From: chrisb@lynx.ps.uci.edu (Chris Barrus)
Subject: Re: Death Valley Mummies
In-reply-to: John_-_Winston@cup.portal.com's message of 21 Dec 92 15:33:10 GMT
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage,alt.alien.visitors
Organization: Dept. of Physics, Univ. of California, Irvine
Date: 21 Dec 92 19:25:06 GMT


In article <72126@cup.portal.com> John_-_Winston@cup.portal.com writes:


     The first of the three extra stories was about The Mystery of the Lost Dutch 
   Oven Gold Mine.  It was about the area around Danby, Calif. between Barstow 
   and Needles, Calif. I had spent a lot of time down there looking for an 
   underground city. 

===========================================================

This really isn't much of a mystery anymore.  I refer you to the book
_The Desert Is Yours_ by Earl Gardener.  Basically, the author and a friend
of his with a helocopter went searching for the Dutch Oven site.  They found
the site and after several days of searching concluded that the site (and the
gold) had already been found (this was in the early 1960s).

  Their conclusion is more or less reasonable.  If you ran across a fortune
in gold, would you tell anyone?  Especially when private ownership of gold was
highly illegal.  It makes for a good story, but as with most "lost gold"
tales, it's still a story.  The Dutch Oven Gold Mine is not a mine at all, but
a place where some passing prospectors buried their ore and forgot where it
was.

Although I don't discount the likelyhood of a buried underground city in
the Mojave, I just find it highly improbable.  The area has its share of 
volcanism, cinder cones, and geologic instability.  Remember the big
Landers earthquake earlier this year?  That was only about 80-100 miles from
the Danby area where the city is reported to be.  If there is a city, it's
probably buried by now.

When you referred to the publishers of "Far Out" magazine as L.F.P. you didn't
tell the whole story.  L.F.P. is also known as Larry Flynt Publications.
Aside from being a perpetual presidential candidate and the publisher of
Screw magazine, Larry Flynt is only concerned with one thing.  Publicizing
Larry Flynt.  His entry into the fledgling UFO/Weirdness magazine field will
only further prevent any kind of serious investigations being made.

Getting back to "lost mine" stories that would be within the scope of this
group...  Has anyone read or heard of a followup to the lost gold within
Vittiorio Peak in the White Sands Missile Range.  _Unsolved Mysteries_ ran
several segments on this a year or so ago and mentioned that the Feds were
going to open the mountain up in 1992 and let investigators in.

Also, anyone have any current stories on the Supersition Mountains outside of
Phoenix?  I've read _The Killer Mountains_ and see a newspaper article now and
then, but nothing substantial AND recent.  Last I heard, the CIA was involved
now.

Chris
(Desert Rat since 1965!)
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Chris Barrus - P.O. Box 5115 - Irvine - CA - 92716 - chrisb@lynx.ps.uci.edu

           Sacred cows make the best hamburger - Abbie Hoffman
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