The Tucson "Lead Crosses" The text following this introduction is from a small introductory paper written for an excellent display that was organized by Peter L. Steere of the Special Collections staff at the University of Arizona Library. No author is listed, but I give full credit to Special Collections for the excellent and informative article. I post it here for educational purposes and research. I do not necessarily agree with some of the statements in the article, by various people. I have discussed the subject of caliche formation with Dr. Cyclone Covey (mentioned in the article) and a few Geologists. From my research, the subject of the rate of deposit of caliche is still somewhat of a mystery. Some of the artifacts were buried under at least five feet of hard caliche. Dr. Covey has said in a communication to me: "Concerted efforts to discredit (the age of the find) have found no way to insert heavy lead objects up to 6 1/2 feet deep through caliche to lie flat, without fracturing the formation conspicuously" - communication March 26, 1999 I agree here with Dr. Covey. In the early days in Tucson, caliche deposits, sometimes called "desert cement" were a constant problem to those who needed to dig in the soil. (as they are today) Some of the "old timers" resorted to dynamite to break through the thick hard layers. I have personally used a jackhammer to dig holes large enough to plant small trees. (when I worked as a landscaper) here in Tucson. I find it hard to imagine that Timoteo Odohui buried 30+ heavy lead objects nearly six feet deep through solid caliche by himself, and then covered all the objects, simply to create a hoax. When the objects were excavated with University of Arizona supervision, It took a crew of several Mexican laborers using picks to forecefully hack their way down to the objects through the hard cement-like caliche. Also, some of the objects were personally witnessed to have been dug from undisturbed caliche and soil, by University of Arizona professors, . - Jack Andrews - Jack Andrews copyright 2001 may be only used in it's entirety with this notice clearly visible