I looked over and saw Ben on his knees, digging at the edge of the Manzanitas, almost underneath them. I thought back to the previous weekend when we were planning this trip—that day had been a “Ben day.”

Let’s take a look at these important property aspects individually, because they all affect the value of a property and how much mining companies might or might not be interested acquiring it.

My intention was to end this discussion with waypoints and routes, then I found USGS maps of the Plainfield Quadrangle.

This rock had been with a family for many years and they were cleaning up an old workshop that had lots of minerals and miscellaneous “ore” samples.

Within this area, about two million ounces of gold and fifty million ounces of silver have been mined. Faults, dikes, veins and fissures that carry the ore form a concentric radial pattern—like spokes on a wagon wheel—around the caldera core.