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Happy Birthday, ICMJ!
September 2020 by Scott Harn
You’ll note the text on the cover now says “Celebrating Our 90th Year.” Yes, we are in our 90th year of publication!
A lot has changed since our gold and black cardstock cover bearing the title California Mining Journal. Through the years, we’ve tried to balance our content to include all levels of experience, from first-time prospectors up to small operations. We’ve sought to provide consistent, quality articles in every issue, and we very much appreciate the feedback and compliments from you, our readers. It’s also been a challenge to adapt to the younger, Internet-based generation, but we now have over 20 years’ worth of articles online along with downloadable 3D issues for the past six years at www.icmj.com. We also have Facebook, Twitter and Instagram accounts. Yes, we are hip 90 year olds!
But we’ve noted that the majority of our readers still prefer to carry a print copy with them around the house or out at their mining site, though there is an increasing crowd of paperless online-only readers too.
To all our readers, we are grateful and we look forward to reaching 100 with your continued support.
Great Basin Gold
The Great Basin, first named by Capt. John Fremont in 1843, consists of a vast region of internal drainage, occupying most of Nevada and western Utah, and parts of California, Oregon, and Idaho.
USGS Reports Increase of Imported Minerals
Since 1993, US reliance on imports of raw and processed materials of mineral origin has increased more than seven fold.
Tucson Mountain Chaos
The Tucson Mountains are immediately west of Tucson, in southern Arizona, and include residential areas of the city. The highest peak, Wasson (Amole) Peak, reaches 4,687 feet. It is part of the great Basin-Range physiographic province, characterized by fault-block mountain ranges separated by broad desert valleys.
Melman on Gold & Silver
As the wags have been putting it recently, it looks like the United States is caught between “Iraq and a hard place.” Every day for the past month we have read headlines about the likelihood of immediate war, and, based on those headlines, gold, petroleum and the financial markets have gone off on their tangents.
Ask the Experts—What is barite used for?
Q: Could you inform me as to what “barite” is used for? Where can I locate a company that mines barite?
Montana's Virginia City Has Golden Legacy
The discovery of gold at Alder Creek, centrally located in Madison County, Montana, was unusually well documented, with the date and time placed at May 26th, 1863, at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon. A group of six miners had been searching the area with little luck until the leader, Bill Fairweather, spotted an exposed area of promising bedrock. He dug up a shovel full of dirt and put it in Henry Edgar’s pan for washing. About the same time that Edgar was busy washing out the pan, Fairweather was poking around the bedrock with his pocketknife. Both spotted the color of gold at once.
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The Bawl Mill
• Ask The Experts - What is the difference between heavy and light rare earth elements?
• Ask The Experts - What are the tax implications for partners on a claim?
• Ask The Experts - What should my plan be for testing quartz for gold in North Carolina?
• Ask The Experts - Did gold deposits come from space or were they created underground?
• Ask The Experts - Is a shaker table going to work on my flour material?
• Subtle and Not So Subtle Dangers of Hard Rock Mining
• How Should I Work This Prospect?
• Tips and Tricks: Preparing Your Dredge Engine for Storage
• Fluorescent Mineral Prospecting
• More Tips on How to Find Gold with A Detector
• What Do You Need For A Successful Micro-Scale Mine?
• Using Favorable Rock Types to Find More Gold
• Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: Of Mice and Men
• Discovering New Territory
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
