Prospecting & Detecting
Placer Gold Deposits of New Mexico
February 2019 by Chris Ralph
While a large number of locations have yielded some placer gold, most of the state’s placer production has come from a few productive districts.
Detecting the Fringe Areas
One prime example is an area that I have talked about in many of my articles. This is a very large area and I will actually describe its location again.
Excavator Testing Wet Placer Ground
The excavator or backhoe has become the tool of choice for testing placer ground. These machines are the best way to explore and sample a placer deposit if the ground is not too wet or frozen and bedrock is not beyond the reach of the machine.
What's In A Name?
The names attached to these areas came about from many sources. Many are easy to see why the name was given while others had a more contrasting note to them.
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.
Using Structural Clues to Locate Buried Placer Channels
They must have assumed the paystreak was spotty and had been mined out, so they never mined as close to the side of the valley as they should have.
The Gold Of Horseshoe Bend
And we eventually reached gold. It was a winding crevice of beautiful white quartz lined with small nuggets and loaded with fine gold. There were flakes and small granular pieces—there had to be a hundred or more.
Chasing Float Gold—The Starry Night Wash
The sun was beginning to set, which put the light at just the right angle against the hillsides to where I believed that I spotted a very small dig and tailings pile up the hill near the top of the second wash.
Subscription Required:
The Bawl Mill
• Ask The Experts - Do I need something other than a fire assay for PGMs?
• Ask The Experts - This low-grade ore is not worth processing
• The Hunch
• Resurrecting An Old Hard Rock Mine—A Series of Small Victories
• The Basics of Exploration Leases and Contracts—Part I
• Gold Prospecting for Better or Worse: A Long Hike
• Mutiny on The Mason
• Who Jumped Whose Claim First?
• The Value of Evidence
• Over The Divide: Charles "Chuck" Cushman
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
