Once across, I panned a couple of spots around some old grass roots and the fine gold was amazingly heavy. Every pan I ran after that had lots of color.

Because of multiple take-out points along a ditch line, the ditches themselves become a wealth of knowledge to us present-day miners.

When I teach people about finding gold, I often explain that it is helpful to think of any river or stream that carries gold as being something like a sluice box.

My first day using my pinpointer I detected an area where the fellas’ big guns had swooped in and cleaned up all the “big gold” and I got over sixty tiny pieces of gold.