History & Geology
The Amazing Mineral Tourmaline
December 2013 by Chris Ralph
It is a gemstone, and yet it is also closely associated with many types of metal ores. It's valuable itself but often points toward other valuable minerals—that is certainly something prospectors want to know more about!
Weathering, Erosion and Placers
The big interest to prospectors thinking about the effect of erosion is not what might happen long into the future, but what they might find in the rivers later this summer when the water levels go down.
Ask The Experts
Q: Is there a correlation between fault zones and mineralization of economic metals?
The Rochester Mining District of Nevada
Only the richest ores could be worked and shipped off for processing at a profit. As a result, early mining in the southern part of the Humboldt Range was short-lived. In the 1880s, placers were discovered in Spring Valley and American Valley on the east side of the range...
Critical Metals: Lithium
Prospecting for lithium deposits can take a number of different directions, because this metal can be extracted from a variety of geologically differnet sources.
Confluence Placers
Confluences of placer streams are well known as concentration sites for heavy minerals. The basic reason is that...
The Silver Islet Mountains of Utah
I set up my dry washer on the north side of the cut and sampled the bed rock and dumps around me. As I was only sampling, I ran for 20-30 minutes, shoveling from a variety of areas.
Green Valley Gold District, Payson, Arizona
Most gold-bearing quartz veins found in the district were fracture fillings in faults enclosed by crushed quartz zones along their margins. Since the host rocks were often extensively weathered, portions of the veins stood out as positive, resistant outcrops. The gold-bearing veins ranged from a few inches wide to the vein at the Gowan mine that was as much as 12 feet wide.
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