History & Geology

This area could be re-evaluated for placer scheelite and gold potential in the future along with sand and gravel processing…

How rich does a hard rock ore have to be for it to be worthwhile to process and extract the gold?

Many prospectors thought that Nevada was all prospected out following all the rich discoveries of the 1860s and 1870s, and what was there to be found had already been found.

…to see the huge differences between the gold production amounts of the Western States, let’s look at the gold production—both hard rock and placer—of these 13 states up to the present.

You can learn a lot from a small mining operation because you have to become proficient in every job. Soon I was preparing fuses, placing powder (dynamite) and learning the ins and outs of drilling and blasting.

Prospectors often wonder why gold deposits in veins like it does. Why is one vein rich while another is barren, even though they are only a few hundred feet apart?

There are times when being able to recognize a type of rock can make you a much more successful prospector.

A few months later, a young, greenhorn lawyer agreed to pay to have it assayed, and the quartz turned out to be rich in both gold and silver.

The small-scale miner has reasonable opportunity to exploit some of these small, rich placer gold deposits. 

There are many other locations in the area where gold has been found, but Woods Creek is the most famous of the creeks and gulches in the area where the 49ers searched for that elusive yellow metal.

The more experienced prospectors know these lesser known spots are the types of places where big finds are still made.

…let’s dive in and take a closer look at these rich gold and silver-bearing minerals to find out what they are, where they form, and how to identify them.

The area was mined intermittently from around 1900 to 1915, but was also mined in the late 1800s, with a total output valued at about $100,000, which is around $9.5 million at the current gold price.

For the prospector, knowing what oxidized hydrothermal alteration looks like in the field is an important exploration tool.

Polymetallic skarn deposits are an interesting class of deposits that can contain a number of different types of metals.

Many miners know that lead is very commonly associated with silver values, but the truth is that it is also associated with gold values in many locations as well.

Every time we prospected here we found gold, sometimes some really coarse flakes, but no large nuggets (yet).

We descended hunched over, down a long, steep, wooden staircase to the 1,000-level.

Some of the wire forms are strange and fantastic, with wires sticking out in twisted, seemingly random directions. Others have deformed crystals and all of them have significant value to collectors.

Many of the Sixteen to One’s challenges arise from its unusual geology and the pocket characteristics of the ore deposits.