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this is Larry Hedrick for Mysteries of the Superstition Mountains
well we bring the past into the present for our future viewers today we have
another great story by Jack San Felice
Bob Ward he came here in hum
this area about 1958 because things about Bob Ward are are shadowy and once you can't
believe what you read sometimes you think he got it right you but you don't
anyhow he was here for sure in the 60s and 70s because of the people that
he had talked to and the information that I had found why Bob Ward I think
got so interested in the superstitions? not long after World War II and korean
war he had been in the korean war and he came out here and there was a lot of
people out here so-called prospectors out of jobs after World War II a lot of men
were out of jobs and then the korean war about the same thing and they were
looking for a lot of them were looking for adventure and they read about
articles that would put in a newspaper about the Superstition Mountains gold
here these stories start coming out and then didn't quit the stories of Adolf Ruth
came out in the 1930s and then Barry Storms book come out and the
stories of Bob Garman about they about Peralta's, by the way Bob Garman was very
good friends with with Bob Ward in fact he dedicated a page to Bob Ward in his
book Bob Ward's book he didn't write this book until after he was he had been
through the superstition about 30 years and he wrote it as he would die in a
cancer so uh you got to take this book with what he wrote in the newspaper
articles he wrote several are very good newspaper articles he made friends with a
lot of people and he was a researcher and seeing this he was a he was a
researcher and he worked for the newspapers and he eventually worked for
the Apache Sentinel and they kept binders great big binders of all their
newspaper articles that they had written as they Apache Sentinel and he could go
back through those and he had him they were available to him and so he started
gathering this information about the Lost Dutchman's story and about the
Peralta's and he was trying to put the two together he was fascinated by the
Peralta stone legend Peralta stones became a notoriety hmm starting about
1948 or 49 when they allegedly were found he spent 30 years trying to put
this story together on the Dutchman and tried to find and verify the fact that
the Peralta's were actually were here and that he could find one of the mines
that was his goal he wrote under the name of Val Paris well Val Paris was a
derivative of the word Valparaiso which means a place of treasure gold and
treasure Valparaiso everybody's dream is to find a Valparaiso so he took the
nom de plume Val Paris when he wrote and that's the name that's on his all of
his newspaper articles Val Paris not Bob Ward... Bob Ward stated in his newspaper
articles and his book but the reason you can't find the Peralta's treasure is
that any of the maps or stories the language is not the language that was
used back then the signs of the symbols that they used were different than the
language of today Bob wrote I wrote this story in the Apache Sentinel it was
called tracking the ancient Peralta's with a stone map he wanted to believe
the stone maps you really thought that they were real
first off you have a story about some people may or may not be real and they
and then you have people that are totally dedicated that story and then by
the same token you go on the other side there are those that don't believe the
story at all they believe the stones were fake
Bob Ward found some areas that in around those south southern foothills of the
superstitions and he used that story in his book as well as in his newspaper
articles in tracking the Peralta's with a stone map so in in there he found a
knife that had been etched into a rock and and he found some other marks and he
actually dug in solid rock out there in a place called Knight rock and knife hill
and it's amazing that that he would have actually dug in solid rock looking
for the treasure well in in 1998 I found several treasure
signs while I was search in that area or could have been treasure signs
um knife hill and knife rock along with fact some petroglyphs an ancient Indian
rock writing but it's an interesting story because just before you get to
knife Rock there was a large boulder setting right down from the bottom base
of the hill and it was it had like a the one end was they had like a pointer on
it and like a pencil sharpened to a point and on there there were some
itched into stone there were some saguaros and they look like they were
marked up saguaros and then on the other side there was the name el gato 41
the cat now al gato in the mountains and and Bob Ward talks about el gato and
finding this this name in my search of over 25 years 30 years I found el gato
the name all the way down to the Gila river north all the way into the
superstitions into the peralta what they call the Peralta caves
up there up there near the Mesa you know which mesa I am talking about that just....
Peters Mesa on the trail to Peters Mesa there inside the cave there's a name el
gato and I find I it was on some petroglyphs on a knoll just south of
Route 60 directly in line with Black Point North
and knife rock the one other thing about knife Rock and that area is beside
the pointer rock and there is a set in a desert there's a series of stones that
are in a straight line off for a few hundred yards there used to be more of
them but the campers are starting to take them and make fire pits out of them
but they used to go longer longer way in today and it go right exactly to knife
rock I thought that was kind of curious that somebody either would spend all
that time putting these stones together and to make this... leads you right to
knife rock and knife hill I climbed all over those...
that mountain I didn't find any anything that look like gold hard to find quartz
hard to find anything now Bob Ward also wrote about a fellow by the name of
Polka! an Indian an Indian friend of his then Bob Ward was in
the army and met this Apache Indian named polka AJ polka and he had a
treasure map he said from we've all got treasure maps I've got a hundred fifty
of them but he said this treasure will lead you to this large mountain and he
scratched out a map for him boy but I'll tell you what there's no way anybody
could find anything and even I I don't know that's I think when Bob was getting
a little bit you know trying to make a story where none existed but it then he
writes this this a story in two newspapers and this is the Apache
Sentinel and then he writes it in a and the place called the Arizona Gazette but
he says maybe I found the Lost Dutchman mine he said he found an old mine after
he found the large mountain and then he went down into the valley he found he
found a mine that was brushed over that someone has stacked brush and some
larger pieces of trees over to like hide it he pulled that aside there was a
shaft there and but the ladders were all rotten and he didn't go down now Bob said
he was in his, in his book and then in the article he said that he looked over
around the see if it could find remains of the camp of Ahlers camp see if it was
a good story there there was some junk left around there but he did find a
rotted bag which was Bull Durham tobacco bag and inside there there were some
gold nuggets Bob had assayed and they said they were gold
but there the gold content was like four dollars a ton at the time gold was $35 a
ton I don't think it was worth it to even
follow that story through there's a $4 a ton that's not much that would that
you'd have to work pretty hard to get enough gold to make it worthwhile
the one thing brings us back to the knife Rock area he said that the you go
a little bit further and there's this black top mountain there or Black
Mountain at which somebody named on the map North Black Point and some people
refer that is Borrego Mountain in conjunction with the Adolf Ruth story
because at one time he had searched in an area called Borrego and the Borrego
desert of California and anyhow and when you go up through that mountain that
little mountain on the east side of it there are all of these grind holes I
mean they are huge they are about that big around a lot of about that big
around and they go down some about a foot or so and Bob stated that he
believed that that's where the Peralta's that took the gold out of the mountains
used that those holes to grind up the ore so then they could pack it on in
packs like burlap sacks on the backs of mules to take on to Mexico and he said
that's where the that's where the the battle started with the Apaches when the
Apaches attacked the so-called Peralta miners and then they chased them through
the superstitions and they finally wound up on the west end Superstition Mountain
the northwest end in an area on the maps today called the massacre grounds and
that story is also told in depth and the maps given in depth in Garmin's book
mystery gold of the superstitions seeing that map in both Garman's book and Ward
writing about it and writing about the same thing
he didn't put the map in his book but he wrote about it and he told exactly the
same direction the same story that Garmin wrote and so I said I got to see
if I can do this so yeah in my hiking I hiked from that
area to Peralta and then from Peralta the Peralta Trail
and then through and you go all the way through the mountains and when you come
out you come to the northwest side and but that that hike is about 25 miles the
way you go there it's about 25 miles but you're not a straight line anywhere
and but but both Garman and Ward said that that was a three-day fight and then that
makes sense that they in three days they could have gone through the mountains
and wind up there why they would want to fight there and go through the mountains
back to where they started maybe gathering the gold because that place
was right across from Goldfield the Goldfield mines and there's there is a
an old Spanish drift that they found over there so there's some there's some
common sense in the fact that the some gold was taken for a place with where
there was gold and in fact on the massacre grounds there is a story about
two old prospectors finding some gold there in rotted sacks that part of the
story now of searching all of this and talking about Bob Ward leads me to of
course reading Bob Ward's book a little bit more and then I find what's Bob
Ward's cabin we have Bob Ward's book you have his stories
somewhere around there if you can might still be able to find Bob Ward's book
and if you put these two books together and start searching you'll find a real
mystery of the superstition thank you for watching this episode of Mysteries
of the Superstition Mountains
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