History & Geology
The Wisdom of Mark Twain—And Tales of Cheating the Unwary Prospector
June 2012 by R. V. Larson
I (enjoy) Twain’s description of a gold mine, “A hole in the ground with a liar at the top.” Some humor here? You bet, but I’m sure he meant it to be a real eye opener as well.The Golden Days of Julian, California
Some scattered reports say that gold may have been washed from streams here as early as the 1840s, but the undisputed major discovery came in 1870.
The Goldfield Mining District -- Then and Now
In 1983, some of the ore yielded more than 2,500 ounces of gold within 30 feet of the surface. The shoot pinched to a narrow vein.
Rock and Formations of the Mother Lode Gold Belt
The faulting, folding and shearing that occurred in the Mother Lode belt has created zones of structurally weak rocks or contacts between different types of rock, which has been favorable for the deposition of gold bearing ores.
A Journey Into the Silver Peak Range
The Gold Rush in California called hundreds of thousands of souls to leave their homes to journey to the the far reaches of the West. At first the rich goldfields of the Sierra Nevada beckoned to these adventurous pioneers.
What Are Those Rocks In My Pan?
The placer mineral identification key is designed to answer this question. It attempts to recognize all the minerals in your gold pan concentrates.
All About Chalcopyrite
…there are loads of different copper minerals, but a large number of them form first in the ground as chalcopyrite and then through the effects of weathering are changed into other minerals like malachite, cuprite and chrysocolla.
Critical Minerals: Tungsten
Because tungsten minerals are heavy, exploration can be done using stream sediment samples. Prospectors looking for gold have found scheelite or wolframite in their placer concentrates, and in some cases this has led them to make important tungsten finds.
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