Each specimen is carefully examined to determine if it would be beneficial or not to use an acid treatment to reveal more of the gold.

The old timers typically washed these areas down to bedrock, and some areas appear terraced. I would imagine this is because these hydraulic mines were generally where the miners found old Tertiary river channels on the sides of mountains that were gold-bearing.

The larger nuggets were all old channel gold, smooth and water-worn. I guessed that a few of them would push a bit under one-half-ounce apiece.

This article will focus on glacial deposits and some of my hypotheses regarding gold in the Midwest glacial area.

Nuggets make for the best memories and this patch was just adding to mine. In the hours of daylight I had left, I worked from that nugget to the bottom of the patch, collecting eight more nuggets.