BETTY'S TRAIL RIDES Not Just Another Trail Ride

LOST GOLD FOR THE FINDING

Part of the fun and adventure of hunting for gold is the lore of those who found gold and lost it and it is "still out there somewhere" just waiting for you to find it. Some of it actually is out there, some of it actually has been found, and some of it is just plain myth. Part of the fun is the wild goose chase you will enjoy or the actual finding of buried treasure or lost gold mines. Periodically we will print stories of these "lost" mines and treasures. We will try to make sure that they are genuine and not the myth variety. Some of these stories will be little known and some better known. For our first story, we have chosen a little known one that we are personally acquainted with and to the best of our knowledge, the gold is actually "out there somewhere."

NEW LOST DUTCHMAN MINE STORY

There has been so much written about the Lost Dutchman Mine that it would hardly seem that there could be something new and different. But there is one more story to be told.

During the 1800's, Brigham Young, the leader of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, sent church members out from Salt Lake City to various parts of the southwest to establish towns and populate the frontier. One family, the Williamses, paused their covered wagon near what is now Snowflake, Arizona, long enough for Mrs. Williams to bear a son, whom they named Bert. The family then proceeded to their destination, Mesa, Arizona, and took up residence there.

During the 1800s, life was very different from today for children. Frequently they took jobs at a very young age. This was true of Bert, who found employment sweeping one of the local saloons when he was about eight or ten years old. This particular saloon was frequented by the legendary Jacob Walz, the "Dutchman" of the Lost Dutchman Mine fame. Walz was actually a German who emigrated from Germany to Mississippi in 1839, where he applied for citizenship in 1848. He apparantly decided to try his luck at gold mining, because there is evidence of his going to California with the gold rush of 1849. Having had no real luck in California, he drifted off to Arizona, where after prospecting around and staking some claims in the Prescott area, he eventually found his way to Phoenix and took up residence. Every now and then, he would disappear into the desert on horseback (there is no evidence of his ever leading a burro) for about three days and return with gold, which he would flash around the area and then go into the saloon for a session of heavy partying and drinking. After he had his party, he would return home until the next time he decided to go out after more gold. Walz was very vocal about his "find" and it soon became known that he had run across some kind of bonanza out on the desert. People being what they are, many decided to try to follow him to the site of the gold. No one succeeded. All that was ever ascertained is that he set out toward the Superstition Mountains after having left Mesa. He was tracked for a way, then the trail would disappear. In a few days, Walz would be back with more gold, which he flashed around Mesa before having another party in the saloon.

Our family met Bert Williams during the late 1940s, when he was living with his niece, Ella Stewart, on the desert in the Castle Hot Springs area. Every week or so, they would drive their old yellow jeep into Morristown to pick up the mail and buy supplies at one of the two grocery stores located there. Although Bert had worked for local ranchers as a cowboy, he was also a very knowledgable and avid prospector of gold and other metals, as well as the many semi-precious gems and agate to be found out in the hills near Lake Pleasant and Castle Hot Springs. It was only natural that our gem cutter/prospector parents should form a close relationship with Bert and Ella.

During the ensuing relationship between our parents and Bert and Ella, many things surfaced about Bert's life. Among them, we discovered that Bert had returned to Salt Lake City as a young man and completed his education at Brigham Young University, graduating in, if memory serves me right, mining engineering. He also invented a type of mill ball for crushing gold. Eventually, he returned to Arizona, where he took up residence out in the hills where he could prospect and work as a cowboy. We also found out that as a child in Mesa, he had known the "Dutchman", Jacob Walz, and we heard many stories about him over the course of our friendship with Bert.

Bert noted that Walz, although purported to have found a rich strike, never lived a lavish life-style, living, in fact in abject poverty. He began wondering about this. If the man had actually found so much gold, why didn't he live a little better? He began observing that although Walz did spend some of the gold, he never spent much. He was a very heavy drinker, but didn't actually buy much alcohol himself. Everyone else bought it for him, got him drunk, and tried to pry the location of his bonanza from him. It never worked. People continued to buy drinks. Bert took a good look at the gold flashed around by the "Dutchman" and came to the conclusion that much of it was the same gold that he had flashed before. Bert drew the conclusion that although Walz had found some gold, the amount was greatly exaggerated and that Walz was his own best PR man, flashing little gold, telling big stories and milking free drinks out of the greedy. When he wanted to go on another bender, he would simply make it known that he was going on another prospecting jaunt.

One day in the early 1960s, Bert and our dad were in our kitchen having coffee when Bert pulled out a nugget and showed our dad, telling him that it was a nugget that was given to him by the saloon keeper in return for sweeping and cleaning the saloon. The bar tender told Bert that it was one of the nuggets that the "Dutchman" had found on his prospecting trip and used to pay for some of his drinks. Our dad gave the nugget a strange look and handed it back to Bert. Bert said, "I know." After Bert had gone, my brother, Jim, asked dad "What was that all about" and our dad replied, "The nugget had been milled and smelted. It was not in its natural form coming straight out of the ground. Walz had no mill and even if he had, could not have mined it and milled it in the few days he was gone."

Whether or not Bert's opinion of the "Dutchman" is accurate, it is very interesting. It answers some questions, and leaves others unanswered. It is one more theory among many and adds to the mystic and intrigue of the "Lost Dutchman Mine."

By Jim Koning

JACK HAMILTON'S GOLD

From sometime in the 1920's through most of the 1950's, Jack Hamilton was the station agent at the Morristown, Arizona, railroad depot. During those days, the depot was a major shipping point for the area and was very busy, sometimes requiring the services of additonal agents working under Mr. Hamilton. The depot was an exciting, vibrant, place with the sound of the telegraph machines tapping out the morse code almost constantly, trains roaring by, trains stopping to leave cars on the siding temporarily or pick them up, pick up passengers and mail or let them off, and trains leaving cars filled with water for the town water supply, which was held in a large tank or cistern just outside the depot. As well as all this, people came and went just to visit, watch the trains and the excitement.

One regular visitor was a prospector who lived on the desert somewhere east of Morristown. About once a month, he would ship out numerous boxes on the train. One day he came in with his boxes, deposited them in a corner, and told Hamilton that he would be back in a little while to attend to the shipping details. He never returned. He was never again seen in or around Morristown, and the boxes sat in the corner for several years gathering dust.

There came a time when Hamilton decided to spruce up, clean the depot and get rid of any excess or unwanted articles. It was then that his attention turned to the boxes left several years prior by the prospector. There were no shipping labels or address where these were to be shipped, and Hamilton opened them to see what was in them. He found that they were chock full of rich gold ore.

Shocked, Hamilton tried to remember all he could about the prospector. He hadn't known him very well. In fact, no one in town seemed to have known him very well or even remember too much about him, where he was from, or even exactly where he had been camped or lived, as he had always kept very much to himself. It was only known that he came on his burros or on foot from out of the desert east of Morristown.

The gold ore in the boxes was rich enough to intrigue Hamilton and make him want to find their source. As the prospector was gone and had been for quite some time, Hamilton reasoned that he didn't want the gold if he was still alive and didn't need it if he was dead. He also knew that the gold couldn't have come from too far away, as the man was always on foot or leading one or multiple burros.

In his determination to find the lode, Hamilton purchased two horses and built a corral at his home in Morristown and began prospecting. Most week-ends and whenever he wasn't working, he was seen saddling up and riding off into the desert east of town. He systematically searched for years, but never found the prospector's gold.

Some of the details of Hamilton's search are not known. It is not known, for example, what may have happened to the paper trail that might have been associated with the shipping details. Perhaps Hamilton tried to trace the whereabouts of the prospector through them, but several years had lapsed and the records may have been filed elsewhere or destroyed or any number of things could have happened in that area. It is not known what happened to the gold ore in the crates waiting to be shipped. It is known, however, that Hamilton was an exceptionally honest individual, very level headed and thorough in anything he undertook. Had he not been certain that the gold was "out there" somewhere and was untracable any other way, Hamilton would not have looked for it in the manner that he did or continued his search for the length of time he did. It is there. It is waiting for someone. One only hopes that it is not located in the back yard or under the swimming pool of one of the many new homes that have been built in the area.

By Betty Ann Hastings

When I first came home from the Navy in 1969, I was sitting by my dad's facet bench one afternoon talking about lost gold and watching him cut a sapphire. He related a story about a lost gold vein that I had not heard him tell before.

A friend of my dad's from Phoenix had a gold claim somewhere in the hills outside of Morristown. There was gold in a quartz vein, so he hired a caretaker to watch it. The caretaker was living in a cave near the vein. The owner of the claim came out periodically to check on things and to prospect and get some of the gold.

On one trip to the claim, the owner discovered the watchman gone. Puzzled, he came to inquire of my father as to any known whereabouts of his caretaker. Dad didn't know, and so accompanied his friend back out to the hills to look for the man. They found that all of the watchman's belongings were gone and there was no sign of any foul play. It seemed that the man had just packed up and gone. Thinking that this was a little odd, seeing that the watchman had been living there happily for quite some time, dad and his friend began to ask around to see if anyone knew anything about where he had gone. One of the local ranchers said he had picked up a man on a dirt road a few miles out of Morristown that answered the description of the caretaker, and had given him a ride to the Morristown Grocery Store, where he purchased a Greyhound Bus ticket and left on the next bus that came through town. The rancher said that the man had two extremely heavy suitcases. He did not know where the man was going. Further investigation revealed that he had purchased a ticket to Las Vegas. They were never able to locate him afterwards.

Dad and his friend went back out to the claim and found where the watchman had dug a big hole in the quartz vein. Not too far from that spot, the two men found a sizable pocket of gold, which they dug out and later sold for $300, which they split equally between them. Gold at that time was $32. per ounce.

The owner went back to Phoenix and apparantly never worked the claim again because of illness. He died a short time later. Dad never went looking for any more of the gold, although he always thought that there was more there. Dad was an artist first of all, interested in cutting gemstones and not always interested in gold or money. He always said that he would go look for it again "someday." Of course, there was always another agate field somewhere or another sapphire or gem to cut and make into jewelry, his health was failing and he was getting older and just never got around to looking for more gold.

Failure to return to the scene happens in many of the lost mine stories. Also, failure to be able to find the scene again happens. Although Dad never did say exactly where the claim was located, I wish I had paid more attention to the details he did tell me. I haven't the foggiest notion of where to look, but to anyone who wishes to prospect in the hills around Morristown, I am sure that there is some gold in a quartz vein "out there somewhere."

By Jim Koning

One afternoon in the late l800's, two miners came out of the mountains into the little town of Hot Springs Junction (now Morristown), Arizona, to let off a little steam and have a great time in local saloon. They set up their tent, cooked their supper, and began cleaning up for their big evening. One miner, being ready before his partner, and anxious to get started, told his friend that he was going on ahead and asked the partner to hide the gold that they had brought with them in a Ball canning jar. The partner said he would bury it nearby.

The prospector then proceeded to the saloon and was soon joined by his companion. They proceeded to get drunk and eventually got into a serious scrap with some of the other revelers. The scrap turned into a full scale brawl and gunfight, resulting in the shooting death of the miner who had hidden the gold. Losing a partner is bad enough, but when he dies without telling you where he hid all your worldly wealth it can be devastating. The prospector looked high and low for a long time, finally giving up and leaving the area without finding the gold. This story was told to me by Ila May (Grandma) LaMar, wife of C.H. LaMar, who came to Morristown in the 1920's and worked on the Santa Fe railroad. It is not known if she knew the names of the miners, but if she did supply them, they have been forgotten. The incident would no doubt have been reported in the newpapers, but the Wickenburg newspaper office burned down, destroying all the archives. It is not known where the miner was buried. No one is alive who remembers the details of this incident, but when I investigated, I found that many of the old timers in the area had heard the story. Many of them had actually searched for the gold, and when metal detectors first became popular during the 1960's, there was a revival of interest in finding the cache. So far, to our knowledge, no one has yet found it and it is another treasure that is "out there somewhere" for you to search for and perhaps find.

By Betty Ann Hastings