The Gold Prospector’s Guide

This eBook contains information to help you learn to find

gold. Please understand that many gold-bearing locations
are located on private lands, patented mining claims,
unpatented mining claims, and within areas that may have
legal restrictions or bans on some or all types of
prospecting. This information is provided strictly for
informational purposes to educate the reader. It is the
responsibility of the reader to do their due-diligence in
determining that they are in an area that they can legally
prospect for gold and other minerals.

Gold prospecting is a potentially dangerous activity. Never

enter old mines or structures. Always tell someone where
you are going before you venture into the hills, and always
be prepared with food, water, and proper equipment.
Prospecting with a partner is always a good idea. Stay safe
and have fun!

By reading this eBook you agree that neither Gold Rush

Nuggets nor the author is responsible for any actions that
you take based on your decisions relating to any
information presented here.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Gold Rush Nuggets buys and sells natural gold nuggets and gold in quartz specimens from miners throughout the western United
States. Our website is also a fantastic resource for gold prospectors, with hundreds of articles relating to all aspects of gold mining
and prospecting.

Over the years we have noticed a trend… while there are plenty of collectors out there who love buying gold, there are countless
others out there who want to go out and FIND the gold!

We have been passionate about gold prospecting for over 15 years, and have learned a few things over the years. Hopefully the
information in this book will help you find your very own “Mother Lode”!

To learn more about us, please visit our website at www.goldrushnuggets.com

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STARTING OUT- Locating Gold-Bearing Areas

Gold prices have reached record highs in recent years, and there has been lots of interest by beginning prospectors
who want to try their hand at gold prospecting for the first time. It is very possible to be successful in finding gold
if you do your research and learn how and where to find gold.

To start with, you need to find an area that has good potential for producing gold. It is very common for people
who are just starting out to ask a question something like this, “There is a creek by my house, do you think there
might be gold there?” Sure, there might be, but this is really the wrong question to ask. What you should be finding
out is if there has been gold discovered there in the past. This is the single most important thing that will determine
whether a beginning prospector is successful or not. While there is a slim possibility that they might get lucky and
find a new gold strike, you are going to have much better odds if you search in an area that is known for producing
gold in the past.

Research is very important and will save you a ton of time and effort. In the mid 1800’s, there were literally
thousands of men scouring the countryside in search of gold. When a large amount of gold was found, a gold strike
would occur and those men would converge into an area to mine for gold. Learn about where these old mining
towns were in your area, and what types of minerals were found.

Before doing any on-the-ground research, most successful gold prospectors today use some type of mapping
program like Google Earth to locate potential prospecting areas. This is an excellent tool to help you find areas,
even if you are thousands of miles away in the comfort of your living room. Surface disturbances like dredge
tailing and hydraulic washouts will show up clearly in these aerial photos, and you can use this in conjunction with
maps and GPS to plot areas to investigate when you get there. You can also identify areas that would concentrate
placer gold like bends in the river or large exposed boulders. Just about every successful prospector I know uses
Google Earth and other types of mapping software to research gold areas. This research is critical, because the

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combination of aerial photos and topographical maps in combination with documented historical gold locations
gives today’s prospector an advantage that the early gold miners never had.

With a small amount of research, you should be able to locate a general area that has produced gold. There are
many books with good information on various states, and there is an abundance of information available on the
internet. Even in a known gold district, the gold is not evenly distributed across the landscape, so you need to look
beyond the general references and try to identify specific areas that gold is likely be found by identifying the exact
locations that the old timers worked. Sometimes the signs of historic mining are obvious; bucket line dredge
tailings, hydraulic mining, and open adits are good examples of things to look for. Other locations you should look
for include hand-placered streams, hand-stacked rocks, exposed bedrock, old iron rubbish, and drywash piles.
These are all indications of past gold mining. Finding these areas can be easy or difficult depending on your
experience, but a bit of knowledge will help you train your eye to identify what to look for.

This may sound simple, but locating an area that actually has gold is one of the things that beginning prospectors
often dismiss too easily, and will have very little success because of it. If you were to look at a map of the U.S.,
only a tiny percentage of the landscape has gold in any quantity, so if you just pick a random creek and start gold
panning, it is very doubtful that you are going to have much luck. Take the time to find the areas that you know for
certain have gold, and that is half that challenge. Put yourself in the right location and use the proper mining
techniques and you will be finding gold in no time.

Some beginning prospectors assume that the areas that were mined have been worked out, and you need to find
new undiscovered areas to find gold. The truth is that the old-timers didn’t come close to finding all the gold. Sure
they got most of the easy stuff, but they also missed a lot of gold too. Historic mining methods were very
inefficient, and a lot of gold was lost by the old timers. Don’t be afraid to rework old ground; it can be surprisingly
productive.

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This isn’t to say that you have to only rework old ground. Many successful gold prospectors search for new and
unknown areas that gold has never been found before. However, it is important to understand that just because they
are prospecting for undiscovered gold deposits, they are not going at it blindly. Prospectors that successfully locate
these deposits are still doing their research. Usually they are searching areas on the peripheries of known gold
districts, and also identify geologic similarities that indicate at least the potential for gold. This type of prospecting
takes a lot of patience, but the reward of potentially finding an unknown gold deposit can more than make up for
the long days searching.

The technological advances that we have today give us a significant edge in finding gold that the gold miners of the
last few centuries never had. Just think of how much more gold they would have found if they had equipment like
metal detectors and suction dredges, not to mention bulldozers and backhoes. This advanced equipment along with
books, maps, historical documents, aerial photos, and everything else available to us give today’s prospector a huge
advantage. If you are just starting out, I highly recommend that you use all of these resources that are now
available, as they will greatly increase your odds of success in gold mining.

Where Am I Allowed to Prospect?

Once a general gold-bearing area is identified, finding a specific area to start prospecting can sometimes be a
serious challenge. The two most common barriers that most prospectors will encounter are private lands and
mining claims. In some mining districts, finding an area that is open to legally prospect can be quite challenging.

It is each prospector’s responsibility to make sure that they are in an area that they are allowed to prospect.

There are a few simple options that new prospectors can take to gain access to gold bearing ground. The first thing
that I would recommend is joining a gold mining club. The best known mining club is the Gold Prospectors
Association of America. The GPAA has chapters in almost every state, and the benefit of joining is that you will

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have access to mining claims that they hold throughout the U.S.
Most states have at least a few other local clubs as well, most of
which have a handful of claims that members can prospect on.
Joining a club allows any prospector to be able to work private
claims for a very reasonable cost, and is highly recommended for
beginners.

Another option that surprisingly few people seem to consider is

simply finding the owners (of either private land or mining
claims) and asking their permission to prospect. Often private
landowners own land that has gold, but the landowners
themselves are not miners and have no interest in gold
prospecting. Simply ask permission to prospect on their property
and you may get a simple “yes”. You can also come to an
agreement to share a percentage of profits from the gold
recovered with the landowner.

Asking permission from a claim holder is also a simple option

that may pay off. Of course not all claim holders are going to allow others to prospect on their claims, but you
don’t know until you ask. I have found it is quite common to get permission if you make it clear that you are just
using simple tools such as gold pans and sluice boxes. Realistically, a person using small scale mining equipment
are not going to have a serious impact, and many claim holders will have no problem giving you permission to do a
bit of “pick and pan” prospecting for the weekend. You may also come up with an agreement to share a percentage
of the finds, as discussed in the previous paragraph.

Finally, it should be emphasized that not ALL of gold bearing ground is claimed. Certainly in some of the more

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populated and well-known mining districts it can be hard to find areas that are not claimed, but I assure you that it
is still possible to find areas on public lands that are unclaimed and open to prospecting. Doing the proper research
will help you find these areas. Yes, most of the well-known gold areas are claimed, but don’t ever believe the
statements that all of the good gold ground is claimed up. Plenty of gold can still be recovered in relatively
unknown areas, often on the fringes of the better known gold districts.

Exploring the Gold Country

Gold prospectors have a wonderful opportunity to explore some of the most beautiful and remote corners of the
world. The presence of gold is not dependent on nearby gas stations, hotels, and paved roads. Rich gold deposits
can occur just about anywhere, which means that adventurous prospectors are often far away from civilization and
the comforts of modern life. While this is certainly one of the aspects that make it so appealing, it is also important
to be prepared so that you can stay safe. Fortunately, a small amount of preparation will go a long way to ensure
that you have a safe trip.

One thing that people need to understand when they get involved in gold prospecting is how many of the goldfields
are located in very remote areas. This is especially true of the many of the gold bearing areas in the western U.S.,
as well as many rich areas in Canada and Alaska. If you intend to venture off the beaten path in search of gold,
there are a few tips that I have discovered that will greatly increase your odds of navigating successfully and
efficiently in the more remote areas. It is also worth noting that safety is of huge importance when you are
exploring remote areas, so it is highly recommend that you go prepared with all of the appropriate safety gear,
food, and water.

Before you ever leave home, be sure to tell someone where you are going and when you will return. This simple
step has saved countless lives. If plans change, be sure to call and tell someone who will notice if you are missing.
If you ever find yourself stranded in the desert with a serious injury, you will be very glad that people know where

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you are located. Don’t count on your cell phone to save you, many of the goldfields across the west are far from
cell towers and cell service is unreliable. Don’t depend on it.

Here are a few things, in no particular order, which should help you navigate some of the remote goldfields.

Use a capable vehicle – You should only venture off of the beaten path if you are confident that your vehicle is up
to the task. At a minimum, you should have a truck with 4 wheel drive and high clearance. Additionally, it is
always smart to carry extra tools so you can handle any difficulties that you may encounter.

Make sure that your vehicle is in good condition and capable of the task at hand. Never try to push your luck on a
rough or muddy road that you are concerned about getting stuck on; it just isn’t worth it. Before you leave home,
make sure that your tires are full, your spare tire is in good condition, and your fluids are topped off. When taking a
vehicle far from civilization, be absolutely certain that it is up to the task.

Survival Gear- Always carry survival gear in your vehicle, and in your backpack if you leave your vehicle. I never
go anywhere without a case of water in the vehicle, as well as at least a week’s supply of food (dehydrated foods
are ideal). This can be stored securely in the bed of your truck and left alone until you need it. Don’t tap into this
supply; keep it available for when you need it. If you leave your vehicle to go for a hike, always carry an ample
supply with you in case something bad happens. Being stranded without food and water in the hot desert can kill a
person in only a few hours in extreme conditions. Don’t put yourself in that situation! Also have a supply of extra
tools, oil, antifreeze, duct tape, and other assorted gear.

So let’s assume that you encounter some troubles while out in the field. If you get stranded in your vehicle, be sure
to stay with it; don’t venture off in search of help unless you are 100% sure that you know where you are going.
Every year people leave the safety of their vehicle and die in the backcountry searching for help. Staying with your

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stranded vehicle is the best and quickest way to be found in case you need to be rescued. If you find yourself
stranded in the backcountry away from your vehicle, it is even more important that you have enough food and
water to sustain yourself. If possible, find an open area that you will be easily visible to rescuers. Attempt to find
some sort of shelter to protect yourself from the harsh elements.

Fortunately, with the proper preparation and planning, prospecting in the remote backcountry can be a fun and
exciting adventure. Of course, you should only go where you are comfortable, and you can certainly find areas
closer to civilization that have gold too.

Use an ATV – If you have one, using an All-Terrain Vehicle makes traveling off-road much more quick and
efficient. They handle rough roads with ease, and can be taken on narrower trails that a full sized truck will not fit.
Modern day ATV’s are a real pleasure to ride. Of course, always accept your limitations and never take them into
an area that you aren’t comfortable navigating. Additionally, always stay on designated roads and trails, don’t ride
cross-country.

Have quality maps – This is an absolute MUST in my opinion. Have the appropriate maps for the area that you
are in, and understand how to read them. For gold mining, it is critical that you can identify public and private
lands, so contact your local BLM or Forest Service office for the best maps for an area. I generally carry several
different maps for an area that I am exploring. The best map for navigating are the 1:24k scale topographical maps
because they have the most detail and sometimes show tailing piles, mines, and other mining activity that is very
valuable. An excellent online resource is caltopo.com; you can view and print 1:24k scale maps of the entire
country.

When I head out for a few days of gold prospecting, I like to have a pretty good idea of where I am going before I
leave the house. Of course many of the places that I hunt for gold I have been to many times so it’s not hard to find
them, but when I am exploring new country I like to have my routes planned out to some extent.

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There are a few places that you can acquire maps for your areas. For pretty much any area in the western U.S., you
can go to the local BLM or Forest Service office in your areas and they will have maps for your area. The maps
that they sell to the public are generally 1:100,000 scale maps. These maps are decent for general navigation
purposes, and will show land ownership (i.e. private and public lands) which is very important.

What most of the current maps seem to lack is good detail. It seems like the newer maps that the BLM and Forest
Service come out with show less and less detail with each new addition. Sometimes they lack very important
features like jeep trails and smaller creeks that are very important to us gold prospectors. For this reason, I prefer to
use them for general navigation only, and rely on more detailed maps once I get near my location.

In my opinion, the best maps for exploring new country are the detailed 1:24,000 topographical maps that are put
out by the USGS. These have much better detail, and will generally show all the roads and trails in an area. One
important feature for gold prospectors is that they will often show details of historic mining activity such as small
prospects, dredge tailings, lode mines, and other features that can indicate that there is gold in the area.

The cost of these maps can get much more expensive than most since they only cover a small area and are quite
detailed. However, for certain areas that I frequent repeatedly, I really enjoy having the higher quality maps that are
printed professionally.

One thing to keep in mind is that these 1:24,000 scale maps do not generally show land ownership, and for this
reason I always use them in conjunction with the more general 1:100,000 maps sold by the BLM.

Bring a compass or GPS – I must admit, I am old-school on this one; I rarely use my GPS unit for navigation.
With that said, many people cannot be without them, and they certainly are a handy piece of equipment. You can
also mark areas that you find gold, so you can be sure to return at a later date. A simple compass is also a good
idea, especially if you prefer to use paper maps for navigation. Even the best of us can get turned around from time
to time.

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Gold Panning
Every prospector should know how to use a gold pan.
They are still the best tool for sampling, and are
inexpensive to buy. Once a nice gold deposit is
found, you will probably want to use some larger
equipment, but for moving around and exploring new
areas a gold pan is still the tool of choice.

Basics of Gold Panning

1. Find an area along a stream or river that has good
potential for having placer gold. The best areas to
start looking are places that have a known history of
gold production in the past. Use a shovel to dig deep
into the gravels, continue digging until you reach
bedrock, as this is where most placer gold will
accumulate. Shovel a moderate quantity of gravels
into your gold pan. Don’t load your pan with so much
material that it is hard to work with, rather a medium
amount of gravel that will be easy to process.

2. Remove some of the larger rocks from your pan, or consider using a classifier to keep the larger material out of
your pan. Rinse the rocks off in your pan so any gold that may be clinging to them will go back into your gold pan.
Slightly agitating the mixture with water helps to expose the largest rocks for easy removal.

3. Submerge the gold pan in water and agitate the gravel using a circular or side to side motion. At first, try not to
let any gravel fall out of the pan. Use your hands to break up any clumps of gravel or organic matter than might be
holding gold. Continue shaking the gold pan, which will allow the gold to work its way to the bottom of the pan.

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4. Once the gravels have been thoroughly agitated, you want to begin to remove some of the material from the gold
pan. Keep moving the pan in a circular motion, and slightly tip the farthest edge of the pan away from your body.
Ensure that there is always plenty of water in the pan to keep the contents suspended, allowing the gold to remain
safely at the bottom. Some of the lighter sands and gravel will pour out of the pan. Every so often, level the pan out
and agitate the mixture to ensure that all the fine gold remains safely in the pan. Repeat this process, and eventually
you will reduce the contents of your pan to just the heaviest materials.

5. One you have gotten down to just the heaviest contents, the separation process will get a little bit tougher. Take
it slow and continue reducing the material until you are down to a very small amount of material. At this point you
should be down to mainly black sands and hopefully a little bit of gold! With plenty of water in your pan, slightly
shake it and try to get the black sands to separate from the gold. This can be easier said than done, but keep
practicing and your skills will improve.

6. If you are fortunate to have any sizable flakes or small gold nugget in your pan, use your fingers or tweezers to
carefully remove them. Place them safely in a small vial for safe keeping. Use a snuffer bottle to carefully separate
the black sands from the fine gold left in the pan. Then suck up the gold into the snuffer bottle. This can take quite
a bit of practice to master, but be patient with it and you will improve your skills.

7. Keep in mind that not every pan is going to have gold; sometimes you have to do a bit of searching to find it.
Keep on prospecting, look in all the likely areas, and sooner or later you will start finding some “color”. Once you
have found an area that is producing a good quantity of placer gold by panning, you may want to start using a
sluice box or suction dredge to start increasing your production.

Choosing a Gold Pan

Choosing a gold pan is something that many prospectors don’t really give a lot of thought to. This is most likely
because gold pans are fairly inexpensive items, and at first glance they all seem more or less the same. However, if

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you take some extra time to choose the proper gold pan you will significantly improve not only your success in
finding gold, but your overall enjoyment of the hobby as well. So let’s take a quick look at a few of the things you
will want to consider before choosing a pan.

The most important thing to consider when selecting a gold pan is its size. Gold pans come in many different sizes,
with diameters most commonly ranging from 10” to 18”. Many beginning prospectors make the simple mistake of
picking the largest gold pan that they can get their hands on. After all, we all know that the more material that you
can process, the more gold you are likely to recover. The problem with these large pans is that they are just too
much for the average prospector use comfortably. When an 18” pan is loaded up with gravel, it gets very heavy and
tough to maneuver, turning the pleasurable experience of gold panning into a real chore. Now if you are a large
man in good shape, maybe the larger sized gold pans are ideal for you. However, most children, women, and most
men will probably find that a small to medium size is a better choice.

To figure out which size is best for you, lay the gold pan face down on the inside of your forearm. With one edge
of the pan at you elbow crease, look at where the other side of the pan is. Does it extend past your fingers? If so,
then it is definitely larger than you want. The ideal pan will fit from the crease in your elbow to somewhere around
your knuckles. Remember that a gold pan should be used more as a sampling tool than for large-scale prospecting
anyways, so save your back and go with a smaller size that will make panning a pleasurable experience.

Another choice you have is whether you want a plastic or metal gold pan. Of course, we all know that the metal
gold pan was the sampling tool of choice used by the old timer prospectors many years ago, and certainly there has
been a whole lot of placer gold pulled out of the creeks and rivers with these pans. With that said, today's modern
plastic gold pans have many advantages that should be considered before making your purchase. One of the biggest
advantages is maintenance, or lack of. Metal gold pans will rust if put away wet. I know that I am often tired after a
long day of prospecting and forget to do something simple like drying off a metal gold pan. A few days or weeks
later and you have a real mess on your hands. With a plastic gold pan, there is basically no maintenance involved.
You can toss it in your backpack and forget about it for a few weeks without having a rusty mess on your hands.
Plastic gold pans are also ready to use straight out of the box, while a metal gold pan requires some preparation to

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remove factory oils. Plastic gold pans also have built in riffles, which will really help you retain some of the
smaller flakes of gold, an added bonus for a beginner who is still learning the basics of gold panning. Plastic pans
will also come in various colors that can help you spot those little specks of gold in the bottom of the pan.

You will find that there are many different pans on the market. Some have slightly different shapes, they will come
in a variety of colors, and most manufacturers will claim that their model is the best for retaining gold. More
important than anything is selecting a gold pan that you are comfortable using, and panning in a spot that has
potential to have some gold. Once you’ve done that, all that is required is a little hard work and you will have a
good chance of finding some gold.

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Sluicing
While the gold pan should certainly be the foundation of your prospecting gear, once you start finding some gold
with your gold pan, you should definitely consider using some larger equipment so that you can process more
material. More material generally means more gold found at the end of the day.

A sluice box is generally the best choice. They are still relatively inexpensive; yet allow a prospector to process
significantly more material than just using a gold pan alone.

How to Use a Sluice Box

A sluice box is a commonly used piece of equipment used to recover gold. They are designed to be used in a
stream or river and have been used all around the world for hundreds of years. There have certainly been
improvements since the early days, but their overall concept remains unchanged. They are an excellent tool for the
modern day gold prospector who is looking for a way to process more material.

There are a lot of sluice boxes on the market, and they will all find gold. The old timers didn’t buy their sluice
boxes, but actually made them themselves. It is a relatively simple project to build a sluice box that will find gold,
but purchasing a modern design made of quality lightweight material will be more than worth the money because
of the added benefit of portability. Just be sure to invest in a quality piece of equipment that can handle years of
abuse, because they will definitely get worked hard. Cheap, poor quality equipment is never a good idea when gold
mining.

Once you have selected a sluice box, you need to identify an area that has good flow of water and the potential to
have some gold.

Setting up your sluice box will take a little trial and error if you have never done it before. What you are trying to
do is find an area that has good flow that you can run through the box and over the riffles. By laying the sluice

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parallel to the flow of the water, you can pick various spots to set it in the stream to regulate the amount of water
running through it. The ideal location will be fairly shallow with a good volume of water, which you can regulate
by using big rocks to funnel the water over the riffles.

Anchor the sluice using a few large rocks, and keep the bottom end of the box slightly lower than the upper end.
What you are trying to do is get the perfect amount of flow running through it, which will allow the heavier
material to get caught in the riffles and carpet of the sluice, while at the same time allow the lighter materials to be
discharged out of the back. If you have never don’t this before, it may be difficult to set up just right, and you will
find that your riffles are getting clogged with sediment. If this is happening, try increasing the speed of the water
through the box, either by slightly raising the head of the box, or by adding a few rocks to the head end of the
entrance to funnel a little more water through it. With a bit of experimentation, you will get it figured out. Test it
out by adding a small amount of gravels and watching how it works through your box. If it appears like the lighter
stuff is getting kicked out the back and the heavier concentrates are being retained, it’s time to start adding
material.

At this point some gold prospectors shovel gravel directly into the head of the sluice. While this does work, your
will get better results if you first classify the material that you run. By running the gravel through a coarse screen,
you will remove the large rocks and debris. This larger material probably does not have any gold in it, so there is
no reason to run it through the sluice. The second and more important benefit of classifying material is that it will
allow your sluice to run more efficiently. Big rocks and gravel rolling through the box and over the riffles has the
potential of affecting the efficiency of the process, and may dislodge some gold that had settled into your riffles.

When you have a few buckets of classified material, add it slowly to the front of the sluice box. Doing this slowly
is important, because adding too much material too quickly will overload the riffles, preventing your sluice from
working effectively. If too much gravel is added to quickly, it is very easy for placer gold to go right through the
box without being retained. Using a small garden trowel for this process may help you to slow down this process.
Add a little bit of material and watch it work its way through the sluice. If everything still looks like it is working
properly, then keep adding material.

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At some point, you will want to extract the concentrates from your sluice. Remove the rocks that you have
anchoring it, and carefully remove the sluice from the water. It is important to take care with this step, as all your
hard work is retained in those riffles. While keeping the sluice box level, remove it from the water and place the
bottom end into your cleanup bucket. Check the first few riffles for visible gold nuggets and pickers. If there are
any small nuggets that are big enough to pick up, carefully remove them using a pair of tweezers and place it into a
vial. Any coarser pieces of gold will most likely be in the first few inches of riffles. Take apart the sluice and
remove the carpeting, being careful not to lose any of the concentrates. Wash the carpet out in a bucket until it has
been thoroughly cleaned up, and rinse down the screen and any other parts of the box that may hold small pieces of
gold. Once everything is cleaned up, you can reassemble your sluice and put it back in the water.

It is your choice to process the concentrates now, or to take them home for the final processing and removal of
gold. Many gold prospectors choose to take their concentrates home, so they can spend their valuable time at the
river digging as much gravel as they can. Then when they get home, they can do the final gold recovery using a
gold pan or automatic panner.

It is as simple as that! Sluice boxes are excellent tool that every gold prospector should have in their arsenal. They
have proven themselves as an efficient and effective gold recovery tool, and the modern designs are light weight
and work better than ever before.

How to Build a Homemade Sluice Box

For relatively low cost, sluice boxes do a fine job of processing a good amount of gravels and retaining gold. While
gold panning is a great way to quickly sample areas to prospect, once a nice gold area is found, a good quality
sluice box will help you produce more gold in a shorter amount of time.

Many handy prospectors like to make their own equipment, and a sluice box is a very simple piece of mining
equipment to build. If you enjoy designing things, a sluice box can be made for a fraction of the cost of a

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commercially built one.

A homemade sluice box can be constructed from a variety of materials. They have been used by miners for
thousands of years, and the earliest ones were made from wood. The benefits of using wood was evident to early
miners; wood was readily available regardless of where they were mining. They could be constructed on-site, and
if they decided to move to a new area it was relatively simple to build another sluice. Wood can still be used to
make a homemade sluice box, but the downside is that they will be quite heavy, especially after they have been in
the water for several hours, as they will absorb water which will add even more weight.

Aluminum is the ideal material to use if you want to build

your own sluice box. It is lightweight, and will be much more
portable than a heavy sluice made from wood. And unlike
steel, an aluminum sluice box will not rust.

When designing your sluice box, it would be a good idea to

take a look at several commercially designed sluices to get an
idea of basic design. A basic hand fed sluice box does not
need to be very long, 3 to 5 feet is generally adequate. Many
people design elaborate sluices that are way longer than
necessary. Width is commonly about a foot or two wide, and
the height is approximately 6 to 9 inches. Since a sluice
should ideally be situated in a shallow section of stream, the
depth of the box does not need to be much, just enough to
capture water to flow over the riffles and retain the gravels
that are shoveled into the box.

The riffles are the most critical part of any sluice box design,
because they are what actually captures and retains the gold. For easy cleanup, you want the riffles to be easily
removed, so that the heavy concentrates can be cleaned out of the box when you are done prospecting for the day.
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There are several ways that riffles can be situated in the box, but essentially all you need is a design that creates
turbulence in the water and cause the fine gold to drop out of the solution. Thin plates of metal situated at a 45
degree angles and held by rails that fit just inside the box are ideal. These riffles are then held in place with a few
bolts. At the end of the day, unscrew the bolts and lift out the riffles to clean out the box.

During the early gold rush days, sluice boxes were generally constructed with slats of wood with nothing else to
capture the gold. It did the job, but a lot of gold was missed, especially the fine stuff. All commercially built sluice
boxes today utilize some sort of material underneath the riffles that is designed to aid in the capture of gold. A
piece of carpet will work, or better yet a piece of miner’s moss is even better. Today, there are several different
types of material that will do the job, and some of the newer material do an exceptional job of capturing and
retaining fine gold. For any homemade sluice box design, it is highly recommended that you add some type of
material under the riffles to aid in fine gold recovery.

Gold miners are generally an inventive group, and building a homemade sluice box is both cost effective and fun.
Sluice boxes are really a fairly simple design, and with a little bit of work and design, any prospector should be
able to build a nice sluice that will work very well at capturing gold. Don’t try to reinvent the wheel; follow the
basic design of the good commercially built sluices, make sure you have well-built riffles with some type of
miner’s moss to capture fines, and you should be able to design a quality sluice for a fraction of the cost, but if
you’d rather just buy one, they can be purchased for not much money.

Sluice Box Cleanup

Prospectors often wonder how frequently you need to do a clean out on a sluice box. Some prefer to clean the
riffles out several times per day, while others wait and do one cleanout at the end of the day. This is mostly just a
matter of personal preference, but there is a reason that a person should keep an eye on how the sluice box is
functioning in order to best evaluate how we can most efficiently run material.

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The most important consideration you must keep in mind when using a hand operated sluice box is setting it up
properly to operate at key efficiency. For the beginner, this can take a bit of practice along with some trial and
error. The goal is to add material to the head of the box which can run smoothly down across the riffles. You notice
that lighter sands and gravel is getting captured in the top end of the riffles, you need more flow to discharge this
lighter material out the back. This can be attained a few different ways; you can resituate the sluice in an area that
has slightly more flow, you can situate the sluice at a slightly steeper angle to increase the speed of water going
over the riffles, or you can add a few rocks in front of the sluice to funnel more water into the box. Once you’ve
got everything set up properly, then you should have a situation where the heavier materials like black sands and
gold will remain in the sluice, while the sands and gravels will move out the back.

Once you have your sluice box properly set up, you need to keep an eye on how well it is functioning. The
frequency that you do a cleanout has a lot to do with the material that you are running. If the material is loaded
with heavy black sands, you will notice that the riffles will get filled up quickly, especially at the head end of the
box. When this happens, they are not functioning at peak efficiency. Under ideal circumstances, most of your cold
will be captured in the first few riffle of the sluice. If you notice that much of your gold is getting caught at the
bottom riffles, then you are likely losing gold out the back. This will be especially true for the fine gold that is
toughest to capture.

Look at your sluice as you are feeding material. If it seems like the riffles at the head of the box are still
functioning properly, then there is no need to continue do a clean-out yet. You time will be better spent feeding
additional material. Understand that the key word here is efficiency. If the sluice box appears to be functioning
properly then continue adding material, but if it seems like it is getting loaded down with black sands, it’s time to
clean it out.

Another tip that will help with your efforts is to always classify your material before running it through your sluice.
This removes those larger rocks and debris out, and helps your sluice operate at its maximum efficiency. This will
ensure that you capture all of the possible gold available, and reduce your losses.

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Other Prospecting Methods

Drywashing for Gold
Most people think of creeks and rivers when they are
looking for a place to go gold prospecting. The fact is
that many rich gold bearing areas do not have the water
necessary for panning, sluicing, or suction dredging.
Many areas in Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, and
Southern California have limited water, yet excellent
gold can still be found there. There are two primary
ways that the small-scale prospector can look for gold
in these areas; metal detecting and dry washing.

Dry washers are devices that are used to separate gold

from lighter material without the use of water. They do
this by using a regulated air flow, which blows off
lighter material and allows the gold to settle. It was
actually invented by Thomas Edison in 1897, and the
new tool provided miners with an invaluable way to
prospect in the desert. Remember that prior to the
invention of dry washers, miners needed water to
process the gold nuggets out of rich gravels. This was often done by physically moving tons of gold bearing
material to other areas from processing, but in many remote areas this was not feasible, and very rich areas were
abandoned. With dry washers, these areas could be mined profitably, and they have been used in many arid
climates ever since.

The earliest models were hand operated, and used bellows to puff air across a series of riffles to catch the gold,
while lighter material would go over the riffles and onto the ground. Many dry washers used today are powered by

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a small blower motor, which provide a constant flow of air that moves a counter weighted fan that shakes the
whole apparatus, allowing gold to separate out of the lighter materials. Most have a two box setup; the upper
hopper uses a grizzly to screen out the larger rocks, and the lower box has a series of riffles to capture gold. Both
hand operated and motorized types are used today and each has its own benefits and drawbacks. Motor driven
devices can process more material in a shorter amount of time, but the motor means that it will be louder to
operate.

As with any type of prospecting, carefully searching for areas with high concentrations of gold will result in higher
recoveries. Dry washers are less efficient than other methods such as a sluice box. Water will always work better
than air for separation, and when possible it is always a good idea to process material by panning or sluicing rather
than dry washing. However, since this is not possible in many areas, using a dry washer will often be the best
option.

Dry washing works best during the summer months when the weather has been dry. Due to its design, it is
critically important that the material that is fed into the machine be extremely dry so that the vibration will allow it
to break apart and gold to be able to separate naturally out of the mix. Many operators prefer to dig their material
and let it lie out in the sun for a day or two before running it through the machine, allowing the material to dry out
as much as possible. The drier it is, the more efficiently the dry washer will operate.

Another thing to consider is the use of a metal detector as a backup search tool. Despite anyone’s best efforts, the
design of a dry washer means that there is going to be some gold lost, either over the riffles, or rejected by the
grizzly on the upper box. Using a metal detector to scan the waste piles will help ensure that you are doing the best
possible recovery. A good quality VLF metal detector that can detect small pieces of gold is highly recommended.

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Suction Dredging for Gold

There have been many advances in modern gold mining methods over the past 150 years, and today the suction
dredge is one of the most efficient and effective gold recovery tools used by the modern day gold prospector. A
suction dredge essentially works like an underwater vacuum cleaner. It sucks up the streambed materials using a
suction hose and processes it through a recovery system floating on the surface of the water. The recovery system
separates and retains the heavier materials (gold, black sands. etc.) and discharges the lighter materials (rocks,
sand, and gravels) out the back of the sluice.

Suction dredges are rated into different sizes based on the inside diameter of the suction hose, but the end of the
hose should have a suction tip that has a slightly reduced diameter to help prevent rocks and other material from
clogs in the main hose. Different states will have different regulations and restrictions on how big a gold dredge
can be. Common sizes include 2", 2.5", 3", 4", 5", 6" and larger, but be aware that the manufacturer generally
measures the diameter of the main suction hose. The diameter of the suction tip (or nozzle) will be the limiting
factor on how much material you can process, thus most dredging restrictions are based on the tip diameter, not the
main hose diameter. Generally speaking, the more material you can process the better, so it is a good idea to use
the largest sized dredge you can legally use in a waterway to recover the most gold.

A dredges basic setup involves a sluice box mounted between two pontoons, with a motor and pump system and
suction hose. The pump creates pressure in the suction hose to vacuum up the gravels from the streambed. This
material is then pulled up the suction hose to the surface where it is processed through a sluice box. The gravels are
run over a series of riffles, lighter material is discharged out the back and the heavier materials (concentrates) are
retained. At the end of the day, the miner washes out the concentrates from the sluices riffles and carpeting for
further processing. At this point it has been processed down to the highest grade material, and all that needs done is
to pan out the concentrates to recover the gold.

Although it may not be necessary in low water conditions, dredgers almost always use a snorkel and wetsuit so
they can dive underwater and work uninterrupted. Many gold dredgers use a hookah air system, which supplies
oxygen from the surface via an air compressor. This allows the modern-day prospector to access deep water areas
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in a river that may have been inaccessible to the early day miners who didn't have this technology, thus a higher
potential for good gold recovery.

Gold dredges are a bigger investment than many other types of mining equipment. A new gold dredge will
generally cost between $2,000 and $6000 depending on the size. However, the initial investment may very well
pay off for a hard working gold prospector who works hard and finds the gold.

Highbanking for Gold

A highbanker is essentially a modern sluice box that is set up above streams or creeks and uses a water pump to
pull the water up into the box so that a proper sluicing operation can take place. A highbanker is really a small-
scale version of larger gold mining production machinery that is used throughout the goldfields of the world. They
are designed to be portable and relatively easy to set up and use.

While an ordinary sluice box can be easily hauled in a backpack, a highbanker is generally bigger, heavier and
requires more planning to set up and operate properly. In fact, unless you have some additional transportation, you
can count on making at least two trips to gather everything needed to set up your highbanker. Ideally, you will have
vehicle access to an area so you don’t have to pack heavy equipment for too far. Of course, this isn’t always the
case so be prepared for the weight.

While smaller, backpack-size highbankers exist that can be carried by one person, they generally are not nearly as
efficient as their larger brethren when it comes to filtering out the materials in order to find gold. The ones I have
seen are kind of “cheesy”, although I’m sure they will work, it is recommended that you get a good sized one that
has good reviews and can handle a lot of use. You want a piece of equipment that can stand up to the rigors of gold
mining.

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Setting up the highbanker is generally no problem, just follow the instructions and make adjustments as needed.
Once you get it running, you can look it over and determine what adjustments need to be made to ensure good gold
retention. You can either bring a level or just eyeball the area to ensure that the gradual slope is maintained.

The next step is adjusting the amount of water that is needed to properly operate your highbanker. If you don’t use
enough, then you will not get enough materials through the sluicing area. Too much and you can be putting gold
right back into the creek or stream from whence it came. The proper amount will have you seeing ripples when it is
half full and seeing the materials vibrate under the ripples as well. Ideally, you will find that gold particles get
caught in the first few riffles. If you notice that a significant amount of gold is getting toward the bottom of the
sluice box, then you will need to make some adjustments.

Once the operation is going, you will have to make periodic adjustments and sometime remove larger rocks that
are not being moved through. Keeping an eye on the materials flowing through is very important to your sluicing
operation with a highbanker.

You should feed the highbanker slowly so that more materials can get through the sluice without getting bogged
down. This is a very common mistake that a lot of prospectors make. Slow down and make sure that material is
running through the sluice properly.

Use shorter hoses instead of one longer one to bring water up from the surface. The further you have to move
water, the harder you pump will have to work (and the more fuel you will burn).

Clay is tricky because it can actually pick up small pieces of gold that otherwise might be discovered in your
highbanker. Be sure to break up clay deposits before they go through the process. This can be said for any placer
mining.

Overall, working with a highbanker can save you time and effort in sorting through materials. Plus, highbankers

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are very efficient at what they do as long as long as they are set up properly. If you take care of them, you will get
many years of use out of them.

Gold Vacuums – Dry land Dredging

Using a vacuum system to prospect for gold is a really fun and interesting way to search for gold. It is a different
way to look at the landscape, and gives a gold prospector a new tool to seek out gold in areas with limited water
that are difficult to work by other methods.

Most vacuum systems for gold prospecting work very similar to a standard shop vacuum that you would use in
your garage, except they are powered by a small motor. The motor is attached to a standard plastic bucket, and
gold bearing material is literally sucked up and captured in the bucket. This material can then be further processed
to extract the gold.

These dry land gold vacuums work especially well in dry areas that other mining methods will not work. A sluice
box or gold pan is of little use in a desert environment with no water, which includes many of these mining districts
in the southwest U.S. Using a dry vacuum lets you suck up material that would be very difficult to remove by other
means.

Using gold vacuums also works great in combination with a quality gold metal detector. Many experience
prospectors in the southwest use detectors to locate gold nuggets, but their limitation is that they cannot detect the
smallest pieces of gold which can add up to very significant amounts. Once a few nuggets are found with a
detector, it often pays to work the bedrock with a gold vac to capture those small bits of gold that couldn’t be found
with the metal detector.

The other benefit of using this neat tool is that the actual processing of material is done using water. One of the
most popular pieces of mining equipment in the desert is drywashers, which use air to agitate the mixture to extract

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gold. While these do work, the use of air is less efficient at separating out gold than water is. Even when a
drywasher is set up properly, there is still going to be significant losses of gold. By using a vacuum setup to suck
up the gold out of the bedrock, the material is conveniently captured in a bucket which can later be run through a
sluice box or panned out to capture the gold. This allows for efficient gold recovery in a desert environment.

However, using these “dry land dredges” is not just limited to desert environments. Keep in mind that many mining
districts have rich bench deposits that were left high and dry by ancient river channels. Some of these locations can
be extremely rich, but difficult to work using traditional methods. Using a gold vacuum, you can capture the gold
in these bench deposits and take the high grade material down to the creek for further processing.

Maybe one of the biggest benefits of using this type of mining equipment is that it lets you think “outside the box”.
You are no longer limited to working the same creeks and rivers that everyone else has already worked over so
many times. This method allows you to seek out that virgin ground that has never been prospected before.

Sniping for Gold

All gold prospectors love finding gold. There are many different methods to find gold, whether it is panning
alongside a mountain stream, dry washing in the desert, or metal detecting some old placer diggings in search of
gold nuggets. One of the simplest, yet extremely effective methods is known as sniping, and it can be a really
enjoyable way to add some gold to your collection.

One thing that I have noticed about gold prospectors over the years is that it isn’t just the thrill of finding gold that
keeps us motivated, but the thrill of the hunt. Doing the research to discover lost mines long forgotten, reading the
lay of the land to anticipate where that big nugget may be hiding, and all the steps between just sitting at home and
actually getting out in the wilds and pulling that gold nugget out of the earth!

If you truly enjoy the process of reading the lay of the land and water to evaluate the best places to hunt for gold,

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then sniping is one of those prospecting methods that will really appeal to you. Basically, sniping is throwing on a
mask and snorkel and visually searching for high grade pockets where gold may be hiding in a stream. A good
sniper must evaluate the area that they are working in, thinking about all the areas that gold might be hiding, and
then recover that gold using a few simple tools. No heavy equipment or motorized suction dredges needed, just
some skill and knowledge about gold, and how it acts in its natural environment.

In addition to a mask and snorkel, you need to have a few basic tools to help out. Basically what you are looking
for is areas that have the potential to trap and retain gold. These are the cracks and crevices in bedrock that gold
can work its way into and sit for millions of years untouched. These cracks will be all different sizes, so the more
varied your tools, the better chance you have of being able to reach the gold. Essentially you want to be able to
clean the crevice out completely, leaving nothing when you are done. To have any chance of doing this, bring
along a chisel and hammer, a few screwdrivers of various sizes, a small garden trowel, crevicing wires, and a
couple spoons. Since these are all fairly small tools, it isn’t hard to have a nice assortment without too much effort.
You probably have everything you need in your garage right now. You should also bring along a pair of tweezers,
magnet, a snuffer bottle and gold pan.

The main idea here is to “think small”. Unlike most other mining methods, we are not trying to process the biggest
amount of material that we can. We are looking for the very best material and high-grading, collecting just the very
richest material in the stream. Locate a promising crevice in the bedrock. Try to think of areas that have not been
searched before, maybe an area that would be too difficult to access with a suction dredge. The beauty of sniping is
that with so little equipment required, it is simple to put everything you need in a small day pack and hike a mile or
two to get away from the crowds.

Once you have found a nice crack in the bedrock that holds potential, it is simply a matter of cleaning it out. Of
course, this is usually easier said than done. You rarely have much room to work, but it is very important to do a
thorough job cleaning out the crack, because the very richest material will be found at the bottom. This is where
you will be glad that you have a good variety of tools at your disposal, because no two cracks are ever the same.
Use all the tools that you need, and take your time to really do it right. Often times as you are underwater cleaning
out a crevice, you will get the pleasure and thrill of seeing a nugget uncovered. There is nothing quite like taking a

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pair of tweezers and plucking a nugget from its resting place. Clean out all the high grade material from those
cracks and pan it out. It doesn’t get much more basic than that, but you will be amazed at the results if you take the
time to do it right.

One of the most pleasurable things about sniping is its simplicity. You can hike in and get away from the crowds,
there are no motors humming or metal detectors making noise in your ear. I think many prospectors hear about this
method and doubt its effectiveness. It is human nature to think that bigger is better, and certainly that is often the
case when it comes to gold mining. However, there is no doubt that sniping can be a great and effective way to
recover more gold. It is a fantastic way to spend a hot summer day, and if you have patience and really learn to
read the stream and what it is telling you, you will find gold using this method.

Trommels
A gold trommel is a piece of mining equipment that is quite popular and is used all around the world on all
different sized mining operations. Their purpose is to process gold bearing material by separating out the larger
rocks and boulders, allowing the smaller material that contains the gold to be run through a sluice box. Depending
on the quality of your trommel and the type of material that you are feeding into it, a grizzly may also be used prior
to feeding the trommel in order to separate out the largest boulders. This will allow the system to operate at its
optimum potential. Some larger wash plants have grizzlies set up directly over the hopper when the material is
added.

When gold bearing material is added to the hopper, it is washed down by jets of water to break up the material and
help release the gold. There are different designs and amounts of water jets used, but the ultimate goal is to
completely break apart any clays and mud that could retain placer gold and prevent it from being caught in the
sluice.

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After gold bearing gravel is added to the hopper, it enters a rotating drum that further helps to break apart the
material. There are generally also water jets inside the hopper, so that there is a combination of high pressure water
and the rotating drum which break apart any clays and dirt as the slurry moves through the drum.

The rotating drum is constructed of screen material. This allows the smaller gravel and fines to fall through to a
sluice or other processing system, while the bigger rocks will move through the drum and be discharged out the
back. The ideal screen size will vary depending on the coarseness of gold found in the area, but ½” and ¾” is
commonly used. If the trommel system is working properly, all of the fine material will drop through the screens to
be processed, and the larger gravels and rocks will discharge out of the back, completely rinsed and without
holding onto any dirt or gravel.

Trommels are quite simple to build and work excellent when they are constructed properly. The come in all
different sizes from small units that can be used efficiently by one or two prospectors using shovels all the way up
to huge commercial mining operations feeding them with loaders.

The trommel itself does not separate out the gold. It is simply used to help separate and classify out the material for
further process. On larger operations, the trommel is generally incorporated into an entire wash plant setup, so that
the smaller material that drops through the trommel is run through is simple sluice system to capture the heaviest
materials and discharge the lighter sands.

To efficiently operate a trommel, it generally works best to have at least two people running the system. One miner
feeds material into the trommel, while the other tends to the operation of the unit; making sure everything is
working efficiently and clearing discharged waste material so more can be added.

Recovering the gold that has been processed is the same as for any other sluice box. Collect the concentrates and
use some type of fine gold recovery system to complete the final process and separate the gold.

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Evidence of Historic Mining

One of the best ways to find an area to prospect for gold is to
locate areas that the old-timers have already mined. Miners
have been actively searching for gold in most of the U.S. for
well over 150 years now, and there are likely very few areas
that are undiscovered. While there is certainly an opportunity
to find undiscovered gold deposits, most of these are going to
be found nearby to the areas that have produced in the past.

So how do we identify these places that the early prospectors

in an area worked? It is relatively easy to see the telltale signs
of past mining, but many new gold prospectors don’t really
know what they are looking at.

Understanding the historic mining methods that were used

can help us determine the likelihood of how and where the
gold will be there today. Many of these methods have not
been done since the days of the early gold rushes, yet you can
still see their past use on the landscape. Rest assured there is still gold in many of these locations.

Bucket Line Dredges

Not to be confused with the suction dredge used by many gold prospectors today, a bucket line dredge is a giant
gold processing machine that can move literally tons of material in a short amount of time. They were used
extensively throughout the world during the early gold rushes in the U.S. and around the world. Today, most of
them are out of commission and lay dormant. While they were extremely efficient and cost effective to operate,
they caused irreparable damage to riparian areas. Today most are just relics of the past in various stages of decay.
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The basic design of a bucket line dredge is relatively simple. The front of the dredge is comprised of a series of
huge metal buckets called the boom. Picture a series of metal scoops about the size of a bathtub, designed to go
around in a continuous loop similar to a huge chainsaw. The boom is angled down into the earth and digs up a
continuous supply of gravels to be processed.

The material is brought into the main part of the dredge called the hull. The hull is basically a floating factory
where several men can work inside of it. As the buckets drop material into the hull, it is sifted through a sieve to
remove the larger non-gold bearing materials. This material would consist of the large boulders, rocks, sticks, logs,
and any other debris that gets picked up by the boom. One fun fact about this system is that the occasional large
nugget was separated out by the sieve and never processed. While it may seem that this was a terrible design flaw,
the fact is that large nuggets are so rare, that it is not efficient to process the extra tons and tons of material that
would need to be worked just to recover the occasional large nugget. So there are still some monster gold nuggets
that were discharged by the dredge and waiting to be re-found!

The smaller material that falls through the sieve gets processed through a sluice system and the gold is recovered
using standard recovery methods. Waste material, both the large unprocessed material and the smaller processed
gravels are moved out of the back of the dredge by conveyors. As the dredge moves forward, this waste material is
piled out the back of the dredge.

Bucket line dredges are not self-propelled, so they need to be manually anchored in position. This is done using
winches and locked in place using a large stake called a spud. Once anchored, the whole dredge and boom is
designed to move around to reach all the material in front of it. Once the available material is depleted, the dredge
is winched forward and reset in place. They continue onward, zigzagging across the valley floor churning up
material for processing. Areas that have been dredged can be easily distinguished by huge piles of waste rock that
often go on for miles and miles.

As stated earlier, bucket line dredges were quite hard on the environment. The damage that they incur on riparian

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areas is generally considered unacceptable, and they have been banned in most countries today. They are still used
in some 3rd world countries, and they are indeed efficient at recovering gold.

The signs of past dredging are easily identified by their large rock piles left in relatively uniform patterns and rows.
Viewed from aerial photos, it is easy to see the zigzag pattern that was left behind. Often there are small ponds
throughout the tailing piles as well.

Metal detectors can be used effectively in tailing piles, but they are notoriously trashy, and it can be difficult to
locate gold without dealing with thousands of ferrous iron targets.

Arrastras
An arrastra, also known as a Mexican Rastra, was a primitive method used by early miners to process gold and
silver ores. It was introduced to the new world by the Spanish in the 1500’s. They were used throughout the world,
often at remote locations where other processing methods were not feasible. It’s simple yet effective design made it
a valuable tool for the early prospectors to process ore on location, without having to transport tons of material to a
stamp mill.

Arrastras were designed to extract the valuable gold or silver that was locked in host material. Unlike placer
mining, gold that is mined from lode sources require crushing to extract the gold from rock. The basic design
generally used two large flat stones that were dragged around a circular pit made from flat stones. The drag stones
were attached to a central pivot which allowed them to be dragged repeatedly over the ore that was placed in the
arrastra. They were typically powered by horses or mules, although some were powered by waterwheels and even
steam engines in later years. The ore was placed in the arrastra, generally a few hundred pounds at a time. Since
each one was built on location, they were each somewhat unique in size and construction, although the basic
designs were all more or less the same. The ore would be pulverized under the large stones until it was broken
down to a coarse dust that could be further processed by the miners.

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It generally took several hours to grind the ore sufficiently for further processing. When it got ground down to near
completion, an appropriate amount of quicksilver was added with the fine gold that had been released. The
grinding process would continue, allowing the mercury and gold to amalgamate. When the process was nearing
completion, several buckets of water were added to the arrastra, suspending the lighter material that was then
bailed out, leaving just the small amounts of amalgamated gold at the bottom of the arrastra. Several hundred
pounds of ore are then placed in the arrastra and the process was repeated.

After running material for several weeks the grinding process would be stopped and the amalgam would be
collected from the cracks in the bottom of the arrastra, then it would be carefully panned and retorted to extract the
gold.

Finding an old arrastra is rare, but if you do then it is an excellent indicator that there is free-milling gold in the
nearby vicinity that you can look for.

Hydraulic Mining

Hydraulic Mining was a gold recovery method that was used during many of the gold rushes around the world
during the 1800’s. It was used extensively in California’s Mother Lode Country during the famous gold rush there.

One of the problems that the early California gold miners faced with basic placer mining was the amount of
manual labor that was required to process the gravels. Most of the early placer mining was done by individuals or
small groups of men who would shovel material and process it through sluice boxes or other equipment to extract
the placer gold. If the prospector was fortunate enough to find a rich pay streak of gold then it was often profitable
to work these gravels by hand. Thousands of men tried to strike it rich this way, and sometimes they were
successful. However, most of the richest and most easily accessible gravels had been exhausted within just a few
short years, and in order to mine profitably, it was necessary to process much more material than could be done

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with simple hand tools.

Hydraulic mining was the perfect answer to this problem. It used water under high pressure to wash away gravels
and high bench deposits, making a slurry that could be run through a sluice box or other equipment to recover the
gold. The water was routed from a source such as a nearby river or stream into ditches and flumes, where it was
run through a canvas hose to a high pressure nozzle called a monitor. The monitors were huge cannons, some up to
18 feet long, capable of discharging massive amounts of water under extremely high pressure. These jets of water
could literally wash away mountains, removing all the material down to bedrock. They were the perfect tool for
reaching the ancient river gravels buried underneath mountains.

Due to its large scale, hydraulic mining was a popular method used by larger mining companies, rather than
individual prospectors. These operations would often employ dozens of men. They were extremely efficient at
moving tons and tons of material for significantly less cost than other methods. It made many areas with lower
paying gravels profitable to mine where it may not have otherwise been cost effective.

Unfortunately, the downside of hydraulic mining was that it dumped massive amounts of discharge material into
the nearby streams and rivers, choking them with debris and causing extensive flooding and erosion issues. The
miners had no interest in stopping the practice, as it was a profitable venture for them. Farmers cried foul, as their
fertile farmlands were covered with silt from the mining upstream. With the huge silt discharges into the river,
flooding became a bigger and bigger problem, destroying not only rich farmlands, but towns as well. The war over
hydraulic mining continued throughout the 1870’s and 1880’s. Farmers feuded with the miners, politicians got
involved, and eventually the practice became outlawed on January 7th, 1884.

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The scale of these old hydraulic workings can vary; some

are relatively small and were used on small creeks, while
many of these areas are massive and can be seen from
miles away.

Gold can be found anywhere in hydraulic pits, but some

investigation of the area can help you determine the best
places to look. If you study the terrain, you can often find
the areas where to monitors were set up. There is often an
elevated piece of ground, and quite often it will be littered
with lots of old iron rubbish. You can visualize the area
where to water was washing away material, and locate the
exposed bedrock and virgin banks that were just out of
reach of the high pressure water. Due to the high volume of
runoff produced at these sites that would commonly
overload the sluices, hydraulic mine sites was notoriously
inefficient at times. There are still plenty of gold nuggets that were missed and still left to be found.

Stamp Mills
A stamp mill is a large mechanical device used to crush ore and extract the desired metals from the host material. It
uses heavy steel stamps to crush and break apart material, releasing the valuable gold from worthless rock,
allowing for the extraction of gold for further refining.

The basic design of a stamp mill has been used for thousands of years for a variety of crushing applications. Its
traditional use has been for the processing of mineral extraction, whether it is copper, silver, gold, or any other
metal contained within host rock. Stamp mills during the early gold rush days were generally powered by water,

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although sometimes steam engines were used as a power source. Their construction typically involves a series of
heavy metal stamps arranged in a wooden frame called a stamp battery. A system of rotating shaft and cam is used
to raise and lower the stamps on top of the ore. Stamps are built heavy, made from steel or cast iron heavy enough
to pulverize the ore beneath. The stamps are repeatedly raised and dropped onto ore that is fed into the mill, until
the coarse ore is reduced to finer material capable of further processing.

The stamp mill provided an invaluable need for the early gold miners. Unlike placer deposits that produced gold
nuggets already separated from rock, lode gold deposits were of little value if the gold could not be efficiently
removed from the host rock. With the gold released from its host, the amalgamation process with mercury could be
done, allowing for the final extraction of the gold.

It is worth noting that today, some gold in quartz specimens hold additional value that is much higher than the
price of the gold contained within them. With this in mind, the vast majority of gold ore does not have special
value to collectors, and still need to be crushed in order to extract the precious metals from the rock. Building a
stamp mill was a sizable undertaking, and most were operated by large mining companies rather than individual
gold prospectors.

Hand Placering
There are thousands and thousands of miles of creeks throughout the U.S. and the world that have been hand
placered. This simply means that the gold was mined without any specialized equipment. The miners simply used
picks and shovels to get down to bedrock and find the gold. Many beginner prospectors might confuse hand
placered creeks with the larger dredge tailings. The easiest way to tell the difference is that hand worked areas are
usually less uniform in appearance, with stacks of rocks and overburden scattered around in random locations.
Dredges required a large amount of water to operate, so most small creeks and gulches were worked by hand rather
than with dredges, which were generally used in the main river channel.

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Creeks that have been placer mined by hand can still hold
excellent potential for gold. Thousands of early miners
worked by hand, and some were more efficient than others.
Often they missed gold that was down in the cracks of
bedrock and difficult to expose. Gold was also lost when they
shoveled overburden into waste piles on their way down to
bedrock. Sometimes there was gold in this material, and it is
still waiting to be found today.

Lode Mines – Many of the largest mining operations were

lode mines, which were the site of the hard rock gold deposits
that fed the placers below. These mines are generally easy to
locate, are often marked on maps, and have the telltale piles
of waste rock and crushed ore lying around. Tunnels can often be located, although they are often caved in if they
have not been actively worked for a long time.

These lode mines can be great areas to search for hard rock gold and specimens still locked up in quartz. Just be
aware that many of these old mines are still in operation or located on patented claims so they may not be open to
prospecting.

Old lode mines can also be extremely dangerous. They may be structurally unsound, have poisonous gases, nasty
chemicals, dynamite, bats, spiders, snakes, and all kinds of nasty stuff. Unless you have the proper training, you
should never enter an old lode mine.

Instead, explore areas surrounding the existing mine. There are commonly nearby gold veins that were
undiscovered or unworked by the past miners. Gold specimens can also be found in the waste piles near lode
mines.

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Drywash Piles/Hillside Prospects

Many of the sites that gold prospects around the west

were relatively insignificant. Often they were small
outcrops that a prospector did a bit of digging to recover
some exposed gold, but stopped after the gold ran out. In
arid climates like the desert southwest, prospectors often
used drywashers to prospect these locations, leaving
behind waste material. The inefficiency of drywashers
meant that quite a bit of gold was lost, and remains to be
found in those old piles. Sometimes these prospects are
located just uphill from a creek or river, and prospectors
would pack the material down to the creeks.

Sometimes seemingly small and insignificant hillside

prospects can be rich with gold. The old timers did not
have the efficient mining equipment that we have today,
and they missed a lot of gold. Metal detectors can be a
great way to explore these areas, and find gold nuggets that the old timers missed.

Locating old mining areas is a great way to find gold today. While it is certainly possible to locate patches of gold
in virgin ground, finding these sites where gold has been mined before is by far the easiest way to recover gold.
Identifying the type of mining activity that took place can help you determine where you are most likely to find the
gold that was missed, and add how you can best add some gold to your poke today.

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General Mining Knowledge

How Does Gold Form?

Gold is not formed on the Earth like diamonds and many other gems and minerals. Instead, most scientists now
believe that gold actually came to earth from outer space in large meteorites that have struck the planet over
billions of years. In fact, most of the gold on Earth is actually
located in its core where its heavy properties caused it to sink
over time. The gold that is found near the surface comes from
relatively recent strikes of meteors that contained a
considerable amount of gold.

While diamonds can be artificially produced, there is only so

much gold available on the planet. It cannot be created in a
lab the way that many gemstones can be. While some
scientists believe that gold mining in outer space may be the
bonanza of the future, such dreams are currently too
expensive to be realized. Of course, if the value of gold
continues to climb up and up, maybe one day soon we will be
exploring meteorites for precious metals. For us small-scale
miners interested in gold, the search remains near the surface
of our world where we find it in hard rock and placer
deposits.

Water not only moves gold by erosion, but it actually helped form the gold veins that originally formed many
millions of years ago. Underground sources of hot water and pressure combined to melt gold and sulfur, which are
often found together, and push them towards the surface. When the waters cooled, the gold filled the natural cracks
in the rocks which formed veins of gold. These veins are often microscopic, but sometimes they are quite
significant high grade deposits that can be mined profitably.
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These processes mentioned above tend to occur in areas with natural faults that move the earth’s crust. This is the
reason why most areas that contain the most gold are mountainous regions with constant geological activity going
on.

Although gold can potentially be found anywhere on earth, the truth is that most gold is found in the more active
parts of our planet, geologically speaking. Most of the original discoveries of gold were made by accident around
stream beds where gold particles and nuggets were found washed down from the hills and mountains where most
of the gold veins are located. These placer deposits are where the majority of present day gold miners go looking
for gold, as these concentrations can be some of the most productive areas. The erosion process of water over time
reveals the places in which large gold deposits can be found. Streams that cut through the rocks carry the smaller
elements of gold down with them.

Because of the malleable nature of gold, it rarely forms into nicely shaped crystals and mostly is found in lumps or
irregular masses that filled the cracks and natural faults in the rocks. These are the typical gold nuggets that we
have come to associate with natural gold. On rare occasions however, gold can be found in crystalline forms,
which are very rare and highly collectable. Gold specimens of rough texture that contain quartz and other host
material are also occasionally found by prospectors using gold pans, sluice boxes, and metal detectors.
Gold is one of the most sought after elements on Earth. Its value has been recognized over thousands of years for
its malleability, multiple uses and rarity. Since the beginning of civilization, gold has been highly valued and is still
today used for monetary value. Gold is also the stuff of legend and dreams for those who seek the quick fortune of
finding a large gold strike.

Although it may seem that today the business of gold mining is reserved only for large companies, there are many
thousands of individuals around the world who pan and mine for gold in different locations around the world.
These artisanal miners find gold all across the globe in different climates and ecosystems.

Prospectors can use a variety of methods to find gold deposits, but a proper understanding of how gold is naturally

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deposited in the environment, as well as the naturally processes that cause it to accumulate in certain areas, are
what will really help the modern day gold miner learn how to successfully find gold.

Types of Gold Placers

The natural processes of erosion result in a variety of different ways that gold will concentrate in the natural
environment. Depending on how they were formed, placer deposits are given different classifications. Below are
some common placers commonly associated with gold deposition.

Alluvial Placers- these gold deposits are the most commonly found throughout the Western U.S. and were typically
the first deposits that were exploited by the early day gold miners. They are gold concentrated by streams and
rivers, typically consisting of paystreaks on the inside bends of flowing waterways. For the most part, in the United
States these deposits have been worked out on a commercial scale, with the exception of Alaska and a few other
remote locations. Alluvial deposits are rejuvenated constantly to a small extent, and are some of the most popularly
mined areas worked by recreational prospectors.

Eluvial Placers- these placers are generally consistent of deposits that form downhill of the original lode source.
The forces of gravity and downhill creep move material downslope, generally concentrating heavier and larger
concentrates toward to base of the exposure. The extent and spread of eluvial placers can vary greatly. The main
lode source can commonly be located, but in some instances the entire lode deposits has weathered away, leaving
behind only the eluvial deposition.

Bench Deposits- these are generally remnants of other ancient placers. These were typically alluvial placers at one
time, but they were left “high and dry” by the down-cutting of a river system or the raising of mountains over
millions of years. In California and other areas, these deposits were commonly processed using hydraulic mining.

Residual Placers- the continuous erosional effect on a gold outcrop will result in the deposition of gold in the
nearby vicinity. Lighter materials will be taken away by wind and rain, leaving the heavy mineral concentration.

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Although these placers are generally not extensive enough to attract commercial mining endeavors, they can be a
very productive for the individual prospector using a metal detector to find gold.

Beach Placers- fine gold deposits can be found along the beach sands in many locations throughout the world. Two
well-known areas in the United States include the rich deposits of Nome, Alaska and the beaches of Southern
Oregon. Gold is either carried to the ocean by rivers and creeks from nearby sources, or eroded directly from wave
action along the beaches. These deposits can often be found directly along the shoreline and along ancient shores
well above current sea level. These deposits generally contain fine gold.

Glacial Deposits- these placer deposits are formed by glacial movement, transporting gold bearing gravel from
different sources and depositing them elsewhere. Glacial gold deposits are very well known throughout the
Midwest and Northeastern U.S. They are almost always characteristic of very fine gold that has been pulverized by
glacial action. Although widespread, these deposits are generally small and not economically viable for
commercial mining endeavors.

Eolian Placers- typically found in arid regions, natural erosive processes (wind) cause sand and other light
materials to blow away, exposing heavier minerals, essentially exposing the vein by eroding lighter material from
around them. Although these can be rich sources, the spotty distribution of gold is generally not workable on a
commercial scale. Patch hunters using metal detectors can often work eolian placers very efficiently.

Flood Gold- Very fine gold can be transported considerable distances by high water flows. Although some small
amounts of concentration can occur, flood gold is almost without exception extremely fine textured, and do not
concentrate in any payable quantities. Even to a recreational prospector, flood gold is very difficult to retain and
does not attract much attention do to its small size and limited abundance.

There are many sub-classifications of various placer types. Different environment have various impacts on gold
deposition. Understanding the characteristics of these different placer deposits are critically important in
understanding how and where to find gold.

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Fine Gold Recovery

Recovering fine gold from black sands is one of the most
challenging aspects of gold mining. While we are all hoping
to find that once-in-a-lifetime gold nugget, the vast majority
of gold that we find as prospectors is very small in size,
ranging from gold flakes down to dust so small that it is
nearly invisible. Extremely fine particles of gold like this
can be very difficult to separate from black sands and other
minerals that have little to no value. Despite their small
size, the accumulation of this fine gold can add up to
substantial amounts, so it is in the prospector’s best interest
to find a process that will help aid in the recovery of this
fine gold to maximize their profits.

The process required to separate gold from other minerals is

simple enough to understand. Gold, being the heaviest
element we typically encounter in a stream, can be
separated from lighter materials by various gravity separation methods. Gold panning is the most common method
used by small scale prospectors, but larger mining equipment like gold dredges, sluice boxes, drywashers, and
many other types of equipment uses gravity separation to discharge lighter material while retaining gold. The
difficulty lies in the fact that none of these methods are perfect, and the end result of a day of gold mining will
result in what we call “concentrates”. This is the concentration of heavy materials that have been captured. If you
are in a gold bearing area, there is a good likelihood that you have captured some gold, but along with that gold
you are going to find black sands and some other trace minerals.

First, let’s take a look at what concentrates are generally comprised of. If your mining equipment is set up properly,
then you should be discharging the vast majority of the lighter material, such as most light sands and gravel. Black
sands, with a specific gravity of around 5 (meaning an equivalent volume of black sands is five times heavier than
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water), is generally made up of hematite and magnetite. Magnetite is known to be highly magnetic, and this will
help in the separation process. Hematite on the other hand is only slightly magnetic. It does not hold near the
attraction to a magnet that magnetite does, but will still draw to a magnet if it is extremely strong. This will be to
the miner’s advantage further in the separation process. Other heavy minerals that are commonly encountered can
include cinnabar, platinum, diamonds, lead, mercury, garnets, and other assorted heavy minerals. Generally if
present, these will only comprise a small percentage of the total concentrates. Black sands are the main challenge
that prospectors will have to contend with.

So where do all these black sands come from anyways? Both magnetite and hematite are crystalline oxides of iron,
which is one of the most common elements on the planet. In addition, it is common fact that metamorphic rock and
igneous rock are generally associated with iron deposits as well as gold deposits. While there are occasionally gold
bearing areas that have very little black sands, it is generally accepted that there will be at least some amount of
black sands anywhere that gold is found in varying quantities. Some areas you will find just a trace, but most areas
will produce a significant amount, thus your concentrates will have a high percentage of black sands.

There are many different methods that a gold prospector can use to separate the gold out of their black sands.
These methods can range from as simple as carefully gold panning the concentrates several times to expensive
separation equipment costing thousands of dollars. For most small-medium scale prospectors, the more expensive
separation methods such as shaker tables are not the best method. These can be very valuable for a large mining
operation, but the average prospector will never yield enough additional gold to justify such a large purchase. On
the other hand, simple hand panning of concentrates will result in lost gold, especially the finest material. No
matter how skilled a gold panner is, it is impossible to work as efficiently as a mechanized piece of equipment
specifically designed for fine gold separation.

Fortunately there are quite a few good fine gold recovery systems on the market that are both efficient and cost
effective. A few hundred dollars will generally get a prospector set up with a system that will do an excellent job of
retaining the finest gold in their concentrates.

A favorite among prospectors is the blue bowl. It uses a simple design of circulating water (much like a flushing
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toilet) to separate any lighter material and black sands while keeping the gold at the bottom of the bowl. Other
popular equipment include spiral panning wheels, which use a specially designed spiral motion at an exact angle to
capture the fine gold. Micro sluices work much the same as a standard sluice, but using much smaller riffles and
less water flow.

All of these types of equipment work, and can be purchased for a few hundred dollars or less. The trick to
maximizing the efficiency of any of these methods is to classify your final concentrates down. Reducing down to
approximately -30 mesh will help reduce losses. Anything larger than -30 mesh should be panned out and
inspected for larger pieces of gold. Once classified, the black sands can be run through the equipment and yields
will be maximized.

Although a bit more expensive than other methods, the Gold Cube is a very popular tool for fine gold recovery that
is used by many gold prospectors.

Even after final processing, you will still find that you concentrates, which are now “super concentrates”, will still
have a mix of fine gold and fine black sand particles. Here is where the magnetic nature of black sands will help us
in the final separation process. Using a rare earth magnet, we can physically pull them away from the gold. It is
very important to get an extremely powerful rare earth magnet, because although magnetite is highly magnetic,
hematite is only slightly magnetic. The added power of one of these extra strong magnets is the key to success in
this process.

Place the remaining concentrates in the bottom of a plastic gold pan with an inch of water. Spread them out across
the bottom of the pan, and hover your magnet just above them. The goal here is to actually cause the black sands to
“jump” out of your gold pan. Clean the accumulated black sands from the bottom of your magnet and repeat this
process several times until the black sands are nearly all removed. Be sure to inspect the black sands as you clean
them off the bottom of your magnet, as small bits of gold can be trapped and lost in this part of the process. Once
you have removed nearly everything but the gold, use your magnet and stir the material at the bottom of the pan to
pick out the remaining fine textured sands.

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Once finished with this wet separation process, you should be down to almost clean gold. Dry whatever you have
left and inspect it carefully. There will likely still be a few particles of mineral other than gold, but they should be
reduced down to a small enough quantity that they can carefully be separated out with the tip of a sharp knife, or
carefully blowing on the remaining material.

In the past, mercury was commonly used for final cleanup, but with our current knowledge about the dangers, plus
the invention of these excellent fine gold separation tools, mercury really isn’t needed for gold mining like it once
was. Using the process described above will work extremely will for the needs of most gold prospectors.

As mention earlier, large mining operation may benefit from more professional equipment designed to process
large amounts of black sand. However, we are talking about mines that produce several tons of concentrates, rather
than a few five-gallon buckets full like most prospectors.

It might also be noted that some prospectors seem to get obsessed with retaining fine gold. They almost have a
delusional belief that there are ounces and ounces of gold hidden in their concentrates, and the perfect extraction
method will somehow produce more and more gold. The truth is that there is only so much gold in your
concentrates, and no perfect method is going to produce more gold than there actually is. Additionally, spending an
extensive amount of time capturing micro gold particles can become a bit pointless, since a visible speck of gold
may only have a value of a few cents. Do your best to retain the finest gold particles that you can, but don’t spend
so much time that you take away from time that would be better spent out in the field. Using the process outlined
above will do an excellent job of fine gold recovery.

Crushing Ore Samples for Free Gold

For those prospectors out there who have dug up hard rock ore samples and want to test them for their gold
content, there are a few different options that are available to you. But for many independent and smaller
operations, you may realistically be limited on which type of testing you can use based on its overall costs. For
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most small-scale miners, you will be most interested in the free gold content within your ores. This is the gold that
can be obtained without the use of more complex and highly regulated methods.

Most lode mining in the U.S. is done by commercial mining companies on a large scale, primarily because of the
high cost involved with startup and operation. This means that for companies will substantial resources, they have
more options open to them than the smaller operators or individual miners. Mines that are expecting to process
millions of pounds of ore can cost effectively consider more expensive extraction methods due to the huge amounts
of material that they are processing.

Probably the easiest way to test the gold values in your ore sample is to have an assay test performed by a local,
independent assay firm. This is the simplest way to test your hard rock ore samples, but it is also one of the most
expensive as well. Plus, the total gold content within your ore is only valuable to you if you have an extraction
method that can collect it. Many ores contain gold that is locked up in sulfides, and cannot be recovered without
significant expense that is out of reach for many miners.

An alternative to an assay test is to determine just the free gold content found on the ore. Free gold is the portion
that is easily removed without the use of complex chemical procedures. Miners have been extracting free gold from
hard rock sources for thousands of years. It simply requires that the ore be crushed and broken apart enough that
the gold can be separated from the host material. Arrastras and stamp mills were commonly used at mines all
throughout the world for this purpose. On an even smaller scale, prospectors can crush up pieces of ore using a
“dolly pot”, which is just a steel pipe that ore is placed in and crushed up. Reasonably priced rock crushers can also
be bought that will make short work of any specimens that you want to break up.

Once the ore has been broken up into fine dust, testing for free gold content in hard rock ore can be done using
some type of gravity method. A simple gold pan can be used to sample small amounts of crushed ore, or if a decent
water supply is available then it can be run through many types of separation devices. Shaker tables are commonly
used, and although quite expensive, work exceedingly well for recovering small particles of free gold.

The traditional chemical treatments done by large mining companies uses cyanide, which has a very significant
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permitting process that is unattainable for the average prospector here in the United States. For most miners, some
type the gravity system is the best choice, as it does not involve any chemicals and does not require the same level
of permitting (or none at all). Regulations have basically squeezed the smaller operators of hard rock mines out of
the picture. Smelting plants that use to purchase considerable amounts of hard rock ore from prospectors have
mostly gone away due to the high regulatory costs. While the high cost of extraction may limit the values that can
be obtained from certain material, ores that have a considerable amount of free gold may still be mined profitably
by the average miner.

Once an ore has been crushed and the gold extracted, evaluations can be made on the overall value or potential for
a mining operation. Mining for lode gold has a very high failure rate, mainly due to the extremely high operating
costs that it takes to recover lode gold. Additionally, it is important to realize that a few small samples of ore may
not be representative of a large area.

Before undertaking any lode mining operation, a large amount of sampling should be done. There are many miners
who have lost a lot of money by testing a few high grade pieces of ore and assumed that all the ore in the mine
would be just as rich.

Finding Gold After a Storm

Many placer deposits formed over millions of years of erosion causing concentrations of gold in certain areas.
Finding these gold concentrations is sometimes predictable, but sometimes these locations are not where you
would expect. Ancient rivers channels, exposed bench deposits, and other geologic events can cause them to exist
in places that you might not think to look, but regardless of where they are found, it is gravity that generally
dictates where the gold is located.

The placer gold deposits that most people think about are those that are found in existing creeks and rivers, and are
located where most prospectors would look; behind large boulders, down deep in bedrock cracks, inside bends, and
various areas that allow gold to settle. These placer deposits are often replenished every year by the typical high
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water runoff that comes during the spring.

Occasionally, there are extreme weather events that can cause gold to be located in places that a miner might not
expect it to be, and can also replenish areas that have been depleted by miners over the years.

Extreme heavy rains can cause excessive erosion, releasing concentrations of gold from newly exposed bench
deposits and lode gold that may have never been mined before. Huge overland flows of rainfall can push this gold
down into the rivers and creeks. The interesting thing about these high water events is how gold can sometimes be
deposited in areas that you would not expect. When water is flowing rapidly downstream, it can pick up gold and
place it in all sorts of weird places. This is a time when the standard spots that you have learned to look for gold
may not always apply. The powerful energy of high water can place gold where you would never think of finding
it. A nice gold nugget may get wedged under a rock or some vegetation that is far above the standard high water
line.

A good example of this is in arid environments like the desert southwest where flash flooding can occur. Extreme
high water events can dislodge gold from bedrock and place them up in all kinds off odd locations. After the water
recedes, a typical dry wash is left behind and gold can be found all over the place. Often times, the newly released
gold will settle in the same location that you would expect to find gold, and you can find gold in old locations that
may have been considered to be “worked out”.

It can be easy for a prospector to spend all their time looking in all the areas you would expect to find gold, and
easily overlook gold that was transported after a storm. Try to picture the areas as they were during heavy rains and
high water, not just an average water flow. This may help you notice areas that have been overlooked by others.
Maybe a large boulder that or exposed tree root that sits high above the water’s edge during the summer made the
perfect gold trap during a huge spring storm. If you live in gold country, it may be beneficial to visit the river
immediately following a storm. You may notice some great locations that you can come back to in the
summertime.

The great thing about prospecting for gold is that there is always more to be found. The natural processes of

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erosion ensure that we will always have some new gold deposits to work. Prospecting for placer gold following a
storm you can often find very rich gold concentrations, but just like all prospecting, it requires that you get outside
and look for it!

Gold vs. Pyrite

Gold and pyrite are vastly different minerals, but because of their similar colors they easily confused. Beginning
prospectors look in the bottom of their gold pan and see a lot of shiny yellow color and think they have hit the
mother lode! Learning how to identify both gold and pyrite is one of the first skills that any gold prospector should
learn. The structure, color, hardness and specific gravities are all indicators that will help to differential between
the two.

The most obvious way to tell the difference between them is the
specific gravity. When panning out material, gold will settle and
concentrate in the bottom of the pan, but pyrite will move freely
in the pan. You will often see them at the surface mixed in with
the lighter sands and gravels. Proper gold panning will easily
separate the two, as the small specks of pyrite will wash out of the
pan while the denser gold particles will be retained.

The color is also a good indicator between the two. While gold
obviously has a golden color, pyrite generally has a brassy and
shiny coloration. It has shiny surfaces that catch the reflection of
the sun. If you move your gold pan in a circular motion in the
sunlight, gold will maintain a consistent color, while pyrite will
flash in the sunlight.

If you take a pocket knife and separate the particles out, their
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different hardness will be readily apparent. Pyrite is much harder, so if you smash it with the tip of your pocket
knife it will shatter into several pieces. Gold on the other hand is a very soft and malleable metal. It can be smashed
flat without breaking apart.

The structure of each mineral is quite different, although this can be difficult to see if you are only dealing with
small flakes at the bottom of your pan. If the pieces are large enough, you will notice that most pyrite is generally
structured in cubic, octahedron and pyritohedron formations. Although there are crystalline gold specimens that
sometimes share these rare formations, they would be considered the exception rather than the rule. Most gold
nuggets and flakes that are found in rivers and creeks are polished and worn fairly smooth.

The differences between gold and pyrite are fairly obvious, and a little experimentation will clearly show you what
you are dealing with. The easiest indicator that most experience gold prospectors use is simply evaluating the
characteristics of how they react when swirled around in a gold pan. If they will easily move and remain on the
surface of the material in your pan, you are likely dealing with iron pyrite. If you can see it shining in the bottom of
a creek, on the top of all the sands and gravels, you have most likely got pyrite. The truth is that once you have
figured out the difference it is rather easy to tell the difference between them. Most experienced miners don’t even
give it a second thought. Once you have seen real gold, you will never confuse it with anything else.

Cleaning Your Gold Nuggets

If you are lucky enough to find a nice nugget, you may want to clean it up a bit. Sometimes nuggets that come out
of rivers are bright and polished requiring no cleaning at all, but nuggets that are dug out of the ground are often
caked with various different muck, dirt, caliche, ironstone, and staining which will hide the beauty of the gold
hidden underneath. On these nuggets, some type of cleaning will often enhance the nugget, both in its visual appeal
and with its overall value to collectors as well.

I have heard dozens of different techniques that prospectors have used, and I am sure that all of them work to a

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certain degree. Most involve soaking in some type of household cleaner. My recommendation would be to use the
gentlest method that will get the job done. On some nuggets, just a simple scrubbing with a toothbrush and soapy
water will do the trick. On other nuggets, a little more may be required to get the job done.

Any recently dug nugget is probably going to have some dirt and grime stuck to it. Soaking the nugget for 20
minutes in some hot soapy water may be all that is needed to break up some of the grime that clings to them. If you
remove the nugget from the hot water and you see some improvement, gently scrub it with a toothbrush and put it
back in the water to soak for a few more minutes. Repeating this process may be all that is needed to clean up some
nugget for display.

An ultrasonic cleaner will also work wonders to break up the grime that is stuck to nuggets. These are typically
used to clean jewelry, and can be purchased for a very reasonable cost. Adding a jewelry cleaning solution can help
with the process. There is also a cleaning product called Simple Green that does an excellent job when diluted with
water in the ultrasonic cleanser. I have found that this method will work for the majority of dirty gold nuggets, and
it does a fine job of removing the grime without giving the nuggets an unnaturally clean look.

Another great way to clean up dirty nuggets is to use vinegar and salt. Using a small glass vial, fill it part way with
vinegar and add enough salt that you can see the salt accumulate at the bottom of the vial. Drop a few nuggets in
the vial and shake it every once in a while. The rough salt works as a slight abrasive to scrub the nuggets, and the
vinegar helps to break up some of the grime and stains. Leave the nuggets in the bottle for a few days or even a
couple weeks, giving the mixture a good shake every once in a while. You will notice that the vinegar will take on
a stained color, indicating that the grime is being removed from the nugget.

Sometimes hard caliche and ironstone material will be very stubborn, and can be difficult to remove from nuggets.
This is where some type of cleaner or mild acid might be needed to clean up the nuggets. Most rust removers that
are in the household section of any department store will do the job. One product that was recommended to me
several years ago is a rust remover called Whink Rust Remover. It does a fine job of breaking up tough iron
deposits. CLR is another well-known product that can get the job done on some of the more stubborn nuggets.

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I generally try to avoid using harsh chemicals unless necessary, as I find that they can take away some of the
natural look of the nugget by actually making the nuggets look too shiny. This is why I would recommend using
the gentle soap water scrub if possible, and hold off on using any chemicals until you have determined whether or
not they are really necessary.

A method that is used by some prospectors to clean their nuggets is soaking them in hydrofluoric acid. This is an
extremely dangerous acid that will remove any and all material that is attached to a nugget including quartz rock.
Often high-grade specimens with intricate crystalline gold are etched with acid to expose the gold. The most
common use for this is on gold in quartz specimens where the gold is contained within quartz and needs to be
completely removed to expose the gold. Hydrofluoric acid is extremely dangerous; in fact just a few drops can
cause serious burns and can even be fatal if it comes in direct contact with the skin. I personally will not get near
the stuff, and would not recommend it as a way to clean nuggets. There are much safer ways to clean nuggets as
previously mentioned in this article, and hydrofluoric acid is overkill for most jobs. If you have a specimen that
you are dead set on using acid to clean, I would strongly recommend finding a professional to do the job, as just a
few drops on your skin will ruin your day. Search the internet for pictures of hydrofluoric acid burns and you will
see why I recommend avoiding it.

As mentioned earlier, I recommend doing a light cleaning on most gold nugget, and try to avoid the chemicals
unless needed. Many nuggets will clean up nicely with a light soak and scrub.

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Gold Prospecting Clubs State Directory

Joining a gold prospecting club is a great way to learn how to find gold as well as meet fellow gold prospectors in
your area. This directory includes clubs and associations that are focused on mining that elusive yellow
metal...GOLD! Since officers, emails, and phone numbers change over the years, we are omitting personal
information in the list below. However, a simple Google search of the club name should bring up the most recent
contact information. Information on the various GPAA clubs can be found on their website at goldprospectors.org
ALABAMA

GPAA Northern Alabama Chapter

ALASKA

Alaska Miners Association - www.alaskaminers.org

GPAA Anchorage Chapter - www.alaskagolddiggers.org
GPAA Fairbanks Chapter
GPAA Kenai Chapter

Alaska Treasure Seekers Society – www.alaskatreasureseekers.com

ARIZONA

Arizona Association of Gold Prospectors - www.arizonagoldprospectors.org

Desert Gold Diggers Based in Tucson, Arizona www.desert-gold-diggers.org
Gold Prospectors Association of Phoenix - www.gpapclub.com

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Gold Prospectors Association of Tucson - www.gpatucson.org

Huachuca Prospectors Association Based in Sierra Vista, AZ
Havasu Gold Seekers Based in Lake Havasu City, AZ - www.havasugoldseekers.com
Mohave Prospectors Association - www.mohaveprospectors.org
RoadRunner Prospectors Club - www.roadrunnergold.com
Superstition Mountain Treasure Hunters - www.smth-gold.com
GPAA Colorado River Chapter
GPAA Prescott Valley Chapter
GPAA White Mountain Chapter Based in Lakeside, AZ

ARKANSAS

GPAA Ozarks Chapter Based in Fayetteville, AR – www.gpaachapteroftheozarks.org

CALIFORNIA

The New 49ers Based in Happy Camp, CA - www.goldgold.com

Coarsegold Gold Prospectors Based in Coarsegold, CA - www.coarsegoldprospectors.com

Mother Lode Goldhounds Based in Forest Hill, CA - www.goldhounds.com
Prospectors Club of Southern California - www.prospectorsclub.org
Orange County 49ers Based in Orange, CA www.oc49ers.com

GPAA Bakersfield, California Golden Valley Prospectors - www.goldenvalleyprospectors.org

GPAA Brea, California Route 66 Gold Miners - www.route66goldminers.org
GPAA Chico Chapter
East Bay GPAA Based in Concord, CA - www.eastbaygpaa.webs.com
Central Valley Prospectors Based in Fresno, California - www.cvprospectors.org
GPAA Hemet, CA Chapter
Inland Empire Prospectors GPAA Rialto, CA Chapter - www.ieprospectors.com
GPAA Mariposa Chapter
Central Coast Gold Prospectors Based in San Miguel, CA
Nor-Cal Gold Prospectors Based in Bella Vista, CA

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River City Prospectors Sacramento Chapter GPAA

San Diego Treasure Seekers - www.treasureseekersofsandiego.org

GPAA San Jose Chapter

Delta Gold Diggers – www.deltagolddiggers.com

COLORADO

Gold Prospectors of the Rockies Based in Lakewood, CO - www.lornet.com/prospector/index.html

GPAA Colorado Springs Chapter - www.cosgpaa.org
High Plains Prospectors Based in Denver, CO www.denvergpaa.org

GPAA Durango Chapter

The Foothills Prospectors GPAA Golden, Colorado Chapter - www.foothillsprospectors.com

Grand Junction Gold Prospectors Grand Junction, Colorado GPAA Chapter www.gjgpaa.org
Western Slope GPAA Chapter Based in Olathe, CO - www.wcgpaa.org

CONNECTICUT

Nutmeg Prospectors Based in Danielson, Connecticut www.nutmegprospectors.org

FLORIDA

GPAA Suwannee Chapter - Based in Branford, FL

GPAA Orlando Chapter - www.orlandogpaa.org

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GEORGIA

Weekend Gold Miners Based in Dahlonega, Georgia www.weekendgoldminers.com

Southern Gold Miners Association Based in Buchanan, Georgia - www.sgma.webs.com
GPAA Augusta Chapter

IOWA

GPAA Iowa Chapter - www.iagpaa.com

IDAHO

GPAA Idaho Chapters Nampa, Snake River, and Caribou Chapters www.idahogpaa.com
Idaho Gold Prospectors Association - www.idahogoldprospectors.org

ILLINOIS

Northeast Illinois Chapter Based in Alsip, IL

Central Illinois Prospectors Jacksonville GPAA
Rock Island GPAA Chapter

INDIANA

Southern Indiana Gold Prospectors Based in Brown County www.southernindianagold.com

GPAA Greensburg Chapter
GPAA Gatesville Chapter

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KANSAS

GPAA Kansas Chapter Based in Wichita, KS www.wichitagpaa.org

LOUISIANA

GPAA Central Louisiana Chapter

MASSACHUSETTS

GPAA Massachusetts Chapter - www.goldprospectorsofwmass.org

MARYLAND

GPAA Maryland Chapter Based in Frederick, Maryland

MAINE

GPAA Maine Chapter - www.mainegoldprospectors.com

MICHIGAN

Michigan GPAA Chapter Based in Cadillac, MI - www.michgpaa.com

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MINNESOTA

Big Lake Chapter Based in Waseca, MN - www.minnesotagoldprospectors.org

Twin Cities Prospectors Based in Stillwater, MN

MISSOURI

St. Joseph Chapter GPAA - www.ponyexpressprospectors.org

St. Louis Chapter GPAA - www.gatewaygold.org
Show Me Gold Prospectors Based in Smithville, MO - www.showmegold.org

MISSISSIPPI

GPAA South Mississippi Chapter Based in Biloxi, MS www.smc-gpaa.com

MONTANA

Northwest Montana Gold Prospectors - www.nwmtgoldprospectors.com

GPAA Headwaters Chapter Based in Harrison, Montana - www.headwatersgpaa.com
South Central Montana Prospectors Based in Billings, MT - www.yellowstoneprospectors.homestead.com
Central Montana Prospectors Based in Great Falls, MT - www.centralmontanaprospectors.org
GPAA Blackfoot River Chapter Based in Lincoln, MT

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NEW JERSEY

New Jersey Gold and Treasure Hunters Based in Clark, NJ - www.gpaanjchapter.org

NEW MEXICO

Gold Prospectors Association of New Mexico Based in Albuquerque, NM - www.gpanm.org

New Mexico Gold Prospectors Based in Alamogordo, NM
GPAA Demings NM Chapter
New Mexico Gold Miners Association

NEVADA

Comstock Gold Prospectors Based in Reno, NV - www.cgpgold.org

GPAA Las Vegas Chapter - www.lvgpaa.com

Northern Nevada GPAA Based in Reno, NV - www.gpaaofnorthernnevada.ning.com

Gold Searchers of Southern Nevada - www.goldsearcher.com
Nye County Gold Seekers -www.nyegoldseekers.webs.com

NEW YORK

WNY Gold Prospectors Based in Western New York - www.wnygoldprospectors.com

GPAA New York Chapter

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NORTH CAROLINA

Gold Prospectors of North Carolina www.goldprospectorsofthecarolinas.webs.com

Triad Gold Prospectors - GPAA Greensboro Chapter
GPAA Matthews NC Chapter

NORTH DAKOTA

North Dakota Prospectors Association Based in Bismarck, ND www.ndgpa.org

OHIO

Ohio State Prospectors Association - www.ospagold.com

Buckeye Chapter GPAA Based in Belleville, OH www.buckeyegold.com
Southern Ohio Tri-State Chapter Based in Lucasville, OH

OKLAHOMA

GPAA Oklahoma Chapter - www.goldprospectorsokc.com

OREGON

Eastern Oregon Mining Association Based in Baker City, OR www.h2oaccess.com

Waldo Mining District Based in Southwest Oregon - www.waldominingdistrict.com

North Bend Prospectors - www.nbprospectors.com

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Mid-Valley Prospectors Based in Brownsville, OR

GPAA Klamath Falls Chapter

Portland Gold Prospectors - www.portlandgoldprospectors.org

Douglas County Prospectors Based in Roseburg, OR - www.dcpagold.org

PENNSYLVANIA

GPAA Mason Dixon Chapter Based in New Oxford, PA

GPAA Bald Eagle Chapter Based in Port Matilda, PA - www.pa-gold.com

GPAA Delaware Valley Chapter Based in Bethlehem, PA - www.dvgpaa.com

GPAA Allegheny Chapter www.goldinpa.com

SOUTH CAROLINA

Oconee Prospectors Based in Liberty, SC

Simpsonville, SC GPAA Chapter

TENNESSEE

GPAA Coker Creek Chapter Based in Turtletown, TN - www.cokercreekgpaa.com

Sugartree Prospectors Based in Sugartree, TN - www.sugartreeprospectors.org

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TEXAS

GPAA El Paso Chapter www.goldprospectorsofelpaso.com

GPAA North Central TX Chapter Based in Granbury, TX
Northeast Prospectors Based in Greenville, TX
GPAA Round Rock Chapter Based in Austin, TX - www.roundrockgpaa.net
GPAA Wichita Falls Chapter Based in Wichita Falls, TX - www.wfgpaa.com

UTAH

Utah Gold Prospectors Club - www.ugpc.org

Northern Utah Prospectors Association Based in Ogden, Utah www.nupainc.org

VIRGINIA

GPAA Virginia Chapter Based in Hillsville, VA

Central Virginia Gold Prospectors - www.cvgp.net

WASHINGTON

Bedrock Prospectors Club - www.bedrockprospectors.org

GPAA Everett Chapter Based in Everett, WA www.everett-gpaa.org
Western Washington Prospectors Based in Port Orchard, WA www.wwgpaa.org

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WISCONSIN

Wisconsin Prospectors www.wisconsinprospectors.com

Greenbush Chapter GPAA Based in Plymouth, WI www.wisgold.org
Wausau Prospectors Based in Stevens Point, WI www.wausauprospectors.com

WEST VIRGINIA

Central West Virginia GPAA Chapter Based in Craigsville, WV

GPAA Mountaineer Chapter Based in New Haven, WV
West Virginia Gold Seekers Based in Nitro, WV www.westvirginiagoldseekers.webs.com
West Virginia Gold Nuggets Based in Smithville, WV

WYOMING

GPAA Casper Wyoming Chapter www.caspergpaa.org

GPAA Cheyenne Wyoming Chapter
GPAA Northeast Wyoming Chapter Based in Gillette, WY
Big Horn GPAA Chapter Based in Story, WY

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