History & Geology
Eolian Gold Deposits
February 2014 by Chris Ralph
Prospectors who specialize in electronic detecting for nuggets in desert areas are especially interested in this type of deposit, as it yields nuggets that are close to the surface of the ground...
Using Vegetation and Soil Conditions as Prospecting Aids
Wouldn’t it be great if you could know if there is gold in the ground without setting foot on the ground? Well you can, to a certain extent, if you can recognize mined ground from unmined.
All About Minerals
There are several common ways that new mineral crystals form and grow. Perhaps the simplest is when minerals form through the cooling of molten rock and the atoms bond together into mineral crystals.
Detector Brings New Life to An Old Lode Mine
…it was immediately evident the previous owner had not been using a detector. During just a few months of working the dumps part-time, he recovered gold in quartz specimens valued in excess of $40,000.
Critical Metals: Lithium
Prospecting for lithium deposits can take a number of different directions, because this metal can be extracted from a variety of geologically differnet sources.
The Verde Copper-Gold-Silver-Zinc District, Jerome, Arizona
When I was a student in the College of Mines at the University of Utah, the Verde district was used as an exploration model for “submarine volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits.” So I looked forward to visiting this district and the town of Jerome in central Arizona in the spring of 2012.
Epithermal Gold and Silver Deposits
Epithermal deposits form in the ground at shallow depths. They are popular with prospectors because can yield very rich deposits and they are widespread in the Western US.
Weathering, Erosion and Placers
The big interest to prospectors thinking about the effect of erosion is not what might happen long into the future, but what they might find in the rivers later this summer when the water levels go down.
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