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.
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Large Gold Deposit Types
It is not necessary to have a PhD in geology, but you need to know the basics, so that’s what I am going to try to dig into here—the understandable basics of these gigantic gold deposits.
Why Haven't They Mined This Claim?
Improvements in mining equipment and techniques, along with a higher gold price, make many mining properties profitable today that may not have been in the past.
Placer Gold Deposits of New Mexico
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.
Eolian Gold Deposits
Prospectors who specialize in electronic detecting for nuggets in desert areas are especially interested in this type of deposit, as it yields nuggets that are close to the surface of the ground...
Gold and Rare Earth Elements in New Mexico
We import nearly all of our REEs from China, so it’s critical that we find and continue to develop domestic resources of these elements.
Prospecting for Diamonds
Let’s take a look at diamonds and diamond mining and see how they form, how they are used beyond just jewelry, and what leads geologists to find diamond deposits.
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