Prospecting & Detecting
Gold Mining Boom in the Carolinas
July 2012 by Craig E. Redick
Not too far from the pine-filled mountains, a young boy was exploring along Meadow Creek in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, one fine day in 1799. He discovered a beautiful rock that he took home and put to good use as a doorstop. Shortly thereafter, a jeweler stopped by to visit his folks, and as it turned out, the new doorstop was actually a 17-pound gold nugget. That nugget truly did open a door as it marked the beginning of the first gold rush in America.Mother Lode Leaf Gold
After removing about six inches of dirt and cobbles, the sound was a bit more recognizable. I was now confident that there was a definite target and not just a ground noise.
Hunting Down Paystreaks
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.
Over the Divide: Retta Atkins & Darren VanHouten
The Historic Gold Rush Town of Quincy
…we focused on various layers of hard-packed flood material out of the creek, and we also obtained some material up quite a ways from the creek itself on bedrock.
Old Mine Sites and New Technology
We’ve had two trips to the deserts of Nevada and explored mines and mill sites, hiked miles of ravines in California, and swung our detector coils over thousands of square yards of bedrock.
Fine Gold Panning Without Using Mercury
The technique I will describe is a much safer alternative and it works. It’s a fine-gold panning technique that eliminates the need for mercury amalgamation of most placer samples.
A Good Start
We split up in order to cover a larger area and found good color almost everywhere. The bedrock was shallow on both sides of the river, but the inside bend was where we concentrated our prospecting.
Subscription Required:
The Bawl Mill
• Gold Depositiion and Gradients of Placer Streams—Part II
• The Life of an Independent Prospector
• Gold in Guyana—Part I: Porknocking on the Puruni River Road
• That Something Extra
• Prospecting for Copper Ores—Part II
• Metallic Trash—Scourge of the Prospector
• California Suction Dredging Update
• Mine, Baby, Mine!
• Hecla to Reopen Lucky Friday Mine
• Nova Scotia Shows It's Serious About Jobs & Mining
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
