Lost Dutchman Gold Mine - Arizona Superstition Mountain Wilderness

Ooops...meant to also point out that they would have taken the left fork at Bull Pass...if you take the right hand one, it goes up Bluff Springs Mtn...that's the wrong trail and won't lead to La Barge...anyway, the left fork is the way they went, as they were headed to La Barge and not Bluff Springs...

Garry, I knew what you meant...no worries... Keep in mind that Black Mesa trail has no relation to Black Top Mesa...Garden Valley lies between Hackberry and Black Mesa (not Black Top Mesa, which is a different mountain). So to get to Marsh Valley from Garden Valley, the shorter and easier way is to ...

Garry, I meant Mott, not Newcomer...sorry...Mott's article on 12 DEC (the first one submitted after they got back to PHX, titled "A Hound In Disgrace") described their finding of the skull off to the right of the trail, after Music started bellowing...the problem being, in Greg D's map and...

Don, I don't know much at all about the Cravey story...that being said, I would like to hear more if anyone here knows anything about it...as to why his death didn't attract as much attention as Ruth's...be careful what your wish for :P ...all we need is a new generation of "Barry Storm's"...

Hi Walker, My experience with buzzards has been about what you described. They are curious birds and I can get them to circle (they are just looking when they circle, as you know...they may not be looking to eat, just looking) with little effort. Like all animals, though, it all depends on circumsta...

Don, All, Looks like I was wrong about the location of Ruth's skull, or more accurately, the mountain behind it, in my earlier post. Paul posted some of Greg D.'s pics and map of the area on another site a while back, which I went back and looked at. After looking at Greg D.'s pics and map, it appea...

Don, To be fair, there are a million and five reasons why Ruth might have died a natural death, right there on Black Top Mesa, and nobody would have ever seen buzzards. If he got wedged in a crack high up, most likely not many animals can see or get to him, just small ones. So he might be wedged in ...

Hi Don, sorry for writing a book here…I can’t sleep, so I may as well get on here and bloviate… I have no opinion on whether the origin story of Ruth's Spanish map is true or false. I still say there’s nothing about the Ruth story that affects the existence of the LDM one way or the other. Maybe it ...

Don, Don wrote: ive never witnessed an execution by firing squad ,but i was under the impression that the firing squads target would be the heart,not the head . so why would he examine the skulls ? Agreed. It's only one of many problems I had with the statement. To be fair, it was made by Erwin Ruth...

Don, I think you mistook Jack's comments...He can speak for himself, but I read it to be a little good-natured sarcasm to respond to your statement: Don wrote: Though saying that barkley was described to me as having a psychophatic personality by a journalist on a pheonix publication a good few year...

Hi Don, Jack, Thanks for the link Jack, I and probably many others here will check it out. I like the work you’ve made available here so far! Regarding the Ruth story, we can’t solve it because the story as we know it can’t be true. First, I don’t care how tough he is, Adolph Ruth doesn’t make it ou...

Howdy Thomas, Hope all is well out there! Also, I hope you didn’t take my comment to Joe, (that people seem to have resented Hrdlicka held such a prestigious post) to mean you, or Don, or anyone else…I was referring to Joe’s observations about people during Hrdlicka’s time. The weather data from the...

One other thing...it looks to me like someone typed up first drafts of Hrdlicka's letters and responses...after which, it also appears to me that he proofread them and made changes to them. The changes show that whoever made the changes, I'm assuming it was Hrdlicka, had training in proofreading and...

Also, forgot to add, I also used as references the Halseth/Hrclicka correspondence provided by Garry. Joe, I think they're originally from your research at the Smithsonian? At any rate I forgot to add that to above post, thanks to you guys for sharing that info as well as Dr. Glover and Tom Kollenbo...

Joe, I got that feeling too, like some people actually resented Hrdlicka having such a prestigious post. Having some personal confusion over the events taking place around the discovery of Ruth’s remains, who the people and organizations were, who did what when, etc…I put together a short timeline u...

From the Hrdlicka documents provided by Joe and Garry, and reading some of Hrdlicka’s work, it appears to me: 1. Odd Halseth mailed Ruth’s skull to Neil Judd in Wash DC, with instructions to contact both the Ruth family and Dr. Hrdlicka, for identification. Halseth and the doctors in Phoenix were un...

Garry, Hrdlicka never served in a military capacity, but at this early stage I can see a few smoking guns in how he may have seen skulls from battlefields: 1. He was instrumental in taking charge of medical specimens (skeletal) from the Army Medical Museum and transferring them to the National Museu...

Seconding Joe, I believe there may be reason for caution in throwing out Hrdlicka's conclusions just yet. While there is always some room for questioning the qualifications of any individual, but so far everything I've read in the forensics realm gives great credit to Hrdlicka for his early efforts ...

Just re-reading this and had a few observations...Don, I agree that the entire LDM legend as we know it is pretty jumbled up now, perhaps impossibly so. There may have been some "tongue in cheek" use of the LDM and Ruth legends by people in Apache Junction to "drum up business" s...

Don wrote: thanks jim....heres a question...any idea from who or where the story came from that Ruth's skull was POSITIVELY identifid by Ruth's Dentist? If it came from Ely then that practically renders the rest of his(Ely's) story worthless Hi Don, Not necessarily…if I had to make a guess, I think ...

Hi Don, All good points, as usual. It was a strange event, no disagreement there. A couple of points: Maricopa and Pinal counties were relative backwaters in 1931. Keep in mind that the City of Phoenix was not involved as it was out of their jurisdiction. So we had county Sheriffs and county coroner...

Ales Hrdlicka was considered one of the foremost experts on the human skeleton in the US, if not the world. He graduated from two medical colleges, then studied for 4 months in Paris under one of the era’s leading forensic scientists (Brouardel). Brouardel is considered one of the fathers of medical...

Hi Garry, thanks for digging that PDF up, I will PM you with my e-mail address. I believe (since you were at the Ranger museum) that you saw a Walker Colt, (vice Wilson?). The Rangers were reportedly the first to use the Patterson Colt in combat, and their leader (Walker) put his head together with ...

Hi Garry, All good points. I believe it’s impossible to say, with the information we have, what caused those holes in Ruth’s skull. I’ve amassed quite the collection of papers from the internet dealing with non-shotgun gunshot wounds to the head. Without exception, they all agree with what Thomas ha...

Mea culpa...not that anyone probably gives a hoot, but the formula I gave above WILL NOT calculate bullet energy in foot lbs 8O ...it's simply the kinetic energy formula in Joules...I also messed up the order of operations while trying to get it all on one line. It should be read "one half the ...