Lost Dutchman found!!??!!

[Roundup]

In the Aprill 2005 edition of TRUE WEST magazine there is an article about the possible discovery of the legendary Lost Dutchman mine in the Superstition mountains of Arizona.

This, if true, sure screws up a long standing wish of mine to poke around the Superstitions.  I have had interest in this for a long time.  My Grandfather had mining claims in Arizona.  I still have a list of their locations etc.  Probably have malls, or retirement homes built on them now.  I knew two individuals who had searched the Superstions in the '40s and '50s.  And of course there was the movie " Lust for Gold".

It appears that the claim may have some validity, as there was a Treasure Trove Permit issued by the U.S. Govt. to have an active search for the mine.  There are environmental rules to follow, of course.  Rules forbid the use of power equipment, so use of 18th century technology is utilized.

Oh well, one more myth down the drain.

I wonder about Roswell?

[unspellable]

I used to live in within sight of the Superstitions and had relatives whose back yard abutted them.  they could bounce rocks off the face of the mountains.

Stories about the Lost Dutchman are a perennial favorite.  It has been "discovered" on average about every eighteen months for the last fifty years.  95% of these stories bear no relation to the actual facts.  Of the remaining 5%, about 95% get the history half way right but are pure fiction as far as recent events or dicoveries are concerned.

The true story is that the "Lost Dutchman" was actually discovered in the early 1970's.  It was not a mine but a cache of fairly high grade gold ore from farther north in Arizona that had been placed there in the time of Spanish exploration.  The Dutchman found the cache and was hauling the ore into town.  The cache was largely emptied long before its modern discovery.

The location is fairly close to the Western edge of the Superstitions, almost directly east from Phoenix.

[jh45gun]

There are always new things to discover every day so if you want to explore go for it. Jim

[unspellable]

The thing that came down near Roswell was a balloon carrying an instrument package for surveillance.  At the time the US had a hush hush project to float high altitude balloons over the Soviet Union for surveillance.  One of them came down near Roswell.  The governement did not want to admit to what it actually was, but was not prepared for such an occurance,  so the public explanation changed from one day to the next.  As we were in a period of cold war paranoia and UFO sightings, this gave rise to all the UFO conspiracy theories you hear about.  

There are still plenty of crackpots who will not be convinced it's anything but a hide the UFO conspiracy, but the serious students of UFO phenomena regard it as a red herring.  To this day it gets a lot of publicity while much more serious UFO sightings deserving of real investigation go unnoticed by the public at large.

BTW: The spy balloon thing didn't pan out very well.  Never held a candle to the U2.