Return to the 70 ft Shaft

well our story on Mysteries today began over 20 years ago it was the story we did on the 70ft shaft and we've gone back to visit the 70ft shaft again just recently but first I need to give you an overview on the story to begin with sometime over 20 years ago a fell named Jim hat a friend of mine approached me to go into the mountains and he needed help doing something he didn't say what it was and I agreed except he had one horse and I didn't have any horse at the time so I asked him if it was all right if I got a friend to go along who had two or three horses and that was Hank Brown and he knew who Hank was had worked with us many times at the Su Superstition Museum and he agreed so we left uh government Wells about mid morning and uh went about uh 30 minutes due east and um took off on a Uncharted tra no Trail whatsoever we were trailblazing all the way in and there were no landmarks that would be able to tell somebody where to start to go into where this place was because nobody's going to find this by accident you got to know exactly where it is and um I might just add government wells in case you don't know it's uh located north of Apache Junction on State Route 88 just before you get into the switchbacks and this is where 200 Puma indans were headquartered when they started to build a patchy Trail in 1903 and Jim Jim hat was uh he had worked for nuclear energy companies he worked at Three Mile Island and he moved out here to work at palaie so he could hunt for the lost Dutchman gold mine and then he mo he quit his job at paly and found a job out here in Apache Junction at government Welles As a caretaker because the land was leased to some people who had a couple of gold mines there and they had Shaker tables and all kinds of equipment at government Wells uh to process gold and he was the caretaker living on the grounds so as a caraker at government Wells this gave Jim plenty of time to uh search for the lost Dutchman mine because he only really needed to be there at night to uh be security and of course his wife was there also so anyway uh we finally got in there and uh in the most unusual place you could think of which I'll say for a little bit later we found this pipe iron head frame overneath a hole in the ground that went 70 ft deep and this was our first trip in uh and Jim had taken we just to Recon order what we might need and he took some string along and measured the depth of the hole and we saw that the uh that the the boat wiench that they were using to lower uh the cable with the with the barrels on it to get the Earth out and stuff like that was very rusted and stuff so we Recon ordered the area and went went back and came in on later date and um we we brought a can of WD40 and stuff like that we oiled everything up and got everything working real good and we lowered Jim down down in the bottom of this 70t hole and that was what it was all about and I always wanted to go back in there with some good photography because we were on a mission we weren't there to look for anything we were there to get Jim down that hole and back out and go home but uh there's it's an interesting place so on the way back we went a different route than what the trailblazing that we went in and we run across a landmark that would have been easy that if anybody knew where that Landmark was was how to tell them to how to get to this 70ft shaft well you know when I was 81 about 5 years ago going on six years ago we uh the film crew and I took a Trek into the lost mine that we found and I took a bad had spill down the mountain and I was beat up some I didn't break any bones but I blew my knee out and I was cut up pretty bad and I had to have Dave help me out of the mountains I was hanging onto his backpack all the way out and about a week or so later I had a stroke and uh I made about a 95% recovery on that still a little weak in one hand if I pick something up and don't think about it I could drop it you know but I made a pretty good recovery and uh so to go back in I'm out of the picture I've made my last trip into the mountains on that particular hike and uh so the film crew was going in but Dave didn't know where this Landmark was and we found a fellow Dutch Hunter hiker guy that had spent a lot of time in the mountains uh that knew where this Landmark was and he he agreed to guide Dave and the film crew in there so our guy doesn't want to be on the media he wants to be a nominus so we won't mention any names but he he guided he went in the the the alone before and uh when he got very close to where we he was supposed to be he lost the GPS signal and he wasn't able to find it so I took a Google Earth picture and I took it to photoshop and I drew a a a root on how to get there so when they went back in with with Dave uh they were able to go pretty much directly to it without too much of uh of uh trouble but they discovered a lot of things that I hadn't seen on our trips because like I said we were on a mission to do something we weren't exploring and they done a lot of exploring and there's some very interesting things we're going to share with you all right Dave uh I'd have gave anything to be on this trip and uh I you told me some amazing things you guys run across so why don't you you had time to explore when we didn't so why don't you tell us a little bit about it well that is true we were there just only to explore we weren't crazy enough to go down that hole oh my gosh but I have to tell you it was beautiful going in there and it there's no Trails it's back in the middle of nowhere um it's beautiful country and there's all kinds of symbols and signs that you think would be clues for the Dutchman mine and we were looking around for it trying to find it we had your pinpoint we supposedly knew right where it was and we were at the bottom of a hill and we look up and we see a one of those uh you know hole in the Rocks you know those little eyes looking we we let's walk towards that and see if we can find it up there we walk up there we get up there and there's a kind of a dog's head and and an eye and we get up there it's gone it's just gone we couldn't find it I mean the the dog had rock is still there but the eye the eye of the needle or whatever that's supposed to be that was just gone we could not figure out how in the world we could see light through that rock when you were up there next to it there is no way to do that so we sat there frustrated for a minute and we looked over to the next Ridge and I'm talking about on a cliff you guys are crazy on a cliff we look over there and there is that metal frame that I remember from the first video we did and he goes there we go that's it I go what really no that can't be it and I looked at it again sure enough there's that tripod so we hike down the The Ridge and back up the rid and it's steep I mean going up there it's not easy to get up to it and we got up there and when we walked by that down below from the lower part of the canyon we didn't see it I saw something blew up on the ridge for a second I go what was that you know and then I didn't see it again but we got up there and looking around and that shaft just goes straight down and it's on the edge of a cliff you could sit up there for years and no one would ever see you going by so if there ever was a Military Trail there that would work you know what I'm saying and there's all kinds of Peaks around there that look like the the the Peralta map or the Ruth map I mean it's just like if you're looking for symbols to make that be the lost touch's mind that's pretty close but there is I mean I am not a geologist but I've been enough around these stories to know that uh there's no mineralization there there's nothing that would hold gold in my opinion there's cracks in the Rock maybe that's what they were after maybe they found something on the surface I don't know but I have no clue what they're doing but there but oh and and coming in was you know my guy kept saying there's the two pillars I go yeah yeah I saw those back in the last Valley too and they're in this one and look down there there's some more I mean there's there definitely two pillars from the maps everywhere around there and when we saw that one eye that we walked towards I looked over straight out that way and there was another eye and it looked over that way and there was another one it was amazing it's like there was Clues everywhere so if you're following Clues it made sense but we got up there it made no sense there was no mineralization up on a cliff they basically started digging the hole and filling the area out so they had a place to even stand up there but to my surprise that A-frame that they put up there was still in place and one of the things that was really surprising to me is it was still solid I leaned on it dropped a camera down there it was amazing I mean it was absolutely amazing it was I mean I don't know what they're going for but you guys are crazy to go down there I I wouldn't go down there and the the U the boat winch was gone wasn't it yeah the the bone winch was no longer longer there and and I I I have to admit I did kind of stage a shot because there was two buckets they're using to pull the the gravel out on the winch up up underneath the ledge and I pulled it out and put it in front of the tripod just to get a cool picture you know I put it back where it was where it was at but why I'm standing up there I I look down and I I see I see stuff down there but I really can't make out what it is the bottom of the cliff and I and I told my the guy I said you know we probably got to go back that way maybe or we'll go look at those holes that we saw on the rocks on the way up but we went that way and we went down there and there was stuff littered everywhere there was cans and more barrels for lifting ore there was an another winch that they probably used and just threw it off the cliff there was more cans down there but the most amazing thing to me is when we got further down all the way down to the flat down at the bottom there was a uh a rickshaw setup with some old wheels on it it looked like it perfect to put two of those little metal cans on there and and you know walk ore out or maybe they use it to bring stuff in I'm not sure but it was hidden up underneath the rock it wasn't even close to the mine but we're assuming that's part of that and also they had a a wire running across so kind of a safety wire that was still there everything was still solid I mean it was amazing everything was still Rock Solid I don't know how long ago that was it was built but it's still pretty solid and no one's taking anything away there's all kinds artifacts and food cans and everything all over the place I mean it's very obvious yeah what what year were you up there I don't know 20 20 some years ago I don't know I don't you don't remember so you didn't think this was a place that uh that the average guy would or even a knowledgeable guy would be digging a hole on the ground huh no no and talk about horrible Logistics oh oh my gosh it would be so hard to get stuff up there cuz you have to scale a cliff to get up on that little tiny ledge yeah yeah okay well you know uh I had a copy of the Holmes manuscript and uh Holmes had actually tried to follow the Dutchman into the mountains one time home senior uhhuh and um he said that uh the Dutchman stayed on the north side of the river the whole way and that meant that he was entering the mountains from the north where he had given Clues from coming in from the south where the Boardhouse was and stuff but with I got to thinking about all these things you described the pillars and the the the head and the profile map and all that kind of stuff if you came in from the north from the lake that wasn't there at the time um of a Canyon Lake then the most logical place you would come in is where the military came in on large which is the second bridge that you get to where all the boats are stored on the North side there's that Inlet that goes south that's where you start up large Canyon and if you started down large Canyon and when you came to that first tributary Canyon that goes off to the West you wouldn't have passed the three Red Hills which was a clue oh now coming from the south you wouldn't want to pass the three Red Hills but going in from the north you wouldn't want to pass the three head three Red Hills and then you take this tributary Canyon and you run across those two pillars you were talking about absolutely and then the dog head with the eye which is kind of what's on the profile map uh and from the M from the hole in the ground if you climbed up just a little bit you could see Weaver's needle right yes okay so all the you can understand how these people could misinterpret or interpret the clues from an opposite direction and end up digg in a hole where they thought where nobody no Miner would think to look for a mine that's for sure and the only other conclusion I came to is uh they dug that that hole 70 foot straight down but if they don't went to the bottom of the cliff and dug in 10 ft they'd have been in the same place that's absolutely true absolutely true true well folks that kind of wraps up our story and that that's just another mystery of the Superstition Mountains thank you for watching this episode of mysteries of the Superstition Mountains