Packing

Well sorry I have been lax in keeping the blog updated. As developers have now bought up ALL the land around ours on all sides, we are packing to leave, and putting this place up for sale.

Both horses are now gone and we have been pretty busy 'breaking camp' and trying to get everything loaded up, so this will be necessarily somewhat brief.

The Lost Dutchman Mine

I am thinking of writing up a sort of "primer" for the Lost Dutchman mine, for the newbies who are interested in the famous mine. It seems there is no book that covers the basics for a beginner, and to help sort out the myth from the facts. Some of the things I think should be covered are:

Basic geology and how to prospect for gold, placer and lode
The many "maps" including the infamous Peralta Stones
The real Jacob Waltz and his friends
The real dangers of the Superstition Mountains
The legal requirements to lay claim to treasure if you should find any,
What to bring if you are going to hunt for the mine,
The best time of year to go

There are quite a few treasure hunters who are interested in this lost gold mine, and apparently a fair number of them really don't know how to prospect for gold, much less the basic geology in which gold (lode) deposits occur - so they rely on "clues" and "maps" which have been very much less-than-helpful for so many thousands of Dutch-hunters (which is what a searcher for the Lost Dutchman mine is called) and may have even resulted in the deaths of a few un-lucky persons. I will keep the blog posted as to this new project.

"Underground, the Disinformation Guide to Ancient Civilizations...etc" well that book has been out over a year now, and it seems that people either love it or they hate it. It is a fascinating read in my opinion, even though some of the theories are a bit far-fetched for my taste. It was fun contributing though, and gave me new incentive to get my long-time book project re-edited and ready to publish.

Searching for Lost Mines...

Mrs Oroblanco and I did manage to go spend some time hunting for the Lost Apache Girl mine, and though we did not find it, it was great fun and the geology of the region strongly suggests that the mine is a reality, just a matter of finding it. A key problem is in locating the spring, which may well be dry today.

While out doing some metal detecting Mrs Oroblanco spotted somthing unusual from a single spot on a very remote back "road", so we hiked out to investigate it and found a small Turquoise mine! We got some very nice samples, and after returning home she did research it, and this might well be a little-known lost Apache turquoise mine! I am fairly convinced that is precisely what it is, after comparing the little info available on the last Apache mine, this mine fits it perfectly. The mine is not large and based on our examination of it, is probably not rich enough to make a man rich. In fact if it were worked on a large-scale, the mine would be played out within a year. We discussed whether to file a claim on it or not, and decided against it - for several reasons. The site is remote enough and almost invisible to the eye, and not close to any known mineral deposits - that if we were to file a claim it would only attract un-wanted attention to the mine and it would be difficult to maintain the mine. No mining claims have ever been filed for this spot, which seems odd but this fact would make any new claim filing "stand out" to the folks who work for the big mining companies. If we even put up the corner claim markers on it, at least one of them would be visible from that "road" and would attract attention. So we are going to keep this one "our little secret" for some fun and profitable (but not "striking it rich") turquoise digging when we are in that area. Perhaps I will post some photos of the turquoise nuggets we brought home some time, but not soon.

Lots of other things that could be covered here, such as the Jaguarundi sighting Mrs Oro had the other night, but I have to go.

Oroblanco