At the end of the day, Jerry showed me how to clean out the sluice box and then how to pan out the concentrates. As we finished panning, there it was—a little tiny smile of gold...

The gold in this area can get quite large. Most of the pieces are about half a pennyweight on average.

I grew up in Southern California, and found my first nugget there, so I know my way around. Because there is good gold there, I thought it might be helpful to take a look at the many placer gold opportunities found in the southern part of the state.

Many of the gold camps were violent places, but in this regard, the town of Auburn exhibited a different behavior. There were few of the duels or lynchings that characterized many of the other early settlements.

After burning more than 350 square miles, the Carr Fire near Redding, California, was finally out. Luckily our home was spared, and I had the opportunity to go metal detecting in burned areas previously too overgrown to access.

The sun was beginning to set, which put the light at just the right angle against the hillsides to where I believed that I spotted a very small dig and tailings pile up the hill near the top of the second wash.