History & Geology
When Legends Were Made and Fortunes Found
August 2011 by Roger O. Walker
Sylvester Smith and his younger brother Nathan were among this group who rode and led their Indian ponies, while climbing the rugged Salmon River breaks and rockhewn mountains, looking for a path that would lead them up and over the uncharted wilderness.Testing Ores for Free Gold
I get a number of questions from people about testing and treating hard rock ores. The simplest way, but also an expensive one, is to just have an assay test done by an independent assay firm. As an alternative...
Iron Ores and Iron Mining
For more than 40 years, iron ore prices have been decided by private negotiations conducted between the largest of the iron miners and the largest steel producers. These two sides dominate both the spot and contract iron ore markets.
Prospecting Homonyms
Three homonyms come to mind when I think of gemstones, gold and vegetables: carrot, carat and karat. Let’s look at carrot first.
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.
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.
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...
Enrichment of Mineral Deposits by Weathering—Part I
The exact minerals formed in the concentrated supergene deposits depends much on the type of country rock around the deposit and the chemistry of the deposit itself, but if conditions are right, this process will form some rich patches of bonanza ore, in some places valued at thousands of dollars to the ton.
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