered the young Marine to bayonette himself! The Marine responded with, Hoooaaaaah Sir!" and shoved the bayonette into his own chest, killing himself. Everyone agreed that was the bravest thing they had seen yet!

Lastly, they went to an Army Base, where the General saw some Rangers training alongside a tank battalion. The General ordered a Ranger to dive under an oncoming tank. The Ranger replied by flipping the General the "Bird" and saying "F*** YOU, Sir!" They all agreed that the Army Ranger was the bravest of the bunch!


Best,

Mike

Sigh Gollum, is that what we can expect of a Ranger in combat? At a critical time to disobey orders and do that?

With that kind of guy we would still be sitting in England looking across the channel at  Germany, providing the Russians had left enough to survive.


Tropical Tramp

p.s. My room mate flew  A-26 's in Korea.  He was sent on a 5 plane mission to blow up a staging area located in the bend of a deep canyon heavily defended. .  The Chinese had strung piano wire from ridge to ridge.   The wire can slice an aircraft wing off just as easily as it can slice a hard boiled egg.

The lead man made his run ok, then slammed into the wall of the canyon, there wasn't enough room to pull up or turn.  The  next one lost a wing to the wire and spun in, no survivors either.   The  third and fourth also ended up on the cliffs.  When it came my roomates turn , he said just as your spec, force guy did, and  aborted.

They tried to courtmartial him but it tuned out that the staging area was made as a set up to lure arcraft into an impossible situation,  and the powers that be, knew this.  They allowed the attact in order to not let the Chinese know that they had cracked theri intelligence, and knew what the Chinese were doing.  The rational was that 5 aircraft were cheap if this knowledge could lead to winning a major battle and possibly saving 100's or 1000;s of lives. hmmm.

Things like this were the reason for "Operation Tiger".

Command decisions can be rough.

Tropical Tramp

Bowman, go to Google, type in       ---   Character Map ---- choose the first one, it is from the UK and very easy to use.
                                ---------------   ®   @   ©   ---------------


Put it in your favorites for quick recall.

TRopical Tramp
 

seek and yee shell find .....i have ....

Greetings friends,

Blindbowman has pointed out that the Holmes version can be "proven" on some points - such as the starting point (First Water) even the three red hills etc - which only proves that the directions told to Holmes included actual landmarks that he could verify - not good evidence that he was telling him how to get to the mine.  If you were telling someone a false trail to your mine, it would be wise to include known, real landmarks that would seem to "prove" your tale was true.  A set of directions which was completely bogus would quickly be seen as bogus by the person trying to follow it.  (Kind of reminds you of something else, doesn't it?)

Real de Tayopa wrote: I will trade my cute mule to ORO for you, maybe even throw in two Hudson Bay 3 1/2 stripped (Beaver Pelt)  blankets and a cast iron Dutch Oven.

HEY don't start giving HER ideas! ;)

Blindbowman wrote: Oro i was thinking about what you said about the nephew ... and this goes to the value of this find . if it is proven that it is the nephew...<snip>

I was unable to find any sort of evidence that Jacob Waltz even had a nephew at all, let alone one that came to his mine to work with him.  However Jacob Weiser, his partner, is documented and prove-able.  Weiser was no nephew, perhaps a distant cousin though - but he was not murdered by Waltz nor did he die in the Superstitions.  In my opinion, Waltz left clues in the Holmes version which his friends would know as false (like the statements about not being a citizen and not intending to ever become one, when he had already been naturalized) which casts doubt on the entire Holmes version.  Remember Holmes searched for the mine for the rest of his life, and his son continued to do so - never finding it.  Blindbowman is wise to hold back from making an absolute conclusion about the bones; if the bones prove to be human, it is still not proven that this human must have been the nephew of Waltz - it could just as easily be some other misfortunate person.  Remember, quite a number of people have died in the Superstitions in the years SINCE 1891, not even counting those that died there prior to the death of Waltz.

A side note here but if you don't have the copyright symbol,  the US copyright office will recognize a copyright notice written without the symbol, if it is a "c" enclosed by two parentheses - like this
(c) 1998 Albert Einstein

Oroblanco

i agree  oro , but i stand by my opioion .. yes i knew the dutchman had been a citizen , and your right there is no record of him haveing a nephew at all . but there is nothing saying he did not have a nephew ...but if he him self was from germany it would be foolish to think he had no family there ....

confused , the starting point IMHO had nothing to do with frist water or secound water ...

if the site is a grave and the bones in the grave are germany Dna and the skull has a hole in the forhead between the eyes , and a chain around the neck , would you beleave it was the dutchmans's nephew than ?

what if the bones in the neck were broken as if the body had been dragged , or if the age of the bones were that of a younger boy say 16-24 years of age ...

what if the grave had coins of germany near the remains . ?

this is my point we dont know yet , anything is posable ....

yet is anything logicial ... with in reasonable dout !


if this was the nephew would the dutchman had a logicial reason for killing him and why tell anyone ...


he is on his death bed ,he had no one else to tell ...

dont beleave me but you may want to check dick holmes statements vs the other two acounts ,,, only dick holmes acount he calls( the stone house in the cave)  a rock house 3 times in that acount ! i know why do you ?© the blindbowman ,2006

[Go to First Water, then to Second Water, then take the old Government Trail to San Carlos...]

Greetings Blindbowman and everyone,

Blindbowman wrote:
there is nothing saying he did not have a nephew ...but if he him self was from germany it would be foolish to think he had no family there ...

No there is not, and perhaps with more research, other relatives could be turned up including nephews and nieces.  Jacob Waltz came from a large family, and at least 15 members of his family emigrated to America.  It seems logical that he could have had many nephews and nieces, and records were not as well kept in the 1800s as today.  Waltz shipped at least $240,000 to relatives in Deutschland.  I just can't PROVE that he had any nephews here in AZ, much less working with him at his mine.  On the other hand, I CAN prove that Waltz had a partner for a little while, a man named Jacob Weiser, who died of wounds received from an Apache attack, but lived long enough to reach a ranch.  Notice in the Holmes version, there is NO mention of Weiser, even though we can PROVE that Weiser existed and did work with Waltz.  Strange, no?   

the starting point IMHO had nothing to do with frist water or secound water .

I have a copy of the Holmes manuscript, here is the relevant passage:

Go to First Water, then to Second Water, then take the old Government Trail to San Carlos...<snip>  (taken verbatim from The True Story of the Lost Dutchman of the Superstitions as told to my father Dick Holmes by Jacob Wolz on his Death Bed, by Brownie Holmes, known popularly as the Holmes manuscript.) 

Even here is a problem - for according to this Holmes version, we are supposed to first go to First Water - yet when Jacob Waltz died, the first place Dick Holmes raced to was NOT First Water but Hidden Water, where he discovered the human remains - including the skull with a bullet hole and a chain around the neck. 

Blindbowman also wrote: if the site is a grave and the bones in the grave are germany Dna and the skull has a hole in the forhead between the eyes , and a chain around the neck , would you beleave it was the dutchmans's nephew than ?

No, what this would prove is that the human remains are that of a person from Germany.  Holmes removed the skull and brought it to the sheriff, so there should not be any skull remaining for anyone to find.  Let's not go making assumptions beyond what the evidence can PROVE.

what if the bones in the neck were broken as if the body had been dragged , or if the age of the bones were that of a younger boy say 16-24 years of age ..

This would serve to prove only what you have already said - that the body had been dragged, and were of a younger boy aged 16 to 24 years.  Identification of skeletal remains is quite a trick even with modern sophistication, unless DNA can be extracted and matched to known DNA or at least a part of the dentition (teeth) that could be examined by dentists and matched to known dental work, it would be difficult to identify the bones as anyone in particular - we have quite a number of "John Does" in county morgues even today.

what if the grave had coins of germany near the remains . ?


This would strongly suggest that the person had either been from Germany or had been to that country prior to his  or her death - now if you found a pocket watch with an inscription that said "from your beloved uncle Jacob Waltz" we would have a strong proof of the remains being a direct relative - but some coins would NOT seal the case for identifying a set of human bones.  Remember we don't even know if these bones ARE human at this point.

this is my point we dont know yet , anything is posable ....

yet is anything logicial ... with in reasonable dout !


Correct - you have found some mysterious bones, beyond that we actually don't know at this point.  We don't even know how long those bones have been there, whether they are 'in situ' or if they washed in there from our monsoon rains; it is possible they may be the correct bones to prove it was the nephew (name?) of Jacob Waltz, or they could have been deposited there two years ago  or two thousand years ago.  We cannot tell at this point.

if this was the nephew would the dutchman had a logicial reason for killing him and why tell anyone ...


he is on his death bed ,he had no one else to tell ..

There have been cases of mining partners killing each other, however it seems illogical that Waltz would have asked for his relative to come and help him, then while living and working in the lands of extremely hostile and dangerous Apaches, to shoot him - his only possible ally in case of any Apache attack, plus the gunshot which could very well attract the un-wanted attention of these same Apaches.  A death-bed confession carries some weight in court, so cannot be totally discounted, but it just does not make much sense.  At least not to me.

dont beleave me but you may want to check dick holmes statements vs the other two acounts ,,, only dick holmes acount he calls( the stone house in the cave)  a rock house 3 times in that acount ! i know why do you

Actually I do have the Holmes version as well as several others (Julia, Reiney etc) and have compared them.  In the light of the KNOWN lies to be found in the Holmes account, I tend to view every statement in it with a very strong dose of salt.  Have you read the full Holmes version, including the Mexican soldiers, women and children, cattle and sheep etc?  It is a great tale for telling round the campfires, but NOT one that I would use as a good guide to locate the carefully hidden (and quite small) gold mine worked by Jacob Waltz and Jacob Weiser in the 1870s to 1891.  There are actually at least two rock houses in the Superstitions too - and one in a cave and a rock wall, along with quite a number of concrete dams etc put in by the WPA during the Depression years.  Why does Holmes include three references to the "rock house" in his version?  I don't know, but note that he has that rock house as "the" most important thing you MUST find in order to locate the mine.  It is common practice to repeat important passages three times (a good way to learn a new person's name, say it three times) just check your Old Testament.  Remember Holmes searched for that mine for the rest of his life, and his son after him for many years, without success.  Still think the Holmes version is a good source of clues to find that mine?  They are simple enough to follow out - many, many hundreds of people HAVE followed them out - yet the mine remains hidden...

Don't let my personal view of the Holmes version as a pack of lies prevent you from following up on them, who knows perhaps it will be proven correct?  I have done some searching in the Superstitions personally, (may do a bit more if I can fin-agle it) and do not find the Holmes version to be worthy of following up - but that is MY OPINION.  So please do not take my skepticism of Holmes as any kind of personal affront - if you feel that the Holmes version is a good source of information to find that lost gold mine, it is your prerogative to make use of it regardless of what anyone here might have to say about it.  Good luck and good hunting to you, hope you find the treasure that you seek.

Oroblanco

I think we already have to question everything from the Holmes version on the basis previously mentioned - Waltz surely did not view him as a friend, and we know of LIES within the version. 

This is also dependent on where Blindbowman found these bones (which remember may not be human remains, we just don't know yet) if it was near Hidden Water, then it might well "fit" with the Holmes tale.  If a skull is found, we know something is wrong - because Holmes took the skull so there should not be one to find.  Also even if they are human remains, we have no proof of the identity of the remains.  Lots of work to do here......

Djui5 wrote: ahhh...I love this stuff.
Ditto my friend - a bit of 'detective' work isn't it?

Oroblanco

Gentlemen,

A considerable portion of the foregoing discussion has become moot: I showed Bowman's photos to a physical anthropologist that I've worked with for years and know to be reliable. Her assessment confirmed mine - the bones belonged not to a dear departed but to a departed deer. Sorry Bob.

By the way, I tend to go with Roy on the veracity of the Holmes story - an awful lot of people have followed its directions (including both Dick and Brownie) for years and found nothing. You want to know the ironic thing - the original Holmes (illegal) homestead was on Federal land that later became part of the Forest and there are several small mines nearby, one being no more than 100 meters away. While none of these mines was successful, all of them playing out rather quickly, they produced more gold than both Dick and Brownie  together ever found looking for the LDM.

Before anybody asks, they were copper mines (actually, more like explorations, most of them) and probably contained no more gold than any of the other copper mines in that area - barely a trace.

Cheers,
Scott

NOT TO TOSS A  BIT OF ICE INTO THE COFFEE POT, BUT I HAVE FOUND BONES SIMILAR TO THAT.  WHERE A PERSON, OR ANIMAL,  APPARENTLY SUFFERING  FROM HEAT EXHAUSTION, CRAWLED INTO SHALLOW CAVE TO ESCAPE THE SUN THEN FOR ONE REASON OR ANOTHER,  DIED IN THERE.

I AM QUITE SURE THAT YOU THAT HAVE RUN AROUND THE DESERT VERY MUCH HAVE ENCOUNTERED THE SAME.

TROPICAL  TRAMP

p.s. I see that I used caps,  sorry, but being inherently lazy I will not retype it, so there  (:>D) ======+

P.P.S.  I SEE THAT I HAVE DONE IT AGAIN,  I TEND TO ANSWER A POST AS SOON AS I SEE IT INSTEAD OF SCROLLING DOWN TO THE END,  SORRY   BETH BEAT ME TO IT THE LASTTIME, SCOTT THIS TIME, SNIFFF..

thank you Scott !  so it is your opioion that these are not human bones , and i can check  this site , yes or no . i only want to uncover the bones nothing more , as little uncoverd as possable ...with photos .. and if there is a human skull in there ....its your bad ...


i agree with everything you guys said about dick holmes statement .. but the fact remains i have a new site 4 and it dose in fact have a large  stone house ...

when i go back this next time i will be  looking at the house and the tunnle area ...

remember scott you said they are deer bones ....i will take you at your word .. i cant brake any law i know of by checking out deer bones right ... lol

Bob,

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. Since I know that will not discourage you from doing so, if you do go back to that place and poke around, make sure you photograph everything you find.

Technically, you probably shouldn't be doing any digging out there without the permit. On the other hand, at the moment you don't have enough evidence of anything to get a permit. Catch-22. However, since the dead nephew - assuming he wasn't just another story to pump up the Dutchman's reputation as a ruthless killer willing to defend his mine at all costs - is not specifically related to the location of the mine, there is no expectation of the presence of any treasure trove at the location of his burial, so we can let it slide. I only ask that you don't get carried away looking for the nephew. If you do find the skull that you think is there, I trust that you will not expose anymore than you have to to photograph it. And remember, even if there is somebody buried there, the odds are much higher that it would be Apache (and you really don't want to be desecrating an Apache burial) and even if it's not Apache, there would still be a long way to go to prove that it was who you say it was...

After you are through there, I'd appreciate it if you backfilled any holes you dug, whether there was anything in them or not. In the tradition of the LDM, we like to practice the "leave no trace" ethic in the wilderness.

Still waiting to see your photos of the stone house. Speaking of which, I won't be back in my office until 1/8/07, so please don't e-mail me anything there until after that; after 3 weeks gone, my inbox is going to explode as it is....

Later,
Scott

The Mine With The Iron Door by Harold bell Wright copy righted 1923 ... is that the iron door legend your talking about ? if so he latter states that the legends of that mine with the iron door was a legend long before he wrote about it and that the true location was unknown ....that it was somewhere in AZ  .....i think it was more for good book sales my self ...this book started others writeing about treasures and so on ... i have a copy if you would like to read it ...


scott "If you do find the skull that you think is there, I trust that you will not expose anymore than you have to to photograph it. " agreed ! but i can only ask why would you say this if its just deer bones ? on the other hand maybe the dutchman put deer bones on the grave to missledd people or if it was a apache grave this could be a matter of tribute....... if i uncover a skull note i did not say dig ! if i uncover a skull i will check skull for forhead bulite hole and the neck line for a chain  and than recover the site carefully after photos are take ...less is better in this case ...and i do agree ...

 besides that i have only shared less than 30% of my research as of yet and after the what has happend with this nephew site i will wait to give out any photos of the house in the cave ... i beleave it will take weeks to reveiw the photos anyway ...

so i will not be posting any more evidence unless i find treasure or prove of treasure ...

you have a good vacation scott ...marry xmas and a happy new year... © the blindbowman ,2006

Hey BB,

The Iron Door Mine was supposedly found in the seventies. It was not too far from Yuma, near the Mexican Border.

Scott,

Hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas. See you when you get back.

Best,

Mike

How about (djui5) ?  djui5 djui5 djui5 on line.

apol. my friend  heheh.

 Tropical Tramp

[am]

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

well said !

i dont beleave that i am being lead anywhere by the stones or the peralta -ruth map .. in fact i only beleave that they are real because i know they point out what i saw in 1979 ...i am not misleeding anyone . am i telling you  everything i know,  ...NO ...out right No ..

for one after talking with scott for a few weeks i felt it was better to uncover clues than to give them to him with out proveing them frist hand .. thats why he dose not have the photos of the stone house yet and may never have them .....

 yes i did use the peralta -ruth map and the stones and did in fact find  the face that looks up at his mine and the stone house and the tunnle acrossed from the house

i was shocked no one  under staood what finding the trap was about ....lol...

you beleave what you want . i know what, i know ... i know i can pick up a object and see its past .. any object . who touched that object and where it has been in the past .. some times i even do what is called shadow walking . i see vissions of the past history playing like a movie around me when i am in a given area .. you dont want to see what i do .....

if you did you would go insane ....

i dont have to prove anything to anyone ...

i dont need the maps and stones any more ...i am no longer hunting for it ...


it could not hide from me ...

i got to confess  i have in joyed watching what others do and say .. remember i have been a recluse for 19 years . i only came out of my shell to go see the dutchman 's gold and look at the tunnle ... i already knew they were there .....

and thats where they will remain ....

you beleave what you want , its alright with me ...

and by the way before this is over i am going to end up in jail  till my death .. why because of my photos .....

unlike scott's request i did take photos  but i will not be giveing out the location to him as he wanted ... in fact i destoryed the photos that show the out side of the tunnle  because i beleave the human race can not respect what is there  .....i know they cant . so why test something i already know ...

when i hold a tea part for the apache than and only than will anyone ever under stand what i was doing there ...they can keep it . i dont want it any more i have things to do .....

Hey Roy,

I don't remember exactly where I saw it. It was a long time ago. Someone found an old mine shaft that had a heavy wooden, with a heavy wood door sheathed in iron plate. From what I can remember, the mine was found with the door ripped off and laying on the ground. I don't recall any details of whether or not the mine was worth anything. I do remember that the story was convincing enough so that I didn't bother looking at anything else about the Iron Door Mine.

Best,

Mike

Thanks Mike! 

Blindbowman wrote:
you beleave what you want
OK  ;)

i know i can pick up a object and see its past

Quite an extraordinary claim, difficult to prove.  If you are experiencing some kinds of visions when holding an object, how can you know the visions are truth?

i dont have to prove anything to anyone ...

Well no, of course not - however you have claimed to have found the Lost Dutchman mine, Tayopa, a church and other discoveries, which the readers want to see proof of.  It is your choice whether to prove your statements or not, of course if you choose not to prove your claims it is not reasonable to expect your readers to believe your statements are true.

i dont need the maps and stones any more ...i am no longer hunting for it ...


Huh?? 
 
you beleave what you want , its alright with me ...

and by the way before this is over i am going to end up in jail  till my death .. why because of my photos .....

OK - but going to jail, till your death?  Because of your photos?  Huh? 

unlike scott's request i did take photos  but i will not be giveing out the location to him as he wanted ... in fact i destoryed the photos that show the out side of the tunnle  because i beleave the human race can not respect what is there  .....i know they cant . so why test something i already know ...

when i hold a tea part for the apache than and only than will anyone ever under stand what i was doing there ...they can keep it . i dont want it any more i have things to do .....

What is it that you think is in the tunnel?  Something that the human race cannot respect?  Is humanity that incapable in your view?  Care to explain?  What do you mean by "they can keep it I don't want it any more" ?   You are confusing me!    

Good luck and good hunting.
Oroblanco

Oro ...

did you say there was a wagon trail in the superstitions ? the reason i ask is because when we were looking threw our 800fs photos we found a wagon trail going from the tunnle area to a near by mt area . we dont see any reason for this wagon trail . it has two wheel track and a small bridge build over a wash .. i walked right past it and did not notice it . but see it shows up on the photos . the trail dosen go anywhere other than the tunnle to this other area and just vanishes by the looks of it ..

the area is closed off from the rest of the trails  and there is no way to get a wagon out of this area . what ever they were doing took place here and only from point A to point B...

it makes no sence to us but it is there and a fact ........we stood ft from this trail and did not see it ....i film 5 or 6 of the mts and we have this wagon trail in about 12 shots

it is a wagon trail what it was used for i dont know ... its old and almost coverd over ...

i walked above it on the rocks and never saw it about 25 ft from me ...we also found a picture of a wolf head on a rock that shows up in the photos ...

i almost forgot . if the dutchman killed the 3 so called peralta and buried them near the hiden camp . we beleave we found the hiden camp and will be looking for those 3 graves as well & the large chache...

its not over yet guys . today we were checking back photos with negative imageing and where  we beleave we had seen a date on the shevling rock . we found what looks like a cross and the number  81,1   we are not sure what it is yet ... dose  1881...  ring any bells ... if we are right that would make the nephew death in january of 1881...

i want to ask a few questions about this date . if this is a  date . the dutchman would have retrun home in jan of 1881, he says he retrun to Phoenix,, .. in the dick holmes acount ... if so is there any record of him being in phoenix at that time .. and the other thing i wanted to know is there any record of him selling gold in jan of 1881 .. ..

and yes i know this is like pulling teeth .. but i hope it gets the job done .... there are a few good reasons i ask these questions ...

if if this date of 1881 january than we know he was working the mine at that time ...

one of the reason i ask was when did his partern wiser die ...?

the other thing that gets me is this is 10 years before he own death ...

the other thing if the dick holmes acount is true or parts of it are true than if that started in 1877 that means he only work the mine for 4-5 years at the most, from 1877 to 1881 before killing his nephew and each time he killed someone he returned to phoenix to wait it out to see if anyone got word of it or saw him  or missed who was shot or killed .. the reason i say that is look  , he says i return the next winter  , and  he close the mine up the next winter ... so that mean to me that he only worked the mine no more than 5-6 year totally in the winter months ... what year was the flood ?... that would tell us he had been liveing off the small catch no more than 5-7 years at the time of his death ....IMHO

they may explan why some years he showed up on the cenus and other years he did not ...?