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.

The largest and most perfect single gold crystals are nearly always in the form of octahedra. These large octahedral crystals often possess deeply recessed faces.

There are many smaller old hard rock mines out there—more than you might think. There are some small hard rock properties that are even open to be claimed if one does the right amount of research to find them.

…whichever layer I’m getting the best gold, I’ll work that stratum. Some of the best gold in the desert is not always on the bedrock.

At first, I tried to shift things around, but then a hand with a rock would appear, so I would stop trying to adjust my gear and grab the rock to keep things moving.

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.