Prospecting & Detecting
Mud Men: Pocket Miners of Southwest Oregon Part II
March 2011 by Tom Bohmker
How many more clays seams lie adjacent to known shear zones and quartz veins in the pocket areas of southwestern Oregon?Detecting Wet Ground Yields More Fun Than Gold
We all continued over to another location at the top of a massive placer operation. Arriving at the draw, I showed everyone where gold had been found before and we all began detecting.
Bedrock
I am going to break bedrock down a bit and explain my view of the varying scenarios I come across in the field.
Follow the Line
Four nuggets, ranging from one to four pennyweight, had been found originally. All four nuggets were found in a line about ten feet apart from each other.
Mining Pegmatite Deposits
With successively lower temperatures as the water mixture cools, new sets of minerals are formed and many of those stable at a higher degree of heat became subject to alteration as the temperature progressively moved lower.
Rediscovering Placerville, California Part II
To get to the gold, the miners had to remove the shale pieces and stack them on the sides while sluicing the remaining material through their boxes.
Ganes Creek After The Flood
Doug told me that there had been a 100-year flood that took place in October of 2013 and it washed out part of the mile-long landing strip. It also washed a large, wide gully down below and above the camp.
Persistence Leads to Over a Pound of Gold
I have figured out over the years that the winning combination is hard work, persistence, knowledge, and a little luck. This leads me to describe one of my best finds ever, a “honey hole” of placer gold, if you will.
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