A Golden Past

July 2021 by Ralph Wetterhahn

My mining partner Keith McBride and I spent a week in May working on a twenty-nine man crew split up into six teams at a couple of “pay to mine” mining camps.

Are There Any Good Prospects Left?

November 2013
This type of thinking will get you discouraged pretty fast, and soon all of your mining equipment will be found gathering dust in your garage.

Prospecting for Silver Deposits

August 2015
In some ways, silver is the forgotten precious metal because it straddles both the world of precious metals and jewelry, while having many important  industrial applications like a base metal. The price of silver reflects both the precious metal investment demand as well as the industrial demand.

Off to the Sierra Again

November 2022

Quartzsite Gives Up Some Big Gold

June 2017

There is always an overwhelming feeling when finding gold of any size, but one like this doesn’t come along very often.

How to Upgrade Your Pocket Plunger

November 2016
These three simple upgrades, when taken together, will considerably increase a pocket plunger’s magnetic pull and make it less susceptible to breakage.

Gold in Unlikely Places

May 2013
Detectors have been around for decades now. And with thousands of them swinging, many of the best or at least most likely nugget places have seen a swinging coil. The part that amazes me is that so many nuggets still get pulled out of these seemingly pounded places.

Butte County: Another Mother Lode Favorite

March 2022

There are so many places in this region to discuss that one article won’t be enough to cover it all, so I’ll focus on a couple of places that we found interesting while searching for gold.

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