The Dutchman's Clues Made Easy?

[music] howdy folks i'm Hank Sheffer and today we're going to talk about a topic that you all have asked us about you've asked about the clues that Jacob Waltz left on his death bed and what we're going to do is try to answer them as best we can for you I assure you that if we had all the answers my bank account would look a whole lot different to what it does today but you all can have a go at it the same as we did with me for this go around is Larry Hedrick and larry hedrick is has virtually spent a lifetime riding up through this mountain and exploring many of the places in fact some of the places weren't even places then but be that as it may he is also one of the co-founders of the superstition mountain museum and he's the only man that I know who has actually found a treasure using some of the dutchman's clues in this mountain Larry it's good to have you here okay hank I'm happy to be here today and share this with folks you know there's a lot of interesting sidebars about these clues that we're going to be sharing today I couldn't agree more larry with that let's get right to it first clue that Jacob Waltz allegedly said on his death bed one of the clues we hear the most often is about the military trails and walt said from my mind you can see the military trail but from the military trail you cannot see the mine entrance now there's been an awful lot of folks trying to sort that mystery out for a long time apparently there must be a lot to consider well the the military trail has been one of the more enduring clues that have shown up in most of the dutch hunter books over the years and it's survived several generations of books but some make it appear that there was a regular freeway going through the superstition mountains that that was used an awful lot somebody in one of the books even mentioned that they thought that they were taking mail runs to camp picket post and stuff like that and supply routes through the Superstitions but you know there's a lot of information about this in various historical books such as the journal of Arizona history and the last bugle call which is one of the most wonderful histories if you're coming to the superstitions from Fort Mcdowell you're coming in from the west and eventually you're going to get to that imaginary circle of five miles that they consider that this lost dutchman gold mine is found in and when you get there you're going to find that there's three canyons that's going to take you on through out of the mountains and all three of those canyons have been used by the military and in the last bugle call for example there are uh comments on the reports of the officers that were going out on campaigns sometime in the early days from 65 to 70. they didn't stay out very long usually a week or two and there were reports that when they came back from those short campaigns that the the hooves of the horses were worn down to the quick and they were the horses were so broken down and the mules for the pack trains were so broken down that they were selling off horses that cost four hundred dollars the army for 35 dollars so you essentially had nothing left on a horse but a nag now i'm sure they recovered over time but they didn't have they didn't have time to deal with healing those horses they had to have fresh animals all the time and it was i wouldn't think much of a commander that would put his men and horses and animals through such rugged territory just to take a shortcut that really if it saved a mile or two the time factor of going up steep hills and downs and arounds and through all these boulder strewn canyons uh just doesn't make sense uh even the military didn't know the names of uh some of these places that they went uh the reports that that i've read they they gave a day and a date and they went 18 miles so far and they camped at this certain spot and it was all indian language I can't even pronounce it two or three syllables you know and there were no common names as we know them today and people don't realize that from 65 to 70 we were using pima and maricopa indians that went along as militia units as many as 300 of them went along on these campaigns they were the ones that were doing the fighting and stuff of that nature now the reports that i've read shows that there was two battles one right at weaver's needle one very close to weaver's needle and the only way you could have got to the south side of the weaver's needle was to take two different canyons to get there and Fort Mcdowell was established in 1865 and it was used as a military post until 1890 when it was converted to apache reservation that's 25 years of active service Camp Picket post or Camp Pinal as it was used interchangeably only lasted part of 1870 and 1871. it wasn't even two years and it was abandoned so going across the superstitions to take supplies and mails to picket post was a bridge to nowhere well if pickett post was abandoned in 1871 then it makes absolutely no sense for the military to have gone over to Hewlett canyon for any reason at all absolutely not and the wear and tear on animals and men was just horrific in fact on some of these on almost every report that these officers made they had a sketch of where they went and indeed it shows clearly that they went around the superstition mountain to the south out on the level ground rather than torture their animals and men going through these things when it wasn't necessary so then when all said and done with the military trails that were available or what people think were available it's pretty much up to the individual to figure out what Jacob Waltz actually said to start with well that's correct because the the records show that every trail out there particularly on what they call scouts today we would call it search and destroy missions every canyon out there was a military trail okay so now that we've finished with those trails there's another there's another clue that talks about a trail that walt said he said the mine is located in a north trending canyon that runs into the salt river I didn't think there were that many that went that way anyway yeah well there's really two north trending canyons but when you get to Weaver's Needle no matter what direction you came in it's only logical that you're going to take the one you can see because to get into needle canyon you have to get into little boulder canyon first and then cross over into needle canyon so that's the one she probably logically took but the point is Jacob Waltz couldn't tell her the name of the canyon no she couldn't tell her any of the names of the mountains because they weren't named there was only two landmarks that was permanently identified by that time Superstition Mountain itself was used on military maps and weaver's needle which was founded by paulino weaver who was a a mountain man and an army scout he founded weaver's needle in 1853 and those two landmarks were identified by the time Jacob Waltz got involved in in the lost dutchman mine but none of the other mountains behind there they've all got names but nobody knew what they were and Julia Thomas's map doesn't name any canyons or any any mountains at all it's it and also some of the earlier maps that were drawn which were possibly drawn off of julia's they had no names either it's it just anybody's guess as to what you'd end up with there even one of them was drawn upside down put north at the bottom that confused people i'm betting well that's the problem Julia's map has been modified several times and you know Julia they went out there in the middle of july eight months after Jacob Waltz died with three of her friends and she sold her business she bought a team she bought wagons she bought camping equipment she bought stuff to prepare food with and all the food and they went out there for three weeks in the middle of August and it was an absolute disaster in fact it was printed in the arizona republican when they come back out the entire story of their trek out there and everybody in Phoenix knew that she didn't find a mine so how in the heck would you buy a map for seven dollars which today is two hundred dollars that had an x on it where the map of where the mine was you know and and that's what you get you if Julia Thomas drew the first map somebody has altered it at least two or three times showing different places where the mine is who would buy it you know they all knew she didn't find it in fact she sold she she got paid a little bit of money to tell a story to a guy named becnel brecknell or i can't pronounce it correctly who was a newspaper man who published her whole story of her search in the San Francisco paper and this is what started the lead in to the search for the lost dutchman mine so what you're telling me is it's kind of like the blind leading the blind you have people who don't know giving somebody else who didn't know money to tell them something they weren't going to find the gold either were they enough said hank here's another clue it's a little on the ambiguous side walt supposedly said if you pass three red hills you have gone too far is that meant to be ambiguous or does it actually make sense well of course if i get to the three red hills i'm not going any further but the truth of matter is that wasn't all of the clue because it said take a north trending trending canyon that flowed into a tributary canyon so i'm going to take the tributary canyon so the next clue really does make sense when he said look for a trick in the trail yeah one of the first trips i took with Tom Kollinborn and let me add right now that Tom Kollinborn was the most noted historian on a lost dutchman legend that ever lived and had a tremendous collection of material and one of the first trips i took into the mountain with him we went up over bull pass and which is at the north end of blacktop mesa and he told me that this was the trick in the trail and it's where you just about double back on yourself you could just about reach out two people reach out and touch each other because the trail doubled back but the most important thing about that trick in the trail is is it not very far from the trail that leads up on top of blacktop mesa where dutch hunters for a hundred years have been looking for the lost dutchman mine but if you continue on over bull pass you're going to pass the mouth of needle canyon where Adolf Ruth skull was found now another clue that Jake left he said there is a stone cabin located at the head of a brush choked canyon well Larry isn't that roughly the same place we've been talking about anyway yeah well if if you continue on past the mouth of needle canyon then you are in labarge canyon and following a large canyon when you come to the where it turns you're going east and when you come to the corner where it turns south this is where Charlebois springs is and this is where a stone cabin was located in that area but you know there were a couple of dozen stone cabins scattered throughout the the wilderness so I don't know what to tell you beyond that nobody numbered them I don't suppose okay I think we've covered that as well as we covered you know that's another clue Waltz is talking about and I always thought this one was pretty confusing of course i did but it said look for a rock covered with stone writings on the trail those writings show a man standing did waltz actually say that or did that come from somebody else well no Waltz wasn't trying to confuse Julia Thomas by telling her this but the problem arises is the confusion exists because of the other people that wrote about these things you know bicknell started this thing and by printing it in the San Francisco newspaper but uh Sims Ely's book was one of the first ones to come out and Jim Barks notes they were partners and and bark admitted that he was heavily influenced by Sim Ely and the problem here is is i've read Sim Ely's book and and you know he may have been a wonderful person and he he may have believed what he put down but there are several gross errors in his book that have been picked up by later books and expounded upon and the only thing I can say is you know the petroglyph is a real petroglyph it's a native american petroglyph in la barge canyon but it has also been altered in minor degrees and I think that's for somebody that's got a book out and wanted it to fit the map and lord knows we have numerous books I mean there's books all over the place that's right and and all of them have have errors in them and so it sounds like it's entirely possible that Jacob Waltz never said that you know if you read some of these books and i have 20 of them it's it's not that i was collecting or anything some of them have been given me by some of these people I knew a lot of those old-timers are dead you know Al rieser and and and I can't even think of their names right now but uh uh Hart Mullins you know how old he was you know and he died in 1960 and and just all kinds of people have come to the museum and discussed these things with me have studied the maps have studied the books and and sought information and as you read these books I have found eight different people that were supposedly at the bedside of Jacob Waltz when he died and Julia Thomas was not one one of them yeah okay in this case Larry there are two clues we're going to put together and it makes it a little easier to understand I think from the way Walt said them so I'll read them to you Walt said there are two columns can be seen from the entrance of my mine and then there's also the one that says there's an eye of some sort or natural arch that you could look through and see the mine geez i can't even begin to guess how many of those formations must exist up there ah it's you know there's stone columns on the very west face of the superstition over by goldfield there's uh there's a there's a pair of columns that we don't have a picture of in needle canyon then there's the one that I found by accident in in the early 90s I was up on top of music mountain with a couple of guys and we sat down to eat lunch and we were looking right down music canyon and bam there were the two columns now the picture we're going to show one of them is obscure by part of the hill because the picture wasn't taken from the place we were eating but i it just jumped right out at me and looked like a cave underneath one of them and I turned to Hank and i said Hank look and he saw it immediately and he says i've been looking for that for 20 years and the next day he was out there without me [laughter] and you talk about the eye of the arch there's one over there in little boulder canyon that north trending canyon on palomino mountain that's a perfect arch it's really shaped like a big eye and as the light shines down through that it hits the wall of blacktop mesa remember I said that's where all the dutch hunters started and they have they have prospected that area from summer to winter because the light changes and although they they if don't go to Blacktop Mesa to find the lost dutchman gold mine now having said all that every clue that we just got through talking about on the west side you can find over on the east side there's there's pillars there's arches and there's the three red hills so what are you you you tell me where to start yeah here are a couple more clues that we can hook together because I think it'll make it a little easier for people to understand what you're going to say he said number one he said climb directly above my mine entrance and in the distance you can see a pointed peak the second thing he said was the rays of the setting sun shines into the entrance of my mind and lastly he said my mine is located where no other miner would think to look well we answered that partially in the military trail thing because he said from the military trail you can't see my mine but you can see the trail but we just showed there were three canyons that you could take and all of them are north and south so you just expanded this search area by two-thirds and the sun's shining if you climb up above music canyon where i told you i found those pillars you could see weaver's needle and the sun would shine right on that spot and as far as no miner's going to find my mind is I think of course he wasn't addressing this but you know the forest service tell you that there's no gold in volcanic activity you know at all and six of the seven of the world's most producing gold mines are found in exactly the same volcanic material I mean goldfield is sandwiched between goldfield mountains and superstition mountain which are all volcanic how'd that go get there if it wasn't from volcanic activity that would be magic all I can tell you is who's who can say that 10 feet 50 feet or a thousand feet at the bottom any canyon isn't one of the richest gold mines in the world and not only that you know Weaver's Needle has been called by every kind of name in the book Hat Mountain, Heart mountain, Picacho Peak Picacho meaning peak yeah peak peak every kind of name Hat Mountain you name it it's been called that and by the way there's dominant peaks over on the east side too so what you're saying is that you'd have to look awful hard all over the mountain not to find the clues that pretty well sums it up! okay Larry now that we've waded through all that Walt said his mine had both a tunnel and a shaft and that the shaft was funnel-shaped what does that mean to me looking for the mine aren't funnel mines pretty much all over the place well yeah many of the trips I took in there uh in the 70s there were pits everywhere and they were dangerous the forest service put fences around some of them and and they buried some I mean somebody drove a atv or whatever a four-wheeler off into one of them you know there were mines everywhere like that but a funnel mine is a little bit different than a pit mine and it's certainly totally different than the standard mine everybody thinks of that's all shored up with wood and it's in the side of the hill and you can just walk right in there because a funnel mine is straight down and the really only good example of a funnel mine with a tunnel is would be found in the book "killer Mountain" up on top of bluff springs mountain and the author of killer Mountain was also heavily influenced by Sim Ely but anyway in his book he had a picture of the the funnel and looking down off of bluff springs mountain into needle canyon and the picture in the book was so pixelated we couldn't we couldn't you couldn't identify anything so I went to google earth because i've been to that point years ago and um with google earth I was able to duplicate where he was standing when he took that picture and that's what that picture is going to show you're you're standing right where the funnel mine is which is filled in now but underneath is a tunnel and i've never been in that tunnel it's down over the side you've got to get to it from from the either rappelling down off the top or coming up from the bottom but they were in that kind of a situation all the time and I'm sure it's not the only funnel of mine in the superstition mountains okay this one should be pretty simple Larry a stone face can be found along the trail to the mine your imagination can let you see faces everywhere as near as I can tell. well just like all those stone houses there are stone paces faces all over the superstitions just like you can look up at the clouds and and find anything you want to see up there you know I'll leave it to your imagination because you can distort that any way you want I was going to say something really smart ass but there's not a cloud in the sky [laughter] so one of the questions that pops up all the time insomuch as we're talking about gold all the time was just how rich was old Jake's gold he said you can remove the gold from the matrix with a pocket knife was it actually ever essay to know one way or the other yeah the gold that was under his bed was sold to a jewelry store and the jewelry store had to have it asayed they did to determine what its value was and none other than joe Porteree who was the the assayer for the Wickenburg mine you know and and uh he's the one that assayed and it it just just what was under his bed was declared to be worth five thousand ounces per ton. Okay Larry this one's a biggie Walt said on the way to my mine the trail passes an old cow barn now I have to interject here from what I've heard over the years the people back then um they've tried to make that make it fit into their own scenarios because near as I can tell what with all the cattle that was going on uh they didn't put their cattle in barns there weren't any cow barns did they well certainly on the west ends of the mountains there weren't any cow barns because they weren't established until after the 1900s um Quarter Circle U ranch has a hay barn today to keep hay and not to keep cattle in yeah these these cattle back in in that time and period were free-range cattle you know you didn't you you drove them in and put them in corrals but you didn't lock three or four hundred out of cattle up in a barn I would like to see a barn that big but anyway what I think that's referring to is one of the first cattle ranches in the superstitions was the cavernous ranch and that was what 1876 I believe he had some milk cows we're really calling it the cow house not the cow barn because you know you didn't turn your your milk cows out free range you had to milk them every morning and every night at least i did on my dad's dairy and so I can see how the cow house got morphed into the cow barn just because we're talking about dairy cows that got milked every day because they were selling milk to Silver king mine and other places and that's where that all came about well I think that clears that one up pretty well Larry that all said I know there's one more clue that is has always been a bug in your craw and i'll read it the way it was the way I believe it came down correctly you you can handle however you want it said from the west end of the mountain take the first gorge on the south side so what's wrong with that well there's nothing wrong with the way you read it but if you go to certain books it got dramatically changed it instead of saying from the west end of the mountain take the first gorge on the south side it said from the west end of the mountain take the first gorge back from the south yeah back you just crossed four miles of open desert from the Goldfield mountains to get to Superstition Mountain now you're supposed to go back now I don't know what this guy was trying to do when he changed that clue it is possible that it was an honest mistake because when you say take the first gorge from that implies you're going away but he was heading east and you take the first gorge from the west end you're still going east particularly after you cross that four miles and uh either that or the guy just simply wanted to throw everybody off maybe he had holdings up at goldfield and he wanted you come up that way because that's where you'd be going if you went to the first gorge back which is a four mile wide valley it's not a gorge okay I don't know what else to say about that as I mentioned earlier there are a whole lot of clues and we know that we can't we can't solve all the clues and we certainly can't answer all the questions Larry but I think we've pretty well gotten it done for this go round anyway but you know what near as I can tell that gold's still up there my friend! you know I mentioned that you read different books all kinds of different people were present at the bedside of Jacob Waltz and I mentioned that Julia Thomas wasn't one of them she was out looking for the doctor at the time that this occurred that's right and uh if you want to know which is closest to the firsthand information about the Lost Dutchman goldmine about the goal itself you need to go back to mysteries of superstition mountain and look up the gold under the dutchman's bed and the last days of the dutchman as it stands what we've done is we've proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that the lost dutchman's treasure still remains one of the greatest Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains thank you for watching this episode of Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains [music] you

Channel: Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains

Views: 136,544

Keywords: Charlie LeSueur, Superstition Mountains, The Lost Dutchman Mine, Superstition Mountain Museum, Opal Images, Arizona, History, Gold, Treasure, Jacob Waltz, Sim Ely, Julia Thomas, Dutchman Clues, Maps, Quater circle U ranch, Jim Bark, Caveness Ranch, Fort Mcdowell, Pima Indians, Marcopia Indians, Miltary Trail, Weaver's Needle, Adolf Ruth

Id: xejgrKvqHII

Length: 30min 9sec (1809 seconds)

Published: Sun Aug 16 2020