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we're here just below the beautiful Superstition Mountain along the old
Apache Trail and if you've ever traveled down the old Apache trail then you've
passed this sign for the old wasp mine a piece of the history the legendary
history of the Superstition Mountains and today we're very pleased because I
can't tell you how excited I am to be talking with Clay Worst now he's
somebody we wanted to have on the show for a long time as probably the most
noted authority of the area he could probably tell us some great stories and
we're gonna be talking to him about the mine here and some other other things
along the old Apache trail in the Superstition Mountains so let's get
right to it clay tell us how you acquired the WASP mine and tell us a
little bit about the history associated with it well I came to Apache Junction
in 1947 over 70 years ago but I acquired the WASP and where my home is now just
over 40 years ago
the WASP this is strange
I'd mentioned that the.. Mammoth mine was all Mormons Merrill Hakes, Cozner but
right in the middle of them was a Gentile Joseph Reilly Morse and back in
those days they had an acronym WASP white anglo-saxon Protestant.
whoa whoa! Clay I don't know how politically correct that is..
and the Mormons probably
derisively called him the old WASP well he named the mine after himself
[laughter]
so a
friend of mine Cliff Soving and I acquired the WASP about 40 years ago
split it cliff took the south end I took the
north end never dreamed of ever mining it the WASP ore shoot wasn't discovered
until 1929 and it was discovered a thousand feet underground
by an encroachment from the Mammoth mine at the thousand foot level the Mammoth
people were drifting south following the Mammoth fault contact where all of the
gold here at Goldfield has been discovered they reached their South
boundary and found some very good assays they continued under the wasp which they
did not own but his pretty dark down there a thousand feet and encroachments
back in the pioneer era were common and they drifted I think a hundred and
ninety three feet under the wasp and there was about a hundred and fifteen
feet of that drift that averaged six tenth of an ounce per ton
and in the center of it there was about fifteen feet that averaged almost two ounces and
at the end of that drift at the face or they quit twelve inches wide
it still averaged almost three ounces so they encountered very good ore at the
thousand foot level now the WASP ore shoot was not discovered near the surface
until I think it was 1986 when two prospectors or miners named Welker
and Housley approached me about getting a lease on the WASP north of the highway
I'd built my home on the my part south of the highway I gave him a lease
what I didn't realize then that there was a fellow over here at at the Bluebird
ahh...
are you talking about John Wilburn John Willburn thank you I'm sorry
the fellow over here at the Bluebird named John Willburn.. Wellburn had gone
over on the WASP north of the highway and noticed a blue copper carbonate
bloom right in the bottom will wash which indicates copper mineralization
darn his hide he didn't come to me he knew I own the
property he went to Welker and Housley they came got a lease on it went over with a
backhoe and four feet below the surface they hit the apex of the lost ore shoot
they mind it has an open pit down to about fifty feet took out six hundred
and twenty thousand dollars in gold which would be over two million dollars
today I terminated their lease for non-payment of royalties and the
operation was shut down I went back into it and did some exploration work down to
another ten feet but that that's six hundred and twenty thousand dollars that
Welker and Housley took out is what's called a super gene enrichment now deep
in the bowels of the earth were the it's under incredible pressure and
temperature gold and silver and precious metals will actually go on a solution
with water and where you have a fault where you have a weakness coming up to
the surface that pressure can force those solutions up through that fault
but once it reaches the surface then the temperature and pressure drop sharply
and the gold and the silver precipitate out and that creates what they call a
super gene surface enrichment it will not continue to depth but the feeder we
know for a number of reasons that were they intercepted the WASP ore shoot at
the thousand foot level is definitely the same or shoot that Welker and
Housley worked out as a surface mine that feeder definitely has to contain
some some gold how much there's only one way to know it has to be drilled that is
expensive is something I cannot do I'm 90 years old next year and I must sell
property so I've got to sell it to someone I personally feel the open-pit
is at the end of its economic life it probably is it's got to be someone with
the funding and the technical expertise to go ahead and drill it out
to determine what's down there and then presuming it drills out to develop it as
an underground mine okay so if you could drill down from the 50 feet of the WASP
mine to the thousand feet of the Mammoth mine how much gold do you think you'd
find there you can play you can take the assay the values at the thousand foot
level and the thousand at the fifty foot level and you can try and interpolate
and you can play with arithmetic and you can come up between around twenty-five
million dollars now you can also extrapolate this it haven't bottomed out
so if you add ten or twenty percent to the bottom and the end of that drift was
still in pay ore if you add another tenth ten or twenty percent to that you could
come up with 50 million dollars and those figures mean absolutely nothing
there is it's wonderful to play with the arithmetic but really the only way you
will ever know what's down there is drill it out and that I cannot do all
right is there anything more that you would say is unusual about the WASP mine
well one unusual thing about the WASP this is something we never quite
understood Merrill Hakes and Cozner and Joseph Reilly Morris staked out the
Mammoth group back in 1893 when they sold out Morse kept the WASP
they sold everything at Goldfield except the WASP Morse kept it back and patented it
bought it from the federal government back
the pioneer era the WASP was the only mine that was patented at Goldfield in
the pioneer era the Mammoth the Bluebird they were patented in modern times now
why he kept it back we have no idea there was it's it's
strange but the work on the mammoth mine was recorded by the engineers that were
there we have the most beautiful set of records of those three miles of
underground workings on the Mammoth we've got it all down in black and white
and nothing on the WASP we know that there had to have been a shaft on the
WASP because there was a newspaper article that someone had fallen down the
shaft at the Old WASP mine and was killed we don't even know where that
shaft was there's no evidence of it today but at any rate the WASP was not
extensively developed during the pioneer era Morse held it back later sold it to
a fella named White it finally came down to Slovege and myself and we've got
dreams about doing something with it we would like to see Goldfield back in
production again and it very well could happen the the history is there the
geology is there and the WASP since it is private land you are not bothered
with permits from the Forest Service and the BLM and all of the other paperwork
with the federal government it's a very clean operation so hopefully we may be
able to do something with it so what does lie between the 50 foot level of
the WASP and the thousand foot level of the Mammoth well it's just one of the
mysteries of the Superstition Mountains thanks for watching
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