Each day for the first part of the week my boys and I picked and chipped away at that wall, stockpiling dirt in 5-gallon buckets and cement mixing tubs.

The small-scale miner has reasonable opportunity to exploit some of these small, rich placer gold deposits. 

Within a very few minutes, I had my first nice sounding target. It turned out to be a nice earring-size gold piece that was about a half a gram.

I’d like to offer some practical comments about staking and maintaining mining claims. Owning your own claim is the dream of many prospectors. I’ve made good money off my mining claims, both from the minerals I have found on them as well as from leasing out some of my claims to larger mining and exploration companies.

“The evidence is clear—mineral deposits alone are not enough to attract precious commodity investment dollars...”