BARREL HOOP MINE

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Jim Hatt

BARREL HOOP MINE

Post by Jim Hatt »

Everyone is wise to see as much different country as they can when just starting out. It puts them way ahead of the guy who has been going in the mountains for “X” amount years, and always goes to the same area, via the same trail, and never wanders more than a mile from the same camping spot he uses each time.

The more different places you go, the more you start developing a "Sense" of the diversity in what is "Natural" out there. Eventually you will come to the place where you feel the "Sense" of something "un-natural" all around you. A closer inspection of the area will, reveal subtle disturbances in the "Natural" things you have become accustomed to seeing.

The remains of a faint old trail that appear to come from, and lead to nowhere. But if you check it out in both directions, following the path of least resistance. You will find additional remnants of it, and finally discover why it was there. Sometimes it leads to water. Sometimes to an old cave that the "Ancient" ones used for shelter, and sometimes to an old tunnel or shaft.

A single rock placed on top of a boulder large enough to be seen above the height of the brush on the area... If you go to it, and look around in all directions, you will more often that not, see another one within a couple hundred feet away. Then another, and another. These too, can lead you to water, caves or old mines.

Saguaros with drooping arms, caused by someone making several hash marks on them, with a machete at the bend where they turn upwards. Saguaros, with other type of mutilations like hash marks, or that have been cut off 3 - 4 feet from the ground. First one, then a series of many that always lead to "something".

More often than not. The trail of "signs" that you were following will end abruptly within 500 feet of an old mine, but will continue right up to the location of water or a cave. When you lose the signs, and there is nothing to be found there. Continue on in the direction had been traveling.

Back in 2002 Clay Worst and I found a Saguaro that had been cut off about 3 feet from the ground, and a steel barrel hoop had been dropped over it. It started growing arms that had reached a height of about twenty feet by the time we found it.

You know that barrel hoop in the photo below, (which was still intact when we found it) had to have been dropped over the trunk of the Saguaro right after it was cut off, and before the arms started growing on it. (100 to 200 years ago, judging by the length of the arms.)
Image

Following other "Signs" in the immediate area around the Saguaro with the hoop around it, we eventually found the entrance to the mine in the photo below.

Image



Jim

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Re: BANDED SAGUAROS and Other trail Markers

Post by Guz »

And???????? You end it there?? What about the untold riches you found that need to be told about? :D
Jim Hatt

Re: BANDED SAGUAROS and Other trail Markers

Post by Jim Hatt »

Sorry Guz but that's the end of the story.

Clay and I checked it all out, but cutting samples, and sweeping it with a metal a detector, and found nothing of interest. I took a Geologist up there a couple years later, and he didn't know what to make of it either. Just another one of the many old mines found in the Superstitions, that may have been a low grade deposit or a rich pocket that was all worked out.

Jim
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