History & Geology
Understanding and Prospecting Benches
September 2011 by Jim Halloran
The most obvious benches are usually near the valley floor, but they can be thousands of feet above the valley floor. Since benches were made by streams, they can contain placer deposits.
Montana’s Rosetta Stone: Discovering Mines In The Treasure State
This is the intelligent way to start modern prospecting. The value of literary research yields challenging outings, specimens, history and geologic research.
Alaska's Cripple Creek Mining District
If developed with metal detecting in mind, this virgin ground could be a bonanza for nugget hunting.
Gemstones to Die For
Some gems can potentially poison you, make you sterile and even make you forget who you are.
Nevada's Silver City Gold District -- Part II
May 2016...this district has had a continuous life of gold mining and milling that spans 150 plus years, and it appears that it will keep pressing on for many more years of production.
Fabulous Florence—The Golden Town of Idaho
In September 1861, on a round-about prospecting journey homeward, five California gold miners discovered gold in the area now called Florence. While watering the horses, one of the men noticed a golden color on a piece of slate bedrock in the stream...
It Pays to Know Your Bedrock
On our last trip, we brought ropes and went down the first waterfall forty vertical feet, only to be confronted by a second, sixty-foot-high, overhanging waterfall that emptied into a slot canyon.
Gold Deposition and Gradients of Placer Streams—Part I
When placer miners from the gold rush era began experimenting with the slope of their sluices, they must have pondered the ideal slope for trapping gold in a creek bed too. Logic suggests the same is true for streams...
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