Fascinated by the sapphires—and the gold that occured with them—he was soon buying parcels of property and setting up his own commercial-scale gravel processing plants.

Present conflicts and realizations having to do with dependence on China have illuminated the fact that suction dredge miners have a vital role to play and are an ignored and untapped domestic resource—until now.

I had a chance to visit the operation in person and talk with Neal. I was very impressed and I think our readers could learn a lot about building up a commercial placer operation from scratch…