LOST OR.....FOUND?

Discuss information about the Lost Dutchman Mine
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IS THIS THE LDM?

YES
7
28%
NO
18
72%
 
Total votes: 25

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djui5
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Post by djui5 »

TC ASKEY wrote:Joe,

You could actually be correct. Maybe they did just need the practice.
But to say " If it's not the LDM, It is a double " is a little thin.
You will need better photos of more than just an empty hole to keep
the conversation going.

Terry

I agree.

Joe,
How do you know they dug anything out of the mine? What if they brought out all that equipment expecting to dig something out of the mine, and found it empty? How possible is that? I've never found any actual mining tools at the site. I know your source never saw anyone working the mine, like you said he showed up when they were done, so how does anyone even know this is the LDM? How would anyone know, except those involved in the initial uncovering, know anything at all about what was found? Where's the proof! That's what I'm asking. I'm still having a serious problem with the location, as I said before. That can't be solved by pictures of rock faces, IMO.

The 2nd pit looks like it was never uncovered to me. Also, the "cache" isn't that big really, but was definitely uncovered.

Here is the cache entrance:

Image


Here is inside the cache, note the ore:

Image

Supports inside the cache, they do look old IMO:

Image

The first time we visited the site, there was evidence of someone "watching over" the entrance so to speak:

Image

Here is the tunnel below the 2 pits. It's kinda hard to see, that site is hard to take pictures of because everything is so close to the vegetation. Also, I blurred someone out of the picture, so excuse the pixelation :)

Image

Here is the upper pit. You can sorta see how deep it is. Also, with the tree's, I think it wasn't dug up when they dug up the mine below:

Image

Image

Also, here is a picture of me at the site. I'm standing where you would stand if you took the trail from the top down. You come out of the bushes, very very thick bushes, and this is what you see. If you were walking too fast and not paying attention you could fall right into this thing, literally. It's kinda dangerous.

Image

I have no idea who did this, everything I know is heresay. What I do know is there appears to be a hole in the ground and a lot of tools around. The only thing I found related to mining at all was a wheelbarrow. The rest of the stuff could be there for whatever reason. Like I said above, I don't think anyone knows what was taken out of the mine aside from whoever opened it. I also don't know if the ladders/pipes were left in the mine when they closed it. They also, obviously, closed off the tunnel down below. I don't know if I'll visit the site again or not. If I do I'll try to get pictures of this stone face. I'd sure like to see that personally. It's a shame this is in the Wilderness boundary as the curiosity of the upper pit is getting to me.
Randy Wright
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Reason.......

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Randy,

If that makes sense to you, fine. Maybe they were just trying to dig a well. After all, there was water in the mine.

The only one who truly knows if it's the LDM is long dead.

You look at the evidence that has been left behind, and make your own decision. If you think those guys were there on an extended vacation, no reason to waste another minute thinking about it. :wink:

Take care,

Joe
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Post by TC ASKEY »

Joe & Randy,

To be honest with you, I don't even have a problem with the legalities
of the dig itself. We all know the risk you will take if the mine is located.
I probably would have gone for it also.

But even in Viet Nam we burned and hauled off our trash.

Terry
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Risky Business....

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Terry,

It's one hell of an eye sore, but getting caught hauling your trash out would not be a happy ending to their little project. They were either very lucky for those three years, or............

When they were lifting the last guys off that building in Saigon, I can assure you we had not taken the trash out for awhile. Compared to what we ended up leaving over there, this little mess would look like a very clean plate.

Wouldn't you love to have a piece of ore from that mine......say the size of a grapefruit? Not for it's monetary worth, but just to be able to put it on your bookshelf and admire the history it represents. :)

The Pina Colada stock in Mexico must have risen considerably since 1999. 8O

Take care,

Joe
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Post by Cubfan64 »

Wouldn't you love to have a piece of ore from that mine......say the size of a grapefruit?
I'd be satisfied with one the size of a pea or even smaller- anything to analyze on our SEM at work!!!

I keep thinking there has to be at least a little piece of something left there somewhere!!
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The Right Tool.......

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Paul,

You are correct, Sir.

A good metal detector is the right tool for the right job.

Has to be a piece of that ore laying around the pit.

Anyone who want's to borrow my White's is welcome........well, just about anyone. :)

Take care,

Joe
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?

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Paul,

I just thought of something. Is the test really marking the gold in the sample, or the matrix?

If the matix is what really identifies the ore......there is plenty of that. I have a number of pieces myself.

Joe
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Post by Cubfan64 »

I'll re-read what Dr. Glover wrote in his book, but if I had to take an educated guess, I would say it would actually be analyzing the precious metal and not the matrix around it.

The precious metal would not be 100% and would therefore have a variety of other elements present associated with it - I tend to think THAT's what I see being referred to as the "fingerprint" of the gold.

I'm not a geologist and have zero background in analyzing ore, and I know I've broached the subject before and been informed that you can indeed identify a gold source by the "fingerprint," but there's a couple things that bug me about the idea.

SEM is a scanning electron microscope. Without getting too in depth on it, it's basically a technique that allows you to see magnified detail down past the micron into the nanometer range of particles. When you include the EDX capability, you can qualitatively and quantitatively get elemental information on whatever area you are focused in on.

The 2 things that bug me about using this technique to 100% validate a "fingerprint" of gold (or anything else) are:

1) When you are magnifying to the extent of an SEM, you're looking at a very tiny portion of the "whole" (so to speak). That means you either have to analyze many (and I mean on the order of 100+) different areas of the "whole" to do a proper statistical analysis of the piece you are trying to characterize, or you only do a few analyses and make the assumption that the "whole" of what you are looking at is very homogenous.

Let me give you an example - let's say you are a gardener with an acre of land you want to plant things in. You decide to be analytical about it and in order to determine the type of soil you have and what fertilizers and soil amendments you need to add, you take a sample of soil in for analysis. Do you just grab a sample from the edge of the acre and have it analyzed and assume the whole field is identical, or do you take maybe 20+ samples from different spots, mix them well and take that in?

Not being a geologist or mining expert, I don't know if that's a good analogy or not - but it's the way I imagine it to work. I just have a hard time believing that an ore deposit is identical elementally in every place I happen to want to analyze.

2) Following along with the above thing that bothers me - I would think that an ore vein would not be identical throughout the vein. Again, I don't know if that's true or not, but it would seem to me that a sample taken at the surface compared with one taken 1 foot, 5 feet, 20 feet, etc... would not necessarily be the same.

All that said, I agree with you that a gold prospecting metal detector might be an interesting thing to take along out there. My detectors will pick up gold, but they aren't made specifically for prospecting, otherwise I'd be bringing one along on my upcoming hiking trip. Perhaps by the Rendevouz I'll have one to bring out with.

Do any of the issues I raised above make any sense to anyone? Are any of you experts enough in geology or mining to be able to convince me that I'm wrong with these assumptions?
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Re: The Right Tool.......

Post by djui5 »

Joe Ribaudo wrote: Has to be a piece of that ore laying around the pit.
Joe
There isn't. Nor is there any in the tunnel area, or the canyon below the mine going all the way, almost, to the canyon it drains into. It's been detected by myself and also a friend of mine who had a very nice detector. :D Not a beep was found, anywhere. Oh wait, I lied, I think we did get one beep and it turned out to be a piece of trash. The tailings pile was also detected. I think the "cache" was detected also, but don't remember.

Also Joe, I don't think they went in for a vacation, I'm just saying I've never personally seen any proof they removed anything of value from the mine. A bunch of tools laying around isn't enough proof for me, personally.

Paul,
on your first point, they usually take a number of samples from the same vein and examine them all to get an idea of the makeup of the mine. Also, some mines go very deep and run into different veins/etc. This is where people say "well you can get different ore from the same mine". Sure you can, but it's usually when 2 veins have mixed together or something else, etc. What needs to be done to prove a mine is the LDM would be to take at least 10 samples at various points of a single vein in the mine. Test all the samples to determine the exact makeup of the vein, then compare this makeup to the makeup of the LDM ore. This would tell you whether or not the mine was the same. Every vein of quartz where gold comes up has it's own fingerprint. The temperature that the ore was formed will vary, as will the elements mixed in with the vein, and with the gold itself. You'll almost never find absolutely pure gold in the ground, it's always mixed with something else. As for the vein itself there are a LOT of variables. What temperature the quartz/gold/whatever was when it cooled, what is mixed in with it (other rocks/metals), the ratio of gold to quartz/etc, how the material came up from down below (mesothermal/hydrothermal veins, etc). Plus adding in the makeup of the metals, you give yourself a lot of variables and possibilities for each deposit discovered. In order to have LDM ore, it would have to match 100%.

Now, if someone went in after Waltz and dug out the vein until it ran into another vein/etc, you could have a problem if you found it now. How would you prove it? You almost couldn't unless there was something else in the mine to prove Waltz was there.

Hope this all makes sense. There are people here who know way more about this than I do.
Randy Wright
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Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Randy,

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Joe Ribaudo wrote:

Has to be a piece of that ore laying around the pit.
Joe


There isn't. Nor is there any in the tunnel area, or the canyon below the mine going all the way, almost, to the canyon it drains into. It's been detected by myself and also a friend of mine who had a very nice detector. Not a beep was found, anywhere. Oh wait, I lied, I think we did get one beep and it turned out to be a piece of trash. The tailings pile was also detected. I think the "cache" was detected also, but don't remember.

Also Joe, I don't think they went in for a vacation, I'm just saying I've never personally seen any proof they removed anything of value from the mine. A bunch of tools laying around isn't enough proof for me, personally.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

If they were working a vein of gold in that mine, I believe it will still show up in the floor of the shaft. If you look at the pit from the top, it's rather obvious that everything would wash down into the pit over the years.

What kind of gold deposit would leave no evidence in the tailings?

Someone needs to present the case for this being the LDM. Not many takers for that job, so I am trying my best to show it in a positive light.
At this point in time, I beliieve there is more evidence pointing towards it being the Waltz mine than away from that conclusion.

If you draw up a list of those positives, and do the same for the negatives, I believe the scale tips towards it being the LDM. That and five bucks will get me a fair cup of coffee. :lol:

Take care,

Joe
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Post by Cubfan64 »

Thanks for the explanation Randy - what you said does make sense to a point, but my brain is still having a difficult time grasping the idea that a single vein of ore will have the same "fingerprint" throughout. I can thoroughly understand that different veins will be different, but it seems like a single vein might also have differences throughout it.

The reason I'm having a hard time grasping the idea is likely because I don't have any background in geology or mining and I'm trying to relate everything back to samples of non-homogenous materials which is what I've done in the chemical industry for most of my life. Unless you're dealing with liquid solutions where you can mix everything well and pull a representative subsample, all of the "solid" materials I've dealt with (from sludges to soil samples to metal oxide powders etc...) are very difficult to characterize because every grab sample is different - as you said, you have to pull and test multiple samples to get a representative analysis of the "whole."

One question - Joe asked me whether the "fingerprint" comes from the matrix or the gold. I couldn't tell from your response which is correct. I sensed that the matrix is as much a part of the fingerprint as the gold itself - is that correct?

Looks like I need to start reading up more on mining and ore analysis :)

Between mining, ore analysis, researching geneology aspects to the story, learning to correctly and accurately use GPS and topo maps - not to mention just familiarizing myself with all of the stories regarding the LDM in general, this is turning into a full time obsession :)
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Post by pippinwhitepaws »

there appears to be a piece of ore...it can be seen in the first photo of the shaft...showing the timbers...that red ball in the lower right corner.
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Post by djui5 »

Cubfan64 wrote: Between mining, ore analysis, researching geneology aspects to the story, learning to correctly and accurately use GPS and topo maps - not to mention just familiarizing myself with all of the stories regarding the LDM in general, this is turning into a full time obsession :)

It sure eats at you don't it? :D I never thought getting into this thing would involve so much. I've learned a ton of history about the central AZ area, way more than I ever thought I would, not to mention all the other stuff involved. It's great.

Anyway, yes the matrix as a whole is the main footprint of the mine. Gold always has somewhat of a footprint to it if you determine how much foreign material is existent in the gold itself, aside from what's in the vein rock. Gold from different regions/areas looks different because of the different amounts of trace elements in it. Gold from the 16-1 mine in Nevada is a bright, beautiful buttery yellow, while placer gold from Arizona is more dull looking, and less bright yellow due to the copper/iron/etc mixed in. Gold from California placers is also a dull yellow, but more yellow than Arizona placers. Alaskan gold is brighter yellow still, getting closer to the buttery yellow, though a lot of times it can be found as a really dark dull yellow slightly different from Arizona, more brown kinda.

So what I'm trying to say is that even though the gold has a fingerprint, that is just one piece of the puzzle to the fingerprint of a vein.

To describe how a vein can be the same throughout, imagine marble cake. I'm going to insert a picture here then discuss it below:

Image

Now notice how the main makeup of the cake is chocolate brown. Through the chocolate are veins of vanilla/yellow cake. So now picture the yellow cake being veins of gold matrix (quartz veins) running through basalt. So, each time a cake is mixed, you don't use the same exact recipe, you kinda wing it. The first time you use 3 eggs, 1/4 cup of flower, 9/10th tsp of salt, 4 tsp of vanilla extract, and a dash of cinnamon. You make the cake and it comes out looking like the picture above. The vanilla veins all have the same mixture of ingredients, though some may be wider than others, and some may contain different amounts of chocolate cake slightly mixed in with the vanilla where they meet.

Ok, now let's say you make another cake, but this time in the vanilla mixture you use 2 and 5/8th's eggs, 1/3 cup of flower, 7/10th tsp of salt, 3 and 1/3 tsp of vanilla extract, and a dash of Allspice. Now your cake will come out the same, with yellow veins running through a chocolate cake, but the makeup of the yellow cake is different than in the last cake. You might have to change your baking temperature also to accommodate the different recipe.

Hope that makes sense. Each cake would be each gold deposit, with the chocolate cake being the "host rock" (granite,etc), and the yellow cake being the actual quartz vein littered with gold (you could use the eggs as a reference for gold in the above equation). See now how each vein would have a fingerprint? Each mixture is slightly different from the other, yet the achieve the same result (the cake).

Now...where is the icing? 8O 8O :lol:
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Checking It Out.....

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

This is when they should have had a metal detector.

Joe

Image
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That's a very good analogy Randy...

Post by Cubfan64 »

and it does put things into perspective for me - the only concept I just wasn't grasping is that due to the way a vein forms geologically, it would be quite similar over a fairly large area. Once I force myself to say that assumption is correct, the rest of it makes full sense.
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Queestions......

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Randy,

What if you take that cake.....before you ate that piece out of it, :lol: and put in in the bottom of a sixteen inch pipe around 2000' long and standing upright. Now take jelly beans and pack them, just around the cake. For every fifty feet or so, you pack in another layer of........something.

Now you heat the cake up to around 1200 degrees and, maintaining that temperature, shoot it to the top of the pipe..... understanding that it does not push all the layers ahead of it, but travels through each one.

Will the makeup of the cake be the same at the first fifty feet as it was at the bottom? Will that change with each succeeding fifty foot layer?

Just curious, as I don't really have a clue about rocks. :wink:

Thanks,

Joe
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Post by djui5 »

Where did you come up with all that?

It doesn't apply. The vanilla cake (quartz vein) comes up through cracks in the chocolate cake (host rock). Simple enough right? Now it could get messy if that vanilla cake came up through that chocolate cake, then an earthquake happened pushing up some strawberry cake from underneath the chocolate cake, making a chocolate/strawberry swirl of sorts, with broken vanilla cake veins mixed in throughout. Either way, the vanilla would still be vanilla, however you wanna slice it. Pun intended.

:lol:


This all is making me hungry. 8O
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Post by zentull »

Now I gotta go out and get a cake.......thanks a lot guys.

Couldn't care less about the geological ramifications here, just my grumbling belly.
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I Think I Understand.......Maybe.

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Randy,

I may still be a little confused. From your last post, I assume you are saying the vanilla cake will still be the same when it has passed through that two thousand feet of fifty foot layers of differing.......stuff. 8O

My, admittedly, limited thought process is telling me that as the cake passes through each successive fifty foot layer, it will take on some of the characteristics of each layer. By the time it gets to the top of the pipe/chimney, it will have morphed into something totally different than what it started out as.

The cake will leave a bit of itself in each fifty foot layer and add to its original recipe as well. If you take a sample every fifty feet, each successive layer will look different.

Now if you take a sample of Dutchman ore from near the top of the outcropping to test, it would look totally different from something one hundred feet farther down the vein. This should hold true........unless it started and ended in the same matrix.

If the entire mess is molten, start to finish, wouldn't the matrix, the gold and the surrounding soil all be constantly mixed as it boils up from depths? :?

By now, it will be obvious to everyone who does know shit about rocks.......that I don't. :roll: :lol:

Take care,

Joe
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Post by djui5 »

Joe,
No, the veins come up through holes in the host rock, not pushing its way through layers of stone/etc. There is a hole there already, so it just fills the void and cools. Make sense? I think your "assuming" the whole mess melts together, which from what I understand isn't the case at all. The veins push up through openings in the host rock, cracks/fissures/etc.
Eventually weathering will erode away any rock covering this vein, and we will have an outcropping. Sometimes the veins come all the way to the surface, and we discover those.

Now I believe in certain heavy volcanic regions that veins can cross each others paths underneath the surface on the way up, or one vein can be pushed up in an uprising and intersect with another vein (think adits). This is where a single shaft could run into slightly different ore footprints.

I really don't know a ton about this kinda stuff, so I'm sure others have a better answer than I do. Maybe I'm wrong, I've never taken a Geology class :)
Randy Wright
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No Class????

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Randy,

I see. What about a cooking class? :lol:

Joe
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Re: No Class????

Post by djui5 »

Joe Ribaudo wrote:Randy,

I see. What about a cooking class? :lol:

Joe

I was a professional cook/chef for 6 years before getting into the music business, so I guess you could say I took a cooking class or 2 :lol:
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Cooking Class.....

Post by Joe Ribaudo »

Randy,

As a lad of around five or so, I would stand on a chair to help my mom with the pasta cooking. 8)

Cooked for a living now and again, and had a few places of my own. I never sang for a living, but was known to sing for a few drinks on occasion. :lol: Being Italian will do that to you. :)

Hope all is right at the Wright house.

Take care,

Joe
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Post by djui5 »

:lol: :lol: Drinking will do that to ya :)

The Wright house is just fantastic, thank you. I also hope your well. Tell the Mrs I said hello.
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LDM Found?

Post by novice »

I have finished reading the Lost El Dorado Of Jacob Waltz by Jack San Felice.

While it was a very entertaining book with a lot of great history, for me it wasn’t a particularly convincing account of why the Lost Dutchman Mine had been found. Little background or research of the clues themselves that have been attributed to Waltz as being authentic was offered. It seems to me that Dutch Hunter’s have long been using selective clues that fit their scenario for over one hundred years to locate the Lost Dutchman Mine. That is why it has been found dozens of times.

Having said that, I’m still not ready to vote, as I haven’t resolved a lot of questions that the thread has raised.

One interesting aspect of this thread was the introduction, by Joe Ribaudo, of the John D. Mitchell story. Joe “seems” to believe (I’m never quite sure what Joe really believes) that Mitchell’s story dovetails to reinforce Jack’s theory. I do have a newer reprint of Mitchell’s book but it does not contain the map Joe posted (WaltzsCarpenter.jpg). It appears to be a nicely done, hand drawn map.

Joe, can you share the source of the map, who drew the map, when it was drawn? It certainly seems to be in the area of Jack’s LDM?

Garry
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