Fall Drywashing—Just the Right Time of Year

November 2018 by Chris Ralph

I could see lots of quartz, both loose on the hillsides and in the numerous small prospect diggings. There was a small gold rush here more than a century ago.

Treasure Hunters Challenge FBI Over Dig for Civil War Gold

November 2018

The father-son duo spent years combing this bit of Pennsylvania wilderness with high-end metal detectors, drills and other tools to prospect for a fabled cache of Civil War gold.

Mining for Gemstones and Mineral Specimens

August 2013
It is better in a gem and mineral mining operation that the driller, blaster and mucker be the same person in order to be able to predict placement of the desired mineral enriched pockets.

To Foam or Not to Foam

February 2020

George was considering filling his dredge floats with closed-cell foam, ensuring that there would be no area available within each float for flooding.

Ask the Experts

March 2014
Breaking cemented gravels

Attention to Detail - Part II

September 2016
Ditches almost always started in the high country and contoured the mountainsides, making a long drop, usually many miles away, to the goldfields. There are ditches in Trinity County that originate at seven and eight thousand feet in the Trinity Alps that carried water almost thirty miles.

Pot Hole Gold

January 2012
It was early in the 2008 season on the Mokelumne River near Pine Grove, California. Considering the potential for high water through the month of June, my wife Fran and I set our sights on investigating some of the pot holes in...

Pocket Gold

June 2016
Once a seam is found it can be traced for miles in either direction. While you are tracing a clay line, you are looking for indicators. The indicators that I look for are ironstone, hematite, different color clays intermingled with the clay line, and a very iron-rich, brown gritty soil.

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