WritingDocs

Gem Trails of Oregon - Remove Little River site!

2011-11-01T15:44:00.000-07:00

Just got word that Site #97 of the Gem Trails of Oregon book should be pulled. This site is outside of Glide, Oregon, where Little River flows into the North Umpqua River. It will be deleted in subsequent printings because there is no safe, legal access to the gravels along the river bank. If I get a chance, I'll try up the river further. If anyone has other good information about this area, let us know.

-Garret

How To Choose The Right Gold Pan

2011-07-17T13:20:00.000-07:00

By Garret Romaine

Any experienced gold prospector will tell you that the most important tool among all your gold mining equipment is the humble gold pan. Whether you are testing a creek, digging a crevice, or cleaning up concentrates, there is no better companion.

But, like candy, it’s hard to stop after just one pan. I like to bring a stack of four or five pans with me when I go out, just in case. I’ll bring a bigger pan for rough work, and some smaller pans to finish concentrates. The truth is that there are a lot of different pans out there, and they all have their strengths and weaknesses. In this article, we’ll look at a wide variety of pans, and give you the information you need to smartly build a nice collection of your own.

Old Reliable

First, every gold panner needs a metal pan. The pan in Figure 1 has been with me for 30 years, and it’s still in good shape. I mostly use it as a safety pan, because it’s not so prone to floating away, but I’ve used it for a variety of camp duties as well. It has put in time serving as a giant ashtray and also to light charcoal. Metal pans can act as a large trowel to scoop dirt, clear holes, and dig ditches, although you’ll probably have to bend it back into shape afterwards. An old timer once told me he once used his pan to boil water and fry eggs when he found himself without his usual pots and pans.

Figure 1. "Old Reliable" 11-inch metal pan.

The truth is, I don’t use the metal pan very often to just plain pan. It makes a beautiful noise when it has ball-bearings, fishing weights, or other metal sliding across the bottom, and I’m sure if I got into some good gold nuggets they’d sound nice, too. But the lack of riffles is a non-starter for me. Some newer metal pans have riffles, although they’re more like bumps. Even with that, metal pans are heavy. The bottom line: the build-up of rust and dents just can’t compete with high-tech, purposefully engineered riffles, so let’s move on.

Big Pans

Next, let’s talk about the big boys – the 16-inch battleships that can handle a heaping shovelful of dirt at a time. I’ve got two to show you, with big differences between them.

First is a very standard black model, with a short, 7-inch bottom. It sports three decent riffles, each with a moderate “bite” to work down black sands. However, I would prefer more riffles, and the bottom has always felt too small to me. It’s a good pan for working unscreened material, because large rocks roll right out. It’s best feature is it’s size, because it holds so much material. If you’re on a good crevice and you just want to collect as much as you can before returning to your panning spot, this is a good transport vehicle, although a bucket would work just as well.

Figure 2. Big 16-inch black pan with small bottom.

I’ve always liked my big 16-inch blue pan. It’s lightweight for it’s size, and the bottom is nearly 9 inches across. That allows for a nice fanning action as you spread the final concentrates. The blue color is excellent for revealing gold and garnets, which is a big advantage over black pans that can have issues when playing with a lot of black sand. This particular pan has some real engineering going on with the riffles, which start out very aggressive, sporting a clever, sunken trap area. The second riffle also has serious bite, but the third and fourth riffles are not nearly as intense. They do have a sharp angle, so gold will trap against them while black sand is washing over the edge. All in all, the riffles are excellent. It’s hard to pan with one hand, but when you get the material going, you can feel those riffles biting, which gives you the confidence to get aggressive and really work it.
Figure 3. Big 16-inch blue pan.

The trap area also makes using a snuffer bottle easier.

Figure 4. Close-up of riffles and trap area.

The GPAA Classic

The 14-inch green GPAA pan included in your membership packet is one of my favorites – I have five of them, at last count. It’s the standard Garrett gravity trap style, and it’s been around for a long, long time. The 14-inch size is easier to use with one hand, but it still holds plenty of material. There are four riffles, each with a sharp, aggressive bite, allowing for respectable work with heavy black sands. I frequently stop using the riffles when I get down to a couple tablespoons of material, and rotate over to the smooth side. Or, I’ll transfer the whole load to a finishing pan and start a new batch.

The bottom is wide, at almost eight inches, which gives you a good view of your material when you look for that flash in the pan.

You’ll see some interesting variations on this simple design. The number of riffles can go up to six, which I always appreciate in areas with heavy black sands.

Figure 5. Classic 14-inch green GPAA pan.

Bright Ideas

In an effort to help with black sands, inventors have gone to great lengths to devise better riffles and traps. The pan in Figure 6 is very effective with heavy black sands, as the riffle system contains three small “pre-riffles” that are set at very aggressive angles. They’re followed by four standard riffles, and the last riffle is actually rounded, under the theory that anything interesting should have been trapped down below.

Figure 6. Variation on the classic gravity trap pan.

I found that the over-sized trap is a nuisance, however, especially with a snuffer bottle. Too much material collected in there when I didn’t want it to, and I never really got comfortable with the small micro-sluice leading out of the trap.

Here’s another “gimmick” pan. It’s made out of a different plastic that feels brittle and prone to breaking. The arrow trap isn’t bad – it does work – but with only two riffles, it’s hard to get good work done.

Figure 7. 12-inch black pan with "arrow" trap.

12-inch Pans – Not Just For Kids

I find that when I pan for great lengths of time, I eventually start switching to smaller pans just to save my arm. The 12-inch pan comes in handy when you’re getting worn out, but it’s also great for kids, grandparents, and moms, because it’s easier to handle. There are usually only three riffles, and the bottom is around six inches in diameter. That’s enough to pan concentrates in a tub, or to work material in a creek. You can’t process as much volume as you would with a bigger pan, but you might be able to work longer, and not fall asleep five minutes after dinner.

Figure 8. Standard 12-inch black pan with three riffles.

My new favorite 12-inch pan is a blue, six-riffle design from Keene with an almost eight-inch bottom. The riffles are sharp and trap gold easily, giving you confidence that you can work fast. Then, when you get material down far enough, there are 20 micro-riffles that really let you work through black sands. Large gold pieces show up immediately here, and it’s a nice feature. I just picked up this pan at the 2011 Gold Prospectors Show at Salem, Oregon, and I’m completely hooked.

Figure 9. 12-inch blue pan from Keene has two sets of riffles.

Figure 10. Micro-riffles on the left, and regular riffles on the right.

Finishing Pans

When you’ve got material that is screened, sorted, and concentrated, you don’t need the big pans any more – you need a smaller pan for maximum control. I used to use a small, green 10-inch pan with four riffles and a three-inch bottom for finishing work. It had a nice feel, and I was comfortable with it. For example, by using a panning tub and a safety pan, I’d processed a lot of concentrates at home. Periodically, I’d test the safety pan to see how I was doing, and I rarely found anything more than black sand in there.

Figure 11. Small green finishing pan with very limited bottom.

Again, after attending the recent gold show in my area, I’ve come home with a new favorite. It’s another blue Keene pan, only smaller. It has five regular riffles and 15 micro-riffles, and the bottom is almost six inches across. I brought home a bucket of concentrates from the Little North Fork of the Santiam River right after the Salem show, and I was really pleased testing this pan. It felt very comfortable, and I was able to work the whole bucket easily.

Figure 12. Small ten-inch finishing pan from Keene.

Square Pans

Figure 13. Le Trap is an 18-inch square pan.

Figure 14. 14-inch square pan.

I never really grew to love either of my square pans. I don’t know if they’re just too non-traditional or if I just didn’t like the feel. There isn’t any swirling with these square pans – you just work the riffles continually, pulling back to re-stratify and then back at it.

Copper Pans

Since I don’t work with mercury, I haven’t had the urge to get a nice copper pan, but I’m weakening. I have a small, four-inch copper pan that is nice for display purposes, and it’s getting a pretty cool patina to it after six years. I’ll probably add a bigger copper pan to my collection at some point, just to have one. I think they’re beautiful, but I can’t imagine they’re much good in a panning tub.

Summary

So, if the question is, “How do I choose the right gold pan?” then what’s the answer? Well, it depends on how you answer these questions:

· What’s your budget?

· Have you bought a new pan lately?

· Do you have a full assortment of pans?

· Do you like to experiment?

Whatever your next pan is, I’m sure it will be the right one. And remember – the problem isn’t too much black sand – the problem is not enough gold.

Garret Romaine writes from Portland, Oregon. He’s always looking for more friends on Facebook.

Mining the Internet – Rock and Gold Links

2011-07-17T12:55:00.000-07:00

By Garret Romaine

The summer field season is in full swing, and many readers have contacted me recently with last-minute questions on places they plan to visit. Back when email was the main way to communicate electronically, I could usually keep up if I typed fast and kept the comments lean. Today, so many GPAA members are technologically savvy that I’m thankful there are so many forums and online communities. In this column for the Lapidary issue, we’ll take a look at some of the activity out there for gold prospectors and rock hounds alike.

Long-time readers know I’ve been enthusiastic about Facebook for some time now. I’ve been ‘friending’ people like crazy this year, and the system keeps suggesting that I add people who share 40-50 mutual friends, so it just keeps building.

Facebook Treasure

I’ve been hanging out lately with the Facebook group called “Treasure Hunting Wiki.” These aren’t just electronic friends – I’ve met several of these guys at the 2010 Jade Rendezvous in Darrington, Washington. Members Ezekiel Hughes and Kristoffer Jay are tenacious jade hunters and frequently share their finds from the creeks and rivers in Washington’s jade belt. Just seeing what they’ve slabbed lately is enough to get your juices flowing.

Figure 1. Home page for GPAA's Facebook presence.

There’s a good mix of beginners, veterans, merchants, and organizations that have formed a solid rock and gem network on Facebook. The benefit is that when Karasarlidis Minerals from Greece posts new pictures to his profile of a gorgeous, deep purple sodalite, you get to see it, comment on it, “like” it, and even share it so it shows up on your page.

Figure 2. Sample update from Karasarlidis Minerals shows how users share information and photos easily.

This is a long link that’s going to be tough for you to type in, but here goes:

http://www.facebook.com/home.php?sk=group_150593431661426&id=165052753548827

Far easier would be to just type in the word “Treasure” in the Facebook search box near the top of the page. You can scan through a dozen different links within Facebook, including metal detecting clubs, rock hounds groups, and individual jewelry makers. Some forums specialize in a single quest, like jade, while others are open to any kind of loot.

Figure 3. Treasure Hunting Wiki's Facebook page.

With over 500 million active users, you can see the possibilities on Facebook are endless. No matter how small your niche, you’ll find like-minded individuals who share your passion. Use that Search box to find fossil hunters, amber collectors, meteorite men, and more.

Facebook Gold

First off, if you haven’t hooked up with the Gold Prospectors Association of America on Facebook, do that right away. Find it by typing ‘gold’ in the Search box. You can enter gold mining, gold panning, gold prospecting, gold in California, etc. Experiment and you’ll find what you want.

Figure 4. Use the Search box to locate groups you might be interested in joining.

After checking on all the updates from GPAA, you can look for local groups in your area or somewhere you hope to visit. For example, I’ve been chatting with Billy Reed, a member who is interested in exploring some of the more obscure gold districts around Mt. St. Helens in Washington, with a base camp on the GPAA claim on Copper Creek. We’ve been able to share maps easily, but you still can’t add attachments to messages, so we relied on regular email to exchange big PDFs. We think we’ve got the location of the lode mines nailed down, so now it’s just a matter of waiting for the &^%$ snow to melt.

Prospecting USA

Facebook’s “Prospecting USA” page has seen good activity lately. They have 75 members, but show good growth. It’s an open group, so anyone can join.

Northwest Rockhounds and Random Rocks of Beauty

This page was more active in the past, and may get archived if not converted to a new format. Still, the members are very knowledgeable and it’s worth getting a conversation going there if you have a question about rockhounding in that region.

Idaho Prospecting Supply

One of the many vendors using Facebook actively, this shop is building a solid online presence. In fact, this is a good example of how to do it – use lots of pictures, post actively, and start conversations. I’m planning to pick up one of Cody’s hand-cranked trommels this summer.

Idaho Gold and Gem Outfitters

Good deals, lots of activity, and friendly. Another strong vendor.

Idaho Rockhounding

I like this page because they mention my book, “Rockhounding Idaho,” all the time. Great discussions of what to find, where, and the accompanying pictures are amazing. I should drop in more often.

Let’s leave Facebook and turn now to some other websites and links I’ve been meaning to publish.

Ghost Towns of Washington

http://www.ghosttownsofwashington.com/

I wish every state had the bounty of ghost towns and mining camps that we have in the west. This is one of the best resources I’ve seen lately for ghost town exploration, but it’s focused on the state of Washington. That limits the appeal for many of you, but it’s a nice site and very informative.

Hunting for Gold

http://www.huntingforgold.net

Good new site that just came up earlier this year. The site boasts over 1,000 members, has witnessed 25,000 posts, and has a thriving presence.

MineCache

http://www.minecache.com

Here’s a nice site to download a good add-on for Google Earth. Once you add this tool, you’ll see little pickaxe and gold pan icons pop up throughout the mining areas. You’ll have GPS coordinates for locales that you guessed at previously. The app is a great idea, but it could use the help of dedicated and knowledgeable prospectors who’ve been out in the field and can dress up the details with pictures, first-hand reports, etc.

Here’s what Google Earth looks like for the Index area of Washington after loading Mine Cache:

Figure 5. Mine Cache adds GPA coordinates and icons into Google Earth, such as on this area near Index, Washington.

Mining Books
http://www.miningbooks.com

I recently stumbled onto this site while searching for gold panning guides for Oregon, California, and Washington authored by Tom Bohmker. I met Tom at the GPAA Gold Show in Salem in March, 2011, and was impressed with his knowledge and enthusiasm. He’s written several guides that have excellent background stories and personal, onsite knowledge that makes them invaluable.

The rest of the Mining Books site contains just what the name implies, plus maps. The site is deep and wide, with all facets of mining and prospecting covered. Want to know more about the chemistry of cyanide mining? Need details on the geology of Creede, one of Colorado’s richest silver camps? It’s all here, plus more. The site is organized well and easy to use, which also helps.

Figure 6. MiningBooks.com has new publications and reprints for mining districts throughout the US.

Western Mining History

http://www.westernmininghistory.com/

I’ve saved the best for last, so I hope you made it this far. This is a deep, elegant website with good writing, nice pictures, and lots of energy. It covers the entire western U.S., so I’d guess the vast majority of GPAA members will find something in here to help them with their research and generally raise their Prospecting IQ. The site is now linked to Facebook, and I expect they’ll start to see traffic increase quickly.

Don’t miss the Database of Mines! The database describes almost 30,000 mines, and has the coordinates and elevations. More pictures would be great, as would production information, geology, etc., but this is a nice start. The mines are divided by state and county for easy reference, or you can pick them off an interactive map.

The Happy Prospector

2011-07-17T12:12:00.000-07:00

Prolific author serves up two more books on gold mining in the Pacific Northwest

By Garret Romaine

Author Tom Bohmker is no stranger to regular readers of Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA) magazine. We published a nice review of his book The Elusive Pocket Gold of SW Oregon, and also recommended his expanded 2005 effort entitled Gold Panner's Guide to the Black Hills of South Dakota(originally published in 1978).

Since then, he has kept up his prolific ways. In 2009 he was the contributing editor for the Gold Panner's Guide to Washington State. In 2010, Bohmker put out Gold Panner's Guide to the Oregon Cascades. As a fellow field-guide author, I eagerly seek out new publications that deal with gold prospecting in my home region of the Pacific Northwest, and I’m glad I caught up with him. I finally connected all the dots after stumbling onto the http://www.Miningbooks.com web page and ordering a book, and then hooking up at the 2011 GPAA Gold Show in Salem, Oregon.

Tom and I discussed his latest books in between gold show attendees coming up with questions. People were eyeing his extensive gold collection, and playing “stump the geologist” with a wide variety of “meteor-wrongs” and leaverite samples. Every once in a while someone would produce a hunk of quartz with shiny streaks and rusty staining or a heavy, glistening sample of fascinating ore, and Tom’s day was further enriched. He easily switched between asking and answering questions, and he seemed equally happy to do either one.

Figure 1. Part of author Tom Bohmker's gold specimen collection he's collected over the years, as seen at the 2011 Salem Gold Show.

“This is a lot of fun for me,” he said from his chair, smiling. “You never know what’s coming next. Folks collect the most amazing specimens.” An accomplished mining expert, his booth was a lively spot that stood out even in that day’s exuberant atmosphere. I got the feeling immediately that Tom would be a favorite in mining camps, talking for hours over a roaring campfire about his experiences across the west.

Bohmker explained how his newest books on Oregon and Washington continue his theme of trying to be as helpful as humanly possible to the newcomers and weekend warriors. As Bohmker explained in his book about the Klamath Mountains, he’s been asked countless times some basic questions:

1. Is it possible to still go out and find some gold?

2. Where is a spot I can do some fun panning with my friends and family?

3. Are there certain types of rocks that carry the gold?

4. I just bought a new detector, so where is a good place to look for pocket gold?

5. How can I have my own claim?

His response: “Selected spots…showed potential for more extensive mining efforts. Even though some of these areas have been extensively mined since the 1849 gold rush, and were some of the areas where suction dredging was first extensively used in the 1950’s and 60’s, our conclusion was that there is still lots of “easy” gold that can be found by 'flat-lander greenhorn tourist want-to-be gold miners,' much more so by serious miners today.”

Because I had seen Tom in action at his booth, I figured he came by his geological “chops” naturally. So I asked him via email about his education and background. In junior high and again in high school, he said that he took all the earth science courses he could sign up for, and then went on to college. “I have an associate degree in aerospace technology, and a Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) mechanic’s license,” he told me. My guess is that he took at least one class on rocket science, in other words. He’s not a certified engineer (his fees would go way up if he were) but he picked up extensive coursework in geology from the College of San Mateo in California. His formal education shows in his precise use of geologically correct terms, which, being a natural teacher, he takes great pride in.

Still, Bohmker’s knowledge about western mining isn’t just based on book learnin’ and taking tests. His family background is the real foundation; both his grandfather and his father were avid prospectors. “My Dad's work selling for John Deere took me to mining areas all over the west,” he explained. “A trip with him always had some stops at active operations with his friends and customers. I was able to learn at the feet of some very talented old miners and prospectors.”

During high school and college, Bohmker and his family took all available weekends and vacations to prospect for gold, silver, and other ores. From San Francisco, they methodically fanned out, covering parts of the Mother Lode country, the Clear Lake quicksilver district, then Humboldt and Esmeralda counties in Nevada, and also the Pinto Basin and Mojave Desert areas of southern California. The expeditions roamed far into the hills, and he developed an eye for abandoned mines, old workings, tailings piles, and other signs of industry. He learned to identify what the miners were after and appreciate their ambitions.

Here’s a partial list of Bohmker’s “mining vita”:

1968 - explored and tested for cinnabar at the "No Sweat Mine"

1969 - mining technician at the Hyatt Mine in ID (lode gold)

1970 - Guadalupe Mining Company, San Jose, CA (lode gold)

1972 - Eagle Creek Mine, Birch Creek AK (placer gold)

1974-82 - leased suction dredge claims near Cave Junction, OR

1976-80 - sluiced in South Dakota

1980-81 - dredged on Illinois River, OR

1982 - dredged Klamath River, CA

1984 - dredged Middle Fork John Day, OR and Black Hills, SD

That’s only a partial list, he explained, referring to himself as a “tramp miner” after college. He’s served as a millwright, technician, foreman, surveyor, resident geologist, and more. “In 1985, I reopened the Way Up Mine for underground gold near Libby, Montana, and completed a large bulk sampling program for the owner. In the 1990's, my teenaged sons and I started leasing the Gran Turk Mine, an underground pocket mine near Columbia, California. This finally ended operation in 2008, when the 90-year old owner traded the property away.”

Even when he wasn’t mining, Bohmker was prospecting new ground or sampling fresh territory. “Whenever I traveled, I tried to do some prospecting along the way. For example, on the way to my brother’s wedding in Missouri, I took a dredge with me and dredged a day or two near Salmon, Idaho, and also near Ogden Utah. My wife claims she never realized how interested I was in mining before marriage. After we got married, we toured a variety of ghost towns from Oregon to southern California, then returned through Nevada. She can give a long, wild story about visiting a whole bunch of mining camps and smiling politely at my old miner friends as I showed off my cute new bride. That was not exactly her dream of a "Harlequin Romance Honeymoon."

Figure 2. Author Tom Bohmker has spent a fascinating career in the western mining industry.

A couple years ago, Tom faced some medical issues that put him in the hospital, weakened with Guillain-Barre Syndrome, a serious disorder where the immune system starts attacking the nervous system. While recovering, he daydreamed about his favorite dredging experiences, and kept coming back to a stint on the Illinois River in southern Oregon.

He eventually wrote the daydreaming episode up in a short story he calls “Snake Oil,” excerpted and lightly edited below:

“We were slowly uncovering bedrock on the Illinois River in southern Oregon …Finally a thin, flat boulder some 3 feet across was found “cemented” with hard pack gravels to the bedrock. I dredged around it and we hoisted the big boulders out of the hole. It took the whole morning to uncover an area 5 by 7 feet or so on the bedrock . We cleaned up about 3 DWT of flakes and pickers from this activity, found mostly in the reddish yellow pack that was within a couple feet of bedrock. We still had the cemented flat rock to move and dredge underneath. With the water clear, I hammered the cemented gravel around the edge and I could see dozens of little flakes of gold 1 to 3 mm in size swirl into the nozzle. I tried driving a gad bar (similar to a carpenter cat’s paw nail-puller) under the flat boulder to shake it loose…it seemed to be held tight with super glue. Again I circled the perimeter hammering the thin layer of cementing gravel. ...

For some 10 minutes I hammered and hammered; finally a little cloud of gray material rose around the boulder signaling it had finally loosened up. I was able to lever it off its perch and the hole became immersed in a cloud of gray. It took a long minute or two for the water to clear and I was anxiously hoping to see some gold. As soon as the dredge started to suck away the thin layer of sand and gravel I could see hundreds of flakes of gold like stars shining on a mountain night. Most of the flakes were large enough to stay on #20 mesh screen or 2 to 3 mm in size and there were hundreds of them. I recall thinking “If this keeps up we’ll get rich.” Of course the “hot spot” was over in just 5 minutes. We cleaned up the sluice again and were thrilled with over 9 DWT (nearly ½ oz. troy).

Still, he lingered in the hospital for several months, until a “golden cure” arrived when his friends brought in the perfect antidote to his doldrums – a full sample jar, crammed with placer gold. “Every day for months the doctor had come in and poked and held my feet hoping to see some nerve reaction or movement. Basically nothing in the feet had changed…they seemed to be immobile. However my mining friend Tom Quintal and his assistant “Professors of Universal Healing” wanted to try to revive my limp lower body. Although Tom was not wearing a dark cape and stove pipe hat, he did ceremoniously wave his bottle of newly mined Briggs Creek Gold under my nose. Wow, did it look good! With difficulty I was able to hold the bottle and examine the heavy flakes and small nuggets and hear them rattle in the bottle. I seemed to feel a wave of energy flow from the hands, into my abdomen then towards the feet. Gold Fever again was evident in my weak and wasted body. I was really excited and felt much better.”

Figure 3. Author Tom Bohmker inspecting a lode sample brought in at the gold show.

Future Plans

Bohmker was nearly half-done with a large work tentatively titled Gold Panner's Guide to California's Klamath Mts. before he had to slow down. He told me that he does have another work in progress: “Along with Eddie Humbird (a real good dredger and pocket hunter in John Day) we may come out with Gold Panner's Guide to Eastern Oregon soon.” It would be a quick, short work, but he still has many mining stories he hopes to get written down.

I asked Tom one of those Robert Service-type questions – was he happier working a single area continuously, or did he have the wanderlust that kept him searching? “In the past, I enjoyed just working a decent spot,” he admitted. “I spent eight years on one set of claims, including whole summers on a single, 150-foot section that was deep and rich, with plenty of good dredging spots. These were economic mining times, when the scale weight at end of the day or week was very important. However, at times I have done weeks on surveys of panning under every bridge...In 15 minutes, if I did not have good color I moved on. That was lots of fun! For example, I tried to pan every major gold stream in the Black Hills...Gold weight was not important. It was the adventure of finding color here and there.”

Field Testing the Book

I ‘test-drove’ the Oregon book immediately after leaving the show, dragging a couple helpers out to the Little North Fork of the Santiam River. We followed his directions precisely, and even though the water was still high in late March, we came home with extensive black sand and some decent colors. More importantly, we scouted out camping spots, bedrock, natural riffles, and giant cracks replenished each spring, and just where he said they were. Filing that one away for later in the summer, I immediately began planning a second trip to a spot in the Washington book, just northwest of Mt. St. Helens.

I’d been rockhounding up McCoy Creek several years earlier, searching for perfect little pyrite cubes in a wet clay in the banks of the creek. The bushwhack down was a chore, but I put the spot in my book on Washington locales. Later on, GPAA added a claim to their guide, and I was anxious to check it out on a modest, one-day trip. We waited for decent weather, and when the chance finally came, we followed his map all the way in. I knew the water would be far too high to do any decent sampling, so I concentrated on the lode mines he marked.

Figure 4. GPAA claim known as "Mother's Nightmare" is at the end of the arrow for Yellowjacket Creek, and is fed by the lode mines on Camp Creek.

Mining cabin and pyrite-laden drilling cores mark the lode mines that feed McCoy Creek.

Sure enough, I was able to locate the road in and track down the abandoned drilling cores behind the main building. I walked in further and located the caved-in mine entrance, and found further examples of extensive pyrite, chalcopyrite, bornite, and perhaps arsenopyrite. Needless to say, I went home happy. So based on meeting Tom, testing two pages from his books, and reading the republished information he provides for areas he hasn’t visited, I heartily recommend both books covered here.

Tom will be the first to admit he took more science than English in school. His publisher would do well to employ an editor, and some graphics help on the maps is also in order. But the charm of this book easily overcomes the complaints of an old writing teacher or a former geography student. Tom’s writing shines through when he relates stories about the camps, about lone prospectors who persevered or resilient men who overcame countless obstacles. His energy and enthusiasm burst from the pages, and if you’re lucky enough to be exploring a region Tom knows well, get your order in. It would be best if you could personally take Tom along, but having his book is a darned good substitute.

Garret Romaine is the author of Gem Trails of Oregon, Gem Trails of Washington, and Rockhounding Idaho. He has contributed as a columnist to GPAA Magazine for 15 years. You can find him on Facebook or email him at gromaine3@comcast.net.

Book Review: Massacred for Gold

2011-07-17T11:56:00.000-07:00

By Garret Romaine

On a thoroughly misguided hike outside of Elk City, Idaho in 1997, trying to trace Nugget Creek to its confluence with Newsome Creek, my team ran into massive piles of timber across the trail and became, well, confused. We spent the better part of a night concerned that we were lost in the wilderness, but as the sun came up, we stumbled into signs of civilization. Walls of rocks were stacked neatly into cubicles and apartments, and it was quickly evident that we were walking through a very old Chinese gold mining camp. In another ten minutes we were in a clear-cut, and we easily followed the skid road to pavement, and then camp. Crisis averted.

Most modern prospectors are aware of the impact Chinese miners had in the last part of the 19^th century. I’ve seen “China Diggins” on topo maps probably a half-dozen times, and in my field excursions, I’ve seen stacked rocks in neat piles. I’ve learned not to count on panning much more than black sand anywhere there were Chinese miners for extended periods of time, because they were patient and thorough. They had to be – they couldn’t legally own claims, so all they got were leftovers, and they faced discrimination wherever they had success.

All that serves as an introduction to a new book by R. Gregory Nokes, a former reporter for the Portland Oregonian. Nokes stumbled onto a detective story straight out of the wild west that should bring a bit of sadness to every gold prospector. His book, “Massacred For Gold,” is the story of a large company of Chinese miners who labored in the depths of Hells Canyon, where the Snake River cuts like a knife between Oregon and Washington. About 34 miners, divided into three teams, worked several coves and gravel bars along the Snake about 35 miles from the town of Imnaha, Oregon. Unfortunately, these canyons also housed a ruthless gang of horse thieves and cattle rustlers, and when the cowboys saw the Chinese miners, the temptation to rob and murder the foreigners was too much to resist.

“[the] crew uncovered a rich deposit of nuggets and heavy gold flakes along the river bank. Tucker speculated that, centuries earlier, the river had cut through a vein of gold-bearing quartz somewhere upstream and that the gold had lodged in the crevices of the bedrock where the miners found it. He didn’t say how he knew all this. But, if he was right, the Chinese scored a major strike, yielding more than the typical find of tiny particles, called flour gold. It would explain why the Chinese mined in the cove for the next eight months. However much they did find, it cost them their lives.” (p. 16)

Accounts of the actual massacre are sketchy, conflicting, and painful:

From a local newspaper account written 40 years later: “They left one to hold the horses and another as a lookout above the camp to warn of anyone coming down the river. Another was sent below the camp to warn of anyone approaching from below. Then the other three took a position on the hillside above the camp and with high-powered rifles began the slaughter of thirty-one innocent and defenseless Chinese whose only weapon of defense was 22-caliber rifle. The rifles barked and one by one the Chinamen were shot down like sheep killing dogs. They killed all but one until their ammunition ran out and when he started to flee in a boat, they had to run after him and finish him off with rocks.” (p. 40)

The bottom line was that several young white men used rifles to gun down the Chinese miners, one by one. There were signs of torture, too, as bodies began to pile up on downstream sand bars, or float past the town of Lewiston, Idaho, 65 miles away. But there was little outrage; massacres of Chinese laborers were somewhat common in the west.

Downtown Imnaha, Oregon, circa 2008. This is the nearest town to the massacre site.

Nokes does an excellent job of pulling together a story about western gold rushes, Chinese customs, and community values. Here’s his description of the town of Lewiston, Idaho, as it grew around the gold rushes nearby:

“Prior to the discovery of gold nearby, there was no such place as Lewiston. But when gold was found along the Clearwater River in 1860 and 1861 – near what is now Pierce, Idaho – it ignited an overnight gold rush, creating the need for a centrally located town to supply the thousands of miners pouring into the region….By mid-decade, however, the boom had run its course. Caucasian miners had scooped up most of the easily mined gold from claims along the Clearwater and its tributaries, then departed in droves for new and more promising gold strikes in southern Idaho…When the Chinese first arrived, the white miners viewed them as unwanted intruders. Even the possibility of Chinese competition alarmed Caucasians. To keep the gold for themselves, the miners organized whites-only mining districts. Typical was an edict from the Oro Fino mining district on April 14, 1861, which affirmed “the complete exclusion of the Chinese and Asiatic races and the South Pacific Ocean Islanders from the mines.” Similar bans were enacted by miners in nearby Warren, Nez Perce, and Salmon River mining districts.” (p. 30-31)

Without spoiling the ending, it’s common knowledge that the murder of a Chinese laborer was rarely punished. At the time, as Nokes documents, there were several similar attacks, including a riot in Wyoming and the rumored detonation of an entire mine by an owner who couldn’t afford to meet payroll for 130 Chinese miners. The most that could happen to a drunken cowboy for shooting a hapless Chinamen outside the local saloon was a $20 fine for discharging a firearm in public. One problem back then was an economic environment that turned quickly negative when the railroad construction boom petered out:

“Within a decade, however, circumstances changed dramatically. Tens of thousands of workers, both Chinese and Caucasian, were laid off during the financial panic of 1873 and the long recession that followed. What had been a labor shortage turned into a glut, and workers were thrown into a fierce and sometimes violent competition for scarce jobs. Whites were enraged that some employers preferred to hire Chinese, caring more about low wages and work habits than skin color.” (p. 35)

So, what could entice a band of foreign-born miners to travel so far from home, in a hostile land, to work so hard? Nokes explains the history of China at the time, and shows how economic conditions and the promise of rich finds was as powerful for poor Chinese laborers as it is today. Stories of fabulous wealth in California had trickled back to China since 1849, and over the course of four decades, there were enough success stories in America to continue pulling Chinese workers across the Pacific.

“The Chinese knew from their earlier experiences in California that after impatient Caucasians had mined the most accessible gold, they would be only too happy to sell their claims to the Chinese, or simply abandon them. That is indeed what happened. Once Chinese could move into the mining camps and work the old claims, they soon outnumbered Caucasians in mining towns throughout the region.” (p.31)

Rugged topography of the area near Hells Canyon features basalt flows and imposing cliffs.

By tirelessly tracking down court documents, interviewing surviving family members, locating cemetery and census records, and squinting at microfiche records from the time, Nokes pieced together not only the history of Chinese miners in the west, but also manages to explain, but not condone, how a community could harbor such murderers in its midst. He correlates the treatment of Chief Joseph’s band of Nez Perce Indians with the treatment of the Chinese, and deftly inserts himself into the story to keep it moving along. The result is an excellent book, with a kind of headlong momentum toward closure that always appears tantalizingly close, but like justice itself, never quite arrives.

I appreciated the numerous references to gold mining, buried treasure, and the history of the west. It isn’t clear to historians if the entire gold cache gleaned by the Chinese was ever completely recovered. There are all kinds of false leads, rumors, and legends surrounding what the Chinese recovered, but there are no definitive totals. Did the Chinese store all their gold in a single sack, or did each miner have his own stash? Did the robbers get a chance to split up their loot, or did the gang’s leader hide the ill-gotten gains by himself and dig it up later? Even Harland Horner’s history of Wallowa County, taken from a 1925 article of the Chieftain, which Nokes recounts, isn’t definitive:

“…Although several thousand dollars in gold dust were found by the murderers, much of the treasure was never unearthed. Each apparently had a cache of his own, and thirty hiding places are difficult to find. Twenty years after the tragedy a sheep herder found a small rusty baking powder can which had been washed out of a sand bank by the action of water. Curiosity impelled him to pick it up and he was started to find it contained gold dust. The battered can yielded more than six hundred dollars worth of dust. The little hoard had cost a life.” (p.18)

But I also appreciated the telling of a sad story, the necessary righting of a long-time wrong, and how, at long last, a public monument may come to be erected at the lonely site of the massacre. Nokes brings to life not only the misfits who committed the dirty deed, but also explores the motivations behind a luckless band of foreign miners, toiling so hard, so far from home. He exposes the community members who helped bury the truth and hide official records, and turned a murder-mystery into a detective story with ease.

It’s hard not to be angered by the entire story, and it would have been easy for Nokes to fall heavily on the side of moral outrage and advance straight to lecturing. But he repeatedly falls back on his training as an objective journalist to stay balanced. This is about as close as he comes to condemnation:

“The Chinese contribution to the development of the American West was substantial. But their efforts won them scant praise and little recognition – they didn’t fit neatly into the popular narrative of the conquest of the West by courageous white pioneers and gun-toting cowboys.” (p. 34)

In the end, it’s a tale that needed telling, and Nokes was the right man for the job.

Mining the Internet: Gold Rush Alaska

2011-07-17T11:44:00.000-07:00

Porcupine Creek, Alaska, early 1900s (click on graphics to make them bigger and easier to view)

By Garret Romaine

Ever since the show’s debut late in 2010, I’ve done my best to carve out some TV time on Friday nights for GOLD RUSH: ALASKA on the Discovery Channel. The 10-part series follows six guys from Sandy, Oregon who cast caution to the wind and head off to Alaska to set up a full-sized, big-time gold placer operation.

It’s got to be the dream of just about every GPAA member to do what these guys did. They’ve got a really inspired setup – the oldest guy, white-haired Jack Hoffman, has run a small mine before, with his son and crew boss Todd Hoffman. The Hoffmans are bankrolling the operation, and they’ve added a solid mechanic, a safety lead, equipment operators, and assorted labor to go with a pair of big excavators, a dump truck, a front-end loader, and a full wash plant with a shaker, trommel, and jig. This isn’t me with a spiral pan out crevicing for a weekend – this is the real deal.

Figure 1. Todd Hoffman, left, supervising his father operating one of the big excavators.

Figure 2. Todd Hoffman, left, and Jack Hoffman, right, had worked a gold mine near Fairbanks in the early 1980s.

I was hooked before the first episode ended, and I’ve followed them on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/goldrushalaska) and on the Discovery Channel at http://dsc.discovery.com/tv/gold-rush-alaska/. I even checked out the scuttlebutt at the Discovery Channel forums at http://community.discovery.com/eve/forums/a/cfrm/f/76419268601.

The team set up at Porcupine, Alaska, an abandoned town in the southern panhandle region. Anxious to learn everything I could, I checked US Geological Survey Professional Paper 610:

“The Porcupine district is ….along Porcupine Creek, a tributary of the Klehini River. Productive gravels were discovered in 1898 along Porcupine Creek and its tributaries (Wright, 1904, p. 12) The era of greatest activity was from 1900 to 1906, when about $100,000 in gold per year was produced. Between 1915 and 1917, hydraulic equipment was installed which accounted for a brief rejuvenation of the district (Eakin, 1918b, p. 99) …Total production for the district through 1959 is 53,250 ounces, all from placers.”

I found Porcupine at www.geocommunicator.gov, and pinpointed the town’s GPS coordinates: 59.420095, -136.238997. Next, I turned to www.mindat.org and got more information about Porcupine Creek (http://www.mindat.org/loc-199458.html):

Figure 3. Porcupine is the red dot on the highway west of Klukwan

“Production: The estimated total production from the Porcupine Mining Area from 1898 to 1985, including Christmas (SK062), Nugget (SK048), Porcupine (SK041), Cahoon (SK044), and McKinley (SK046) Creeks, is 79,650 troy ounces of gold. From 1898 to 1906, there were small manual operations producing as much as 9,000 troy ounces per year that were destroyed by flooding in 1906. From 1907 to 1915, mining by the Porcupine Gold Company was conducted using a flume constructed one mile below the junction with McKinley Creek. Production averaged 3,000 troy ounces of gold per year, until the flume was destroyed by a flood in 1915. From 1916 to 1918, the old flume was repaired and a new flume was built. Over 6,000 troy ounces of gold was produced during this period. The flumes were destroyed in the flood of September, 1918. Porcupine Gold Mines, which later became Alaska Sunshine Gold Mining Company, took over in 1926. In 1928, they completed a flume that originated on Porcupine Creek 0.5 miles above the junction with McKinley Creek and bridged McKinley Creek. Mining commenced in 1929 but closed at the end of the season due to poor returns. After much additional exploration, mining began again in 1935. Work continued into 1936 when the bridge over McKinley Creek was destroyed by a rock slide. As of 1986, there had been only minor, sporadic production since World War II. During times of high gold prices in the 1970's and early 1980's, some mechanized mining was conducted (Hoekzema and others, 1986).”

Figure 4. Topo map from GeoCommunicator showing the site of Porcupine, where the Hoffmans set up their mine.

Just before the final episodes ran, I tracked Todd down through his Facebook page and set up a phone interview. The Q&A transcript follows:

MTI: First off, congratulations on a great show. It’s been so compelling to watch.

TH: Thanks. We really appreciate everybody that’s watching it. We just made it into the top 25 cable shows, right below SpongeBob….(laughs)

MTI: There probably isn’t a single GPAA member who wouldn’t have traded places with you guys up there in Alaska. Tell us about the origins of this idea to start a gold mine in Alaska - was it something your dad Jack always talked about?

TH: My dad came to me when I was 15, in 1983, 1984. That was the last gold rush, gold tipped the scales at about $800 an ounce, coming out of the Carter years. So my dad came home and said we ought go gold mining. I said, that sounds awesome, but can you still do that? We made up our own plant, home-made. It had a potato digger belt – you don’t see that very often. It was kind of a neat way to wash dirt and move out the rocks. We built that, got a Case loader, got a D8 cat with a ripper, replaced the undercarriage on the Cat and put it on a train and sent it to Alaska. We mined in the 80’s for two seasons out of Fairbanks. I always knew it was something we could do. So, when gold started taking off, you know, and I’m watching what’s going on in the world, I’m thinking to myself, ‘It’s time.’ But geez, I can barely do this, maybe I can turn it into a show and get some of my fuel paid. That’s pretty much it – that’s the whole premise of what we did.

MTI: So you had done this before. You weren’t a complete novice.

TH: We didn’t do it real successfully before. We had mined, and we had gotten enough to basically break even. But some of our friends did really well. I’ve seen it happen. I knew it was possible. I’d seen things a lot of guys never get to see. And I never forgot it. Some of the best times of my life were up there. There were several mines on our creek. I actually think GPAA now owns the claim. I think it’s one of your group. And I actually know where the gold is on the claim. (Laughs) I can’t remember the name. It’s up out of Circle Hot Springs.

MTI: How did you pick Porcupine Creek? Was it someplace, or someone, you knew from your past?

TH: I went up on a fact-finding mission, and I looked at all kinds of mines. I knew that getting back into the business, plus coming up there with all the cheap equipment that I had, it was going to take me a long time to get everything running. It wouldn’t if I had a half million dollars to plunk down on a high-end system. But I didn’t –I’ m bringing a bunch of home-made stuff. So I knew we were going to have issues and stuff like that. So I had to pick an area that had a longer mining season than just the average 60-75 days. And Southeast Alaska has a season that goes almost 4 months. We started in snow and ended in snow. Plus I found this mine that I believe was pretty lucrative. It had this great history, all the way up the creek. That’s why we plunked down there. Plus, you know Schnabel there across the creek, was pretty open to having us and was really gracious with us. We actually became pretty close with him and his family, and his grandson Parker.

MTI: Tell us about the inspiration behind your wash plant – was it even an option to buy machinery already in Alaska, or did it just pencil out to make more sense by barging it all up there?

TH: Really, you don’t want to buy too much stuff already up north, because it’s pretty hammered on. It’s always better to buy down here, in the Portland-Seattle area., and then have it shipped up by barge, because you can still find a decent piece of equipment for cheap and have it shipped up there. But you get up there, it adds 20-30%, and the equipment is really beat up. They hammer stuff pretty hard up there.

MTI: Attacking that claim with a big wash plant meant it was going to take a long time to get going. Did anyone have a dredge or high-banker operating in the background? Even a sluice box would have been worth setting up just to prospect the bucket loads you were bringing up. Or were you convinced that the only way to succeed was to go big, so you didn’t even consider smaller gear?

TH: Everything was in the bigger equipment. The majority of miners are like your folks, with the high bankers and stuff like that. I believe that gold will keep climbing, and staying in that recreational capacity is going to be pretty crucial in the next few years. I really do. Because you have a minimal investment, you can move around, you can do it on your own, you don’t have the headaches of a commercial setup. But we just stuck with what we had.

MTI: Designating a safety officer was sheer genius – most of our members have watched a placer gold camp quickly pile up broken parts, used hoses, spare gold pans, and more . Your camp stayed fairly neat, and I saw spray paint on the ground, grates blocking the trammel, and safety vests everywhere. Whose idea was that to designate a leader for safety issues?

TH: Actually Thurber and Greg had safety backgrounds. Thurber is a safety officer at his construction company. He was a natural fit. Plus, you just have to have a designated safety officer. You also have to have a basic safety plan. So we did. When my daughter had her seizure, we were able to take care of her. The production crew also had a safety plan. They had repeaters, and we were able to communicate with the hospital. We took our tailings and used them to make our roads better. When we got there, it was just a mess. So we moved stuff around, all our roads were graveled, and it was pretty nice. We tried to keep it pretty decent. That’s just how we do stuff. We do the best we can.

MTI: Getting a mine going while the cameras are rolling must have been a challenge, especially since mining and “bad hair days” go together really well. Did you just adjust after awhile?

TH: Yeah, you just kind of get used to it. Almost like they’re not there. But you have to know who you are. I’m just kind of an overweight kid with a dream. So it doesn’t bother me a whole lot. When you get upset and you swear, that’s something I’m not proud of, and something I’m working on, ‘cuz you don’t want that. We know families are watching our show, and we keep that at a minimum. Of course, with television, you know they want maximum drama, but to be honest with you, we’re just trying to get our job done the best we can. It is weird having a camera on you the whole time, but after awhile you get used to it.

MTI: One of my favorite episodes was when everybody, including women and teenagers, started panning concentrates. It seemed like a lot of community spirit, everyone is in this together. Was that pretty satisfying for you, too?

TH: I was a little nervous, because when you had kids panning, you know…but my dad had showed them how to pan, and to be honest, I think I was in the wrong. Because, I was a kid, and I was panning, and that meant a lot to me, to be panning out some concentrates, that I’d be trusted to do something like that. In the end, aren’t we trying to pass on something great to our kids and our families? There’s nothing more pure than panning gold out of the ground that you’ve just dug up.

MTI: Wave tables aren’t all that complicated – I’ve seen them work. Did you ever figure out what you were doing wrong with that equipment, or was it just that there wasn’t enough gold in those early buckets of concentrates?

TH: You know, I personally don’t like them…I’ve seen better ways of doing that. But you know what? What do I know ? I’ve known guys who swear by them. But a lot of those guys have them mounted really solid in their basement. And they’ve got the material sized out really well – they’ve got the mesh sized out just right. I’m no professional – I’ve seen the extruder table that’s made by MSI Mining [http://msi-mining.com –ed] – the guy that designed that, I know him, and he is a meticulous builder, and so that extruder table is a pretty neat system. But you know, I’m like everyone else, I’m still learning. After you pull your concentrate out of your sluice box, I like to work them through a small hand jig first, to get it down to a finer concentrate. I used to actually build them when I was younger, when I was 15, 16. I sold them to the miners up in Alaska. I didn’t sell a lot of them – I think I made six of them, but they all worked really well. One of them was still going 10-15 years later, someone was still using it. That was really cool, seeing it still going.

MTI: Most of our members can only dream of digging a hole visible by earth satellite, but you guys had two excavators, pumps, and all the other equipment necessary to reach deep bedrock. In the last show I saw, there were some giant-sized boulders coming up out of the ground. Describe your efforts as you got closer and closer to the bottom of the hole.

TH: (sighs) There are other areas that are a lot easier to mine. You’re better off in an area that’s maybe 10, 15, 20 feet deep. The thing is with this one, according to what we’ve all figured out, there’s a waterfall there. And we don’t know how deep that bedrock is there. But we know there’s gold on the top, and over the years it’s sifted down to this glory hole. The problem is, like you’ve seen with Schnabel, that hole could be 100 feet deep – we don’t’ know. It’s a risk. We gauged it at 40 feet deep, so you’re really taking a risk on something like that. I wouldn’t suggest doing that. I would suggest finding a mine that has coarse gold that is not very deep – 10-15 feet to bedrock, where you can work the bedrock and follow the pay streak right up the hillside. So that’s my advice.

MTI: I pulled some of the early mining reports for Porcupine Creek, and at one point, they built a 20-foot wide flume and just put the creek in the flume, to get it out of the way basically. Did you look at those old reports?

TH: Oh, yeah. The history on that creek was incredible. The amount of gold they pulled out of there was just astronomical. And they moved the creek, a one- or two-mile flume. It was going above their head, and they’re down in the creek bed mining, dry. The problem is that the valley there has so much snow, and it can back up, and create these flash floods down through there. And it blew out this million-dollar flume they built. If you look at the old pictures it was incredible, the amount of manpower they put into that flume. We’re living on the town site. There were almost a thousand people, 500-1000 people, living at Porcupine, right there on the property. So, it has a lot of incredible history.

MTI: One thing about mining is that when you’re starting out, you learn a lot every day. A whole season is like a university degree. Plus, once you get a good case of gold fever, it’s hard to shake. Has it been announced yet if you’re going back for another summer?

TH: I am putting all my stuff together to go back. I don’t know if Discovery Channel is going to tag along again. A couple things I want to say for your members, though. A lot of the larger mines, and people up there, they don’t really want more people coming up and doing what we’re doing. They would rather that a lot of the recreational guys stay down in the lower 48. But don’t let that be a discouragement to you. Alaska is part of the US, and you have every right to put a group of guys together and do what we did. Now, having said that, it isn’t easy, and you have to do a lot of paperwork and go through the proper channels. You have to have some wherewithal to make it work. That’s what we’re trying to do is help some different groups prepare and figure out how to make that happen. That’s going to be a service I will provide in the future to help those guys go after it. Don’t get discouraged when you hear professional miners say mean things about us. Don’t worry about us. It didn’t discourage me – I don’t give a rip. The mining associations aren’t really for the little guys – they’re for the big guys. You’re not going to get a lot of help from them. GPAA has been very aggressive – you guys have done a great job working for your base. So keep up the good work.

MTI: Have you been a GPAA member in the past?

TH: You know what, I think my Dad was. For many years, I just kind of forgot about gold mining. I always looked back with fond memories, but you grow up and get married and have kids – I don’t even know where the time went. I haven’t had a lot of time to go out and do stuff like that. So, it’s kind of re-sparked the dream for my father and myself, and all these guys. Now there’s a lot of people out there watching us make mistakes, but also do some good things. They’re learning about sluice boxes, they’re learning about gold pans. There are a lot of equipment companies, like White’s Metal Detectors [http://whiteselectronics.com – ed] , that are selling a lot more stuff now. And hopefully you guys get new members, because there’s safety in numbers. I don’t care if you’re big or small, the more people involved in it, that’s how we’re going to protect the freedom to do it.

Bibliography

Eakin, H.M., 1919, The Porcupine gold placer district, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 699, 29 p.

Koschmann, A.H., and Bergendahl, M.H., 1968, Principal gold producing districts of the United States: U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 610, 283 p.

Wright, C.W., 1904, The Porcupine placer district, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 236, 35 p.

New video up: Knapping

2011-04-11T18:05:00.000-07:00

Hanging out with the Puget Sound Knappers at their Winter Break Knap-in. What a fun group!

http://youtu.be/D_uc5pk9wpM

Those rocks are sharp!

Mining the Internet: ArcGIS

2011-03-29T20:45:00.000-07:00

In this article, I want to accomplish just three things:

1) introduce you to ArcGIS, a new tool

2) update you on GeoCommunicator, an older tool that’s seen some major improvements, and

3) talk a little bit about magnets.

ArcGIS

Late last year I sat down for lunch with Evan LaCour, one of my readers. Evan is a young man with a geography degree specializing in geographic information systems (GIS). We’ve kept in touch since ever since, mostly by email through LinkedIn.com. He sent me a quick note recently about ArcGIS Explorer. It allows people to share maps, data, and tools online. There is also a desktop version available for those who don't have high speed access.

Here is the site: http://explorer.arcgis.com/. You need Microsoft Silverlight installed, which stopped me for a second. I had to reformat a laptop once thanks to a desire to use Silverlight to stream NetFlix movies to my television. It took two days to recover from that fiasco, but I’m sure there was more pilot error involved than blame for a rogue software program. Eventually, you should see the map in Figure 1:

Figure 1. Main ArcGIS screen, ready for map overlays that you select. Remember that you can click on an image to make it bigger...

Once you reach the main map, click the "map center" link in the upper left corner. It’s not intuitive, but there is a rollover if you hold the mouse over the icon long enough. I highlighted the map center link in Figure 2:

Figure 2. The Map Center button is in the far upper left corner.

The Map Center button takes you to the “Featured Maps” page. Since there’s no telling what the site managers might choose to highlight from day to day, you’ll want to learn to search the contents to find what you’re looking for. Click the blue Search bar on the left and bring up the Search screen. Type "geology" into the box and click the [Search] button. You should get a few pages of geology-themed maps to choose from.

There are topographic maps, hazard maps, mine dangers, earthquake locations, and lots more. My current favorite is the “Community Geology Base map,” which covers North America. You can zoom into your state and watch as it dynamically loads the data at different scales. Most of us have a scroll mouse now, and this will zoom in and zoom out on the data.

For example, I’ve been gearing up for a visit to the Burnt River area of eastern Oregon. The geology here is old and complicated, with Jurassic and Cretaceous granite intrusions colored pink and labeled JKg, recent Quaternary river gravels and alluvium colored yellow and labeled Qal, and so forth. I pulled out a screen shot in Figure 3.

Figure 3. ArcGIS Geology map for the Burnt River, Oregon vicinity.

One feature that will help you is the “Identify” button up in the ribbon at the top of the page. The most common need to do this would be to learn more about the color on the map, which represents a rock type, formation, or other major unit. Click this button, shown in the snip below, and you should be able to then left-click inside the map for more information.

Sometimes you’ll get a formation name, age, and rock type. Other times, you don’t get much more than the age of the rock. There are often links to the

source map, so you can chase down detailed geology from there.

I like to use a topographic map as the base, using the “Basemap” icon in the ribbon. You can go with various satellite images as well.

ArcGIS Explorer allows people who don't have a GIS or a mapping background to create and easily make, use, or view maps. You could add you own data to existing maps to create your own custom maps. You can even code your own maps that are shared on that site and combine data from multiple other maps or servers. You could plug in your GPS, use the data in GIS or other programs and add it to the web maps. In short, there’s a lot of power here.

Geocommunicator

A friend recently asked me about the Hansen Creek quartz crystals at Snoqualmie Pass in Washington state – he wanted to see if the claim activity had changed in Township 22N Range 10E Sections 15 and 22. The best tool to figure out claims is the Bureau of Land Management’s GeoCommunicator site at http://www.geocommunicator.gov/blmMap/Map.jsp?MAP=MC.

I zoomed in to Washington state and the pass area, and brought up the usual view. The maps looked more up-to-date than I remembered, and I could see claims I knew about easier. Then I clicked on the “i” button, also known as the Identify button.

Figure 4. Geocommunicator ribbon bar, showing "Identify" button.

This caused the cursor to change shape. So I clicked in the claim area, and after some throat-clearing, the following report came up in Figure 5.

Figure 5. Claim report from using "Identify" button.

All of these listed claims are closed. But the hatching indicates there are still open claims, which verified what I remembered. I ran a Mining Claims report from the upper right with the little prospector icon. I set it for Washington State and King County, and didn’t even bother with the Township and Range setting. I got the report in Figure 6.

Figure 6. Two active claims in the Hansen Creek area.

Garden Slug and Banana Slug are the two active lode claims, and have been there forever. That meant the information in my book “Gem Trails of Washington” was still accurate, which was a relief.

Magnets

On a recent outing in western Washington, we fought the urge to set up a primitive camp because of the rain. Instead, we paid for a U.S. Forest Service site at Coho Campground on Lake Wynoochee. Once we got settled and made a fire, someone pulled out one of my big, round magnets I’d recycled from a stereo speaker years ago. We tied a string on it and dragged it around, and sure enough, we soon found a bottle cap, rusty safety pin, three nails, a washer, and two screws. We also recovered enough magnetite to fill up a small eight-ounce pop bottle.

From there, the conversation went to meteorites, and for the next day, we dragged the magnet around on the various gravel bars we inspected. Sure enough, the darned thing broke on us – without recovering any heavy, rusty, or black rocks we could test for extra-terrestrial iron. We did clean up a lot of junk, however, so that was rewarding.

When I got home, I ordered up a big ringed precious-metal magnet. There are various vendors online, such as www.Magnet4less.com, www.duramag.com, www.kjMagnetics.com, and www.rare-earth-magnets.com to name just a few. These sites sell high-quality permanent magnets with ten times the strength of my old ferrite magnet, and they’re tougher, too. Hopefully they’ll arrive before my next trip and I can provide a full report.

Summary

Modern-day prospectors have great tools at their disposal, so it’s a shame not to use them. After my last column, requesting more Facebook and LinkedIn friends, I’ve received dozens of Friend requests, which has been a lot of fun. I’ve got links now to readers all over the world, and you’ve been unfailingly polite and inquisitive. I’ll try to keep sharing links and events that I discover, and I hope you’ll do the same.

[Update - since I wrote this, the GeoCommunicator site no longer provides visual claim information. I'm investigating...]

Rockhound and Barbarian Fan

2011-02-24T21:19:00.000-08:00

Back before I wrote so much about rockhounding, gold prospecting, and fossil collecting, I used to spin out an e-zine called "The Hyborian Review." It was dedicated to Robert E. Howard, and I had a lot of fun with it. I also learned the ins and outs of keeping up a mailing list, using Adobe Acrobat, and general Internet publishing.

Here's a link to the old PDFs:

http://www.barbariankeep.com/hyborev.html

Not sure how much longer Ed will keep that site up, but I figure I might as well link to it.

How to Carve Soapstone

2011-02-21T21:48:00.000-08:00

By Garret Romaine and Marty Schippers

When you think lapidary, you might be put off by all the tools and technology that are required, but don’t lose hope. If you’ve ever carved a fire stick while shooting the breeze over a summer campfire, you have enough skill to work with soapstone. It’s the easiest rock and gem material to get started with, and a $10 set of files will have you fashioning amulets in no time.

In this How-To article, we’ll take it a few notches up from carving with a pocketknife – we’ll get some power tools involved. Primitive man can have his “Venus of Willendorf,” but we can do better.

Figure 1. Venus of Willendorf, a fertility fetish carved in oolitic limestone and dating to 24,000 BC.

Disclaimer

Now don’t get the wrong idea – after reading this article, you won’t be able to match famed sculptor Donal Hord of San Diego, who fashioned a young woman’s head from obsidian and created the epic “Thunder” from nephrite jade.

Figure 2. “La Cubana,” by Donal Hord. Obsidian, 1937. http://www.sandiegohistory.org/hord/images/79cubana.jpg.

Figure 3. “Thunder” by Donal Hord. From dark green nephrite jade, 20” high. 1946. http://www.sandiegohistory.org/hord/images/103thunder.jpg

Hord (1902 – 1966) worked with the hardest woods and experimented among various rocks and minerals, including granite, black diorite, obsidian, nephrite jade, and onyx. As a somewhat sickly and sheltered young man, he studied art in Mexico and developed a uniquely American style that celebrates the strength and nobility of ancient cultures. I grew so enamored with him I found a website where I could track auctions to see if his stuff ever comes up for sale: http://www.artnet.com.

More Donal Hord websites

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/hord/images/107yangkweifei.jpg

http://www.sandiegohistory.org/hord/hordlist2.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donal_Hord

Whatever your particular style, the part where art comes in is where you envision the form inside the rough material. You may not know it when you pick it up, or you may see it in a flash of light. I don’t know. This is the part I’m not so experienced in. I’m still at the crude pipes and fishies stage. That’s why I brought in Marty Schippers, an experienced carver in the Seattle area.

Safety precautions

Talc isn’t asbestos, but they hang out together. Around any metamorphic rocks you run the risk of harmful dust invading your lungs. Always use caution and ensure that you have excellent ventilation. If you are going to operate sanders, grinders, drills, and power saws, you should always use a mask, use eye protection, and maybe shin guards and a helmet, if possible.

Figure 4. Be extremely wary of getting dust in your lungs or eyes.

Mineralogy Lesson

Soapstone is a talc-rich schist, and has been fashioned for centuries into jewelry and tools. On the Mohs hardness scale, talc is a 1, and you can scratch it with your fingernail. The more talc present, the softer the stone. Wikipedia has a great write-up, explaining that soapstone occurs when tectonic plates grind against each other at great depth. The heat and the pressure, when mixed with the strange witches-brew of chemicals that circulate miles below the crust, is never quite enough to completely melt the rock, so it retains all its streaks and swirls.

Just to continue the geology lesson into mineralogy, soapstone can start out as dunite or serpentinite, but with more metamorphism, it cooks into a composition of talc, chlorite, and amphiboles, with trace to minor iron and chromium. Pyrophyllite is similar to soapstone and has similar uses.

Soapstone pipes are occasionally found among Native American artifacts, but catlinite, or pipestone, was apparently the preferred medium for fancy ceremonial purposes. As a side note, check out Pipestone National Monument at http://www.nps.gov/pipe. You have to be a member of a tribe and make reservations far in advance to dig there. So stick with soapstone!

Ten Easy Steps

Listed below are ten easy steps to follow when completing a soapstone carving project.

Step 1: Find a rock, get it home

There are multiple soapstone locales in the US, which you can track down using Mindat at http://www.mindat.org. Outside of Seattle, Washington, on the North Cascades Highway, the rivers and creeks near Marblemount contain some good soapstone material, but most of the mines are no longer active. That’s the general area where we collected from, plus another chunk from a Washington State Mineral Council (WSMC) field trip at Lake Wenatchee. If you want further information, consult the Council at their new home page: http://www.mineralcouncil.org. (In addition, a shameless plug: my book Gem Trails of Washington will help you find soapstone at Marblemount.)

Figure 5. Map of Marblemount soapstone area; click to enlarge (from Gem Trails of Washington.)

It’s possible to use a chainsaw or handsaw to remove large chunks of soapstone from an outcrop.

Step 2: Envision some kind of form

Now that you have a chunk, you need to figure out what to do with it. Marty explains, “I don’t know where it really comes from, but you just start to see something in there. I had a small boulder once that I just knew was going to be a frog, and out it came. I carved some salmon once, and it just seemed like the most natural thing to do with the piece. After a little experience, you see something and you just know you could get a small orca out of it.”

Figure 6. Envisioning the form that you are about to release is the tricky part.

Animals and figurines are more of a challenge, so you might want to start with easier projects. When carving simple shapes and abstract forms, there is more leeway in the approach. You may simply want to work with the stone and experiment. It takes practice to learn the art of the possible, so feel free to try different tools and approaches.

As Marty explains it, “Basically, you’re going from big to little. I'm sure just about anything used to shape wood or metal could be employed. A flat screw driver and a carpenter’s hammer would remove a lot of rock.”

Step 3: Cut off big chunks

This is where the dust starts to fly, so be prepared to make a mess. Your main goal is to reduce the amount of time you have to be more careful with trimming. A Saws-All with a good blade will work really well. I’ve seen rockhounds in the field bring a carpenter’s saw with them to cut out top-quality chunks of soapstone, so any saw will work. Power tools are more fun, certainly.

Figure 7. Use power tools such as a Saws-All to remove big chunks of material.

In this procedure, Marty wanted to create an interesting fountain, so he needed to taper the top and leave plenty of room for his imagination. He sawed one side basically smooth, then roughed in some beginning forms on the side for swirls and knobs.

Step 4: Rough out

Marty uses a pneumatic die grinder with rotary rasps and stones for the rough stuff. You might find that a chisel removes pieces more easily, so if you have one, consider using it. This step is optional; the photograph below is from a bowl project. Marty has a better collection of tools than I do, so I never know if he needs to use something or is just giving it a try.

The goal at this step is to have a good roughed-out form. If the piece will be sitting on a pedestal, you can get a flat bottom going. If there are arms or fingers, they should start to emerge. You should start to see your piece better at this point.

Figure 8. The air chisel can help with material that will chip away. Marty used it more on the bowl project than on his fountain, so your mileage may vary.

Step 5: Drill hole

Now that the form is roughed out and sits on a pedestal, it is ready for the fountain hole. The drill bit for this fountain project was insanely long, and required a good, straight aim, plus patience, and some luck. The fountain hole can be one of the trickiest parts to get right, because you sometimes have to drill the hole from the top AND the bottom, requiring pinpoint accuracy. Marty’s advice is to invest in the longest bit you can buy, as, the “two-hole” approach is maddening and can stop a project in its tracks.

Test the water flow of your fountain hole at this point, as the water won’t stain the raw soapstone.

Figure 9. Drilling holes for a fountain requires the right bit and a lot of patience.

Step 6. Fill cracks

Now that most of the rough stuff is over, it’s time to repair the damage. If you sloughed off a piece when drilling, or otherwise saw a crack emerge, all is not lost. Invest in a few tubes of Superglue and get a good fill on the problem areas. Let the material dry for a minimum of what the label says. Be extra patient here, or you could repeat the step.

Figure 10. Some material cracks more easily, but a strong glue will fix the problem.

Step 7: Add detail

At this point, Marty had zeroed in on the forms and shapes he wanted, including a line of grooves on the face. He roughed in the parallel lines with a mix of power tools, including a grinder, and also used a set of files with various edges and tips.

“Just about anything will work,” Marty says. “You can use a hobby rasp or file, a Dremel, some wood carving chisels, smaller fine files, or a pocket knife. Avoid the temptation to try one of your wife's best pieces of cutlery.”

Treat this step as the final work before fine sanding can start. Make sure you have taken enough material off; you don’t want to rely on sanding to remove a lot of rock at this point.

Figure 11. A grinder is good for smoothing down the rough edges quickly.

Step 8: Sanding

At this point, Marty’s form is definitely taking shape. He’s put in a series of rough, parallel grooves, added various knobs and ridges, and worked with the piece’s natural streaking from green to reddish. But the surface is still coarse, so sandpaper is the next tool.

Figure 12. Wet-sanding with a fine-grit sandpaper ensures that you don't take off too much material with each pass.

“As far as the sanding goes, I start with 80 to 120 grit dry sand. It’s pretty dusty, but that’s why they call me ‘Dusty Fingers.’ When I get to 200 grit, I start wet-sanding, which simply involves keeping the sandpaper wet while working. I keep getting finer, going all the way up to 1000 grit. On a typical project, I wet-sand at 200, 400, 600, 800, 1000, and even 1200 grit.”

By the way, the finer grit sandpaper is usually found at auto body supply stores – not at Home Depot or Lowe’s.

This is the final step where you take material off, so make sure everything is smooth and nice before proceeding.

Step 9: Polish + Seal

Soapstone will turn color with age, water, dust, or other influences, as it will oxidize and form a crust. The best you can hope for is to slow down the process. There are several different schools of thought here, but Marty reports on what worked best for him.

Figure 13. Marty uses Minwax Helmsman spar urethane to seal the sanded soapstone.

“I would recommend the urethane for a piece you plan to leave outdoors, and any water feature should have a satin or gloss finish. Indoor art would be better served with plain beeswax or "BRIWAX" brand furniture wax. Any wax could be used, but these are my preferences. The point being that fine art does not encourage a hard coating like the urethane. It needs to be as natural as possible.”

Step 10 Present

Here is the finished piece, without any tubes or pumps showing. From some angles, it resembles a horse head, while from other directions it is more abstract. Marty calls the piece “Grooved Fountain.”

Figure 14. The finished product.

Summary

There you have it – ten steps to making your own soapstone carving with various tools. If you just want to make a fetish or amulet, or some ear rings, the process is a lot simpler, and less power tools are involved. Be aware that carving soapstone can lead to working with additional materials, and you can see what experts do with material like jade. The fun part of this project for me was that we collected the material ourself. Plus you can work at your own pace and learn something new. At some point, you may even start to see salamanders creeping out of their rocky prison, and you’ll know you have achieved the rank of a master carver.

South Dakota

2011-02-21T21:24:00.000-08:00

I always appreciate reader emails – that’s why I put my email address at the bottom of the column. This one came in recently and I just had to check it out, right away, because it was a great excuse to focus on an area I don’t know much about.

Dear Garret:

I am new to gold prospecting, and have limited computer skills, but I am planning a trip to the Black Hills. I saw your address in Gold Prospectors magazine -- any info/directions on where to mine the Internet for gold in South Dakota would be appreciated – thanks!

- Dean Dahlheimer, http://www.firstcityloghomes.com

Great question! First off, let’s take a look at historic mining in South Dakota, and get an idea of the location of the state’s major gold mining districts from USGS Professional Paper 610:

Figure 1. Principal gold mining districts of South Dakota all lie in the Black Hills area, at the western border with Wyoming. Click to enlarge the graphics.

Clearly, the best gold you’re going to get from this state is in Lawrence County and Pennington County. That’s the heart of the Black Hills. Custer County, to the south, is probably also in play, but not a strong contender. For that matter, it might make sense to check the drainages headed east from the Black Hills if you catch wind of a 100-year flood…

I went out to the South Dakota geology web page and found this relief map of the state:

Figure 2. Black Hills appear like a giant oval uplift on the western border of South Dakota in this relief map.

Now you can start to see the Black Hills, on the far western border, and what a significant mountainous region it truly is. And that drainage pattern isn’t too bad, either – I count about ten drainages that end up in the Missouri River.

Check the Claims Guide

First, before doing a lot of Internet searching, let’s check the GPAA Claims Guide and see what it says about South Dakota. According to the guide, gold was first discovered along French Creek in the Black Hills during Custer’s Expedition in 1874. The resulting influx of miners upset the Sioux, who had supposedly gained ownership of the Black Hills by treaty. Eventually, as most history buffs know, Custer was killed but won the war, and the area went back to public lands. The area’s big producer was the Homestake Mine, which eventually produced more than 30 million troy ounces of gold before closing.

The guide suggests the following placer opportunities:

For Lawrence County: ‘All streams, bench and terrace gravel deposits, including Deadwood, Whitewood, Gold Run, Bobtail, Blacktail, Spring, and Strawberry Gulches, plus Spearfish and Elk Creeks and their tributaries, around Deadwood. Squaw, Yellow, False Bottom, and Annie Creeks show promise. Blacktail and Sheeptail Gulches, and all other area streams and benches around Lead are worth checking. The Negro Hill district, including Sand Creek, Beaver Creek, and Bear Creek, shows gold. Also Potato, Negro, Poplar, Mallory, and other creeks and gulches should be checked.’

In Pennington County, try ‘Spring Creek, Rapid Creek, Castle Creek, and Battle Creek.’

In Custer County: ‘All stream, bench, and terrace gravel deposits, especially on French Creek, site of the first discovery, along the eastern slopes of the Black Hills, near Custer.’ So my earlier thoughts about Custer County need revising.

Here’s where your full GPAA membership pays off; there are four member claims in South Dakota, all in the Black Hills. In Pennington County, check out MIGG 1-4, comprising 80 acres near Rochford on Rapid Creek; also try the Mary Ann and Rainbow Claims nearby. Or, if your Harley is tuned up, check out a spot near Sturgis, known as the Husker #1 claim.

Given all that, an Internet search should at least verify what we know, plus provide answers about state rules and regulations. I like to get an idea of how many people I’m going to trip over, where the museums and camps are, etc. It’s the concept of “local color” that defines an area, so you know what to expect on your first visit to the region. Aerial photography is good, but I like to develop a complete appreciation for a spot so that the trip is more in the category of ‘verification’ rather than ‘discovery.’

Finding Gold in South Dakota

http://www.e-goldprospecting.com/html/finding_gold_in_south_dakota_.html

This is a comprehensive site that offers clues about finding gold in most states. For South Dakota, the site recommends these starting spots:

· Several Black Hills streams due west of Rapid City, from Custer in the South to Lead and Deadwood in the North area. An interesting area is Castle Creek, Hoodoo Gulch, Crooked Gulch, and Chinese Hill, all of which are near Mystic.

· You can look in Rapid Creek, which is located near Placerville and Rockerville, and are both southwest of Rapid City.

· Along the banks of French Creek in Custer County.

Mayhill Press

http://www.mayhillpress.com/wygold.html

Here’s what Mayhill Press says about South Dakota’s two noted gold-bearing counties, with an emphasis on hard-rock mining:

LAWRENCE: Bald Mtn District - 3 m West and SW from Lead, Mogul Mine.
.....Deadwood-Two Bit District - around Deadwood. Mostly from placers in Deadwood Gulch and the following creeks: Two Bit, Elk, Strawberry. Also Strawberry Gulch. Mines: Cloverleaf, Mascot.
.....Garden District - 1-3 miles N from Lead. Maitland mine - 3 miles NNW from Lead.
.....Lead District - at Lead. HOMESTAKE MINING COMPANY.
.....Squaw Creek District - 6 miles W from Lead. Includes Elk Mtn, Carbonate, Ragged Top areas. Placers at Squaw and Annie creeks. MORE MINES: Gold Reward - 2 miles SW from Lead; Wasp No 2 - 2 miles S. Gilt Edge - 5 miles ESE; Spearfish - 7 miles W; Uncle Sam - 7 miles SE; Lundberg, Door and Wilson - 2 miles WSW; Hoodoo-Union Hill - 5 miles ESE; Reliance - 5 miles W; Hidden Fortune - .5 mile N.

PENNINGTON: Hill City District - near headwaters of Spring Creek and around Hill City to the NW. JR mine - 3 miles NE from Hill City.
.....Keystone District - 1.5 miles SE to 3.5 miles NW from Keystone. Mines: Keystone-Holy Terror.
.....Rockerville Placer District - E from Rockerville.

So now you have the names of some hard rock mines to check as well as placer locales. I’ll leave the hard rock mining to concentrate on placer locales. Whenever I see a creek called “Two-Bit Creek” I know I want to try it. I’ve been on Ten Cent Creek in Oregon and recently spied “50-Cent Creek” in Wyoming.

Black Hills National Forest

http://www.fs.fed.us/bhnf

Check out the links to the US Forest Service map page, as there are lots of files to download and plenty of good information. This will give you ideas about camping in the area, too. You’ll probably want to order the Black Hills National Forest map if you plan to do any exploring at all; it’s practically a must-have.

Here’s what the Black Hills National Forest says about rockhounding, gold panning, and fossil collecting:

· Rock collecting in small amounts for personal use is allowed on the Forest. Make sure you surface collect only, with no digging or excavating.

· Recreational gold panning is allowed in some locations. Contact the closest Forest Service office for more information on locations and rules.

· Metal detectors are allowed, as long as you don't dig holes.

· Federal law prohibits the collection of fossils.

If I’m not mistaken, the last bullet about fossil hunting is new. Collecting non-vertebrate fossils used to be fine for amateurs. Also, what’s the point of metal detecting if you can’t dig a target? Just remind people to fill in their holes and move on!

Here’s the address:

Black Hills National Forest

Highway 385 Northg

Route 2, PO Box 200

Custer, SD 57730

(605) 673-2251

Geology Information

http://denr.sd.gov/linkslandnav.aspx

Check out links for abandoned mines (there’s a name and phone number if you want to contact the office about promising mine dumps) and links to geology maps. There is a nice section of web links at http://www.sdgs.usd.edu/other/webresources.html as well. You could spend a lot of time tracking down documents and links from this page. For example, the South Dakota University School of Mines and Technology is located at this address: http://sdmines.sdsmt.edu/sdsmt.

More Geology maps

http://www.sdgs.usd.edu/publications/general.html?limit_to_download=Yes&sql_option=7#g10

The maps on this page include a geology map for the entire state in PDF form, which you can zoom in on. There’s also a statewide topo map.

Figure 3. Note the ancient geology of the Black Hills, with an abundance of Precambrian rocks at the core.

Tourist Info

If you can plan far enough ahead, contacting a tourist-focused website can net you a full envelope of brochures about an area. If nothing else, I’d hate to miss a promising brew pub (Black Hills Brewing Co., 51 Sherman St. in Deadwood). Here are two tourist sites for the Black Hills area:

Deadwood

http://www.deadwood.org/

Request their brochure, entitled The Official Guide to Deadwood. Figure out where the gas stations, mini-marts, and taverns are situated. Check for museums and other attractions – especially if you have kids with short attention spans.

Lead

http://leadmethere.org

Lead is not all that far from Presidents Park, Deadwood, Mount Rushmore, Crazy Horse, Spearfish Canyon, Wind Cave, Jewel Cave, Custer State Park, and Devils Tower, to name a few sites. It would make an ideal vacation headquarters, as this site points out.

Gas Prices

Here’s a site I learned about during the big price run-up in 2008. Actually, it wasn’t just the prices I was worried about – just FINDING gas is often a challenge.

First off, you can add GasBuddy.com to your Google maps. I went to google.com and entered “gas prices” in the search box. The first link was to Google Maps, with easy instructions to add prices to the overlay. You can also go to http://www.gasbuddy.com to get the widget. I find this interface tough to use, but by clicking through I got to http://www.southdakotagasprices.com/Map_Gas_Prices.aspx and the map of “gas temperature” comes up. This is a graphical representation of where prices are red hot. The trick here is to set the time limit in the bottom right corner to “All Stations.” That way each gas station shows up, even if the reported information is “old.”

Google Earth hack

http://www.gearthhacks.com/dlfile10754/-Homestake-Gold-Mine,-South-Dakota.htm

I’ll just assume you already have Google Earth loaded, since it’s such a great tool for checking an area before you visit. Label this link under “advanced” Google Earth – it’s a user-created “hack.” This is pretty neat – if you already have Google Earth installed, click on the link for the .kmz file and you’ll bring up the Homestake Mine.

Amateur Geologist

http://www.amateurgeologist.com/roadside-geology-of-south-dakota.html

This site is always a good source of information if you’re trying to puzzle out some likely spots missed by earlier prospectors. You’ll need to understand schists, quartz veins, dikes, sills, pegmatites, and ancient metamorphic rocks if you want to sort out the Black Hills geology. Roadside Geology of South Dakota is often sold with the Geological Highway Map for the Northern Great Plains region.

SD Department of Energy and Natural Resources

http://denr.sd.gov/des/mm/forms.aspx

Get a small-scale mining permit at the DENR’s “one-stop shopping” site. Check out the FAQ if you have questions. A small miners permit – a state level permit issued by the DENR – is required for anyone who uses motorized equipment, such as a dredge or high banker or panning wheel. It appears that if you want to use a bucket, shovel, and sluice, you also need to check in, but it’s always good practice anyway. At the very least, contact the National Forest if you are planning to do anything other than pan and trowel work. But it’s a good idea to just get the permit and start accumulating concentrates by the bucket.

Broken Boot Gold Mine

http://www.brokenbootgoldmine.com

The Broken Boot Mine is noted for its underground tours. It wasn’t the greatest gold mine, but makes for a dark underground experience. Here’s a snip from their home page: “…gold wasn’t the only metal Seim and Nelson found in their mine. They also found plenty of iron pyrite, or fool’s gold. Fortunately for the miners, iron pyrite was in demand. Since it could be used to make sulfuric acid, which was used in the processing of real gold, the miners could get decent money for iron pyrite. Indeed, the mine made more profit from selling fool’s gold than they did real gold.”

South Dakota history

http://www.infoplease.com/ce6/us/A0861208.html

If you just want a snapshot of the history of the Black Hills, Infoplease is a good site. Here’s a snip:

“Rumors of gold in the Black Hills, confirmed by a military expedition led by George A. Custer in 1874, excited national interest, and wealth seekers began to pour into the area. However, much of the Black Hills region had been granted (1868) to the Sioux by treaty, and when they refused to sell either mining rights or the reservation itself, warfare again broke out. The defeat (1876) of Custer and his men by Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and Gall in the battle of the Little Bighorn (in what is now Montana) did not prevent the whites from gradually acquiring more and more Native American land, including the gold-lined Black Hills.”

If you want to spend hours tracking down obscure historical facts, there’s no better site than the South Dakota State Historical Society. The link is http://www.sdhistory.org.

Ghosttowns.com is still one of my favorites. Try http://www.ghosttowns.com and click on South Dakota. Then you’ll get a list of old towns, such as Rochford or Rockerville. Be sure to think of them if you return from the area with photos, as they can use all the updated information and photographs they can get.

South Dakota GPAA

http://www.blackhillsprospectingclub.com

The site isn’t real active, but it’s a good start. I always get the best information when I talk to a GPAA member directly. The phone number is listed as (605) 341-0483 but is subject to change. Check in the Pick and Shovel Newsletter (free with membership) for the most updated info on state claims committees.

Geocommunicator

http://www.geocommunicator.gov

Since that’s where three of the four GPAA claims in South Dakota are located, I used the BLM’s Geocommunicator site to check the Rapid Creek area in Pennington County for active and abandoned claims. Here’s a snapshot of the area from the BLM’s LR2000 database:

Figure 4. Active claims on Rapid Creek as shown by the Geocommunicator tool.

Note that if I were to flip the switch on this display to show the expired claims, most of the streams and creeks in this area were under claim at one time, but there are a few open spots now.

Treasurefish

With all that gold mineralization in the Black Hills, you know there is bound to be some rockhounding as well. I checked Treasurefish and got this report about South Dakota:

“Don’t forget the gems - The State's best known chalcedony is its colorful and beautiful Fairburn agates. Named after a community near a very prolific agate deposit in Custer County, these brightly colored banded agates are similar to Lake Superior agates found in Michigan and Dryhead agates from Montana. The color patterns are alternating bands with one of the bands always white. The colors that alternate with white include yellowish-brown, dark red, salmon pink, black, yellow, grayish-blue, and milky-pink.

“The agate nodules range in size from about 20 millimeters in diameter to some that weigh as much as 20 kilograms. The nodules are recovered from the weathering of the Chadron Formation in an elongated belt covering parts of Custer, Pennington, and Shannon Counties, with the community of Fairburn at about the center of the belt. Nodules similar to the Fairburn nodules weather out of a limestone formation in an area that includes parts of Custer and Fall River Counties.

Other varieties of agate are found in the State. Moss agate, much like the famous Montana moss agate, can be found in river gravels of the Little Missouri River system in Harding County. A wide variety of agate can be found in the gravel pits in the entire eastern part of the State.”

The reliable Western Gem Hunter’s Atlas (Cy Johnson & Son, 1994) has good information about South Dakota. Here’s a snip of their map for the area around Deadwood and Custer.

Figure 5. Rockhounding map of western South Dakota, from Johnson (1994).

Summary

This should be enough to get anyone started on a fantastic trip to South Dakota. You can see why the reader got the idea in the first place – the place drips with history, the gold should be good, and there are a lot of things to see in the nearby area. I can even suggest a snip from a Beatles song to hum to yourself as you tour the area:

Now somewhere in the black mountain hills of Dakota
There lived a young boy named Rocky Raccoon…

Garret Romaine writes from Portland, Oregon.

Stevens Pass, Washington

2011-02-21T21:08:00.000-08:00

As gold rushes go, the area to the west of Stevens Pass, Washington was just a minor footnote in western history. Located about 50 miles east of Seattle, the old mining districts were often located in remote, steep terrain, where rain and snow made conditions miserable. Today, few traces exist, yet there are still colors in several of the creeks, including my favorite, Money Creek.

In this article, I’ll describe a prospecting trip in late September, 2009 that took me to several different locales. I can update you on some of the road conditions, and maybe give you a few ideas of your own. The major producer in this general area was the Monte Cristo district, mostly wrapped up in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness Area and off-limits. So we hit it briefly, then concentrated on the next drainage south, along the Skykomish River, including Beckler River, Foss River, Miller River, Money Creek, the Sultan River, and the North Fork of the Skykomish.

Background

First, let’s understand where the area fits into historic gold mining in Washington, by consulting “old reliable” – U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 610:

“Gold was first discovered in the state in 1853 in the Yakima River valley by a party under the command of Capt. George McClelland exploring for a possible railroad route (Huntting, 1955, p. 28). By 1855, prospectors were active in the Colville district, although the first discoveries were not made until 1883. In 1855, small placers were found along the Columbia and Pend Oreille Rivers. From the 1850s through the 1890s, placers were worked along streams in Okanogan, Whatcom, Chelan, and Kittitas Counties and along the major streams of the state – the Columbia and Snake Rivers. By 1900, however, most of the placer deposits were exhausted.” (Koschmann and Bergendahl, 1968, p. 260)

For Snohomish County, the authors have a little more detail of interest:

“In south-central Snohomish County gold was produced from several districts in the western part of the Cascade Range. These districts – Monte Cristo, Index, Silverton, Silver Creek and Sultan—are more or less contiguous and occupy an area about 10 miles wide and 20 miles long extending from about the center of the county south to the King County boundary…The Monte Cristo and Silverton districts produced most of the gold in the county. Patty (1921, p. 282) estimated that the combined early production of all metals, but mostly gold, from these districts was worth $7 million. From 1903 through 1956, production was 9,595 ounces of lode gold and 535 ounces of placer gold.

“Spurr (1901, p. 804-805) believed that ore deposition began in late Pliocene or early Pleistocene and continued to the Recent. The most important deposits are mineralized joints within or near tonalite masses. Ore minerals are galena, sphalerite, chalcopyrite, pyrite, and arsenopyrite. An upper zone, with is nearest the surface, contains galena, sphalerite, and chalcopyrite and is richer in gold and silver…” (p. 261)

So what does that mean? Basically, you’re looking for sulphides, including fool’s gold, or pyrite. Western Washington’s incessant rain will turn sulphides veins black by liberating sulphur, and sometimes you can even sniff out a pyrite-rich zone.

Here’s a rough map of the major gold areas we’re talking about, taken from the Gold Digger’s Atlas:

Figure 1. Gold districts near Stevens Pass, WA. Cick it to make it larger.

Monte Cristo

Area	Monte Cristo
GPS reading	48.01887, -121.44429
Land Status	US Forest Service
Activity	Panning
Warning(s)	Active claim near road; Old mines on private land
Waterway	South Fork Sauk River
Nearest town	Darrington

Figure 2. Mountains near Monte Cristo.

The simplest way to reach Monte Cristo is to drive south from Darrington on the Mountain Loop Highway, which is actually a gravel road in its more remote stretches. There is plenty of camping in the area, with primitive spots throughout but also organized camps, especially out of Verlot. At Barlow Pass, you’ll usually spot many cars parked along the road near the trail head. Be sure to lock your valuables. You’ll need to hike about a half-mile, as there is an active claim along the S. Fk. Sauk River.

This GPS reading is right on the road; it’s the best early place to hike down to the water on the easy, level trail. There is a big jumble of mossy boulders; go a little further, and you should locate a trail to the river that is short and doesn’t take you through the underbrush. Gravels are extensive here. Look for traps up and down the river. Rockhounding material includes gneiss, schist, quartz, granite, marble, etc. We chose a spot at the head of a big gravel bar and found good black sand in the first pan, and color in the second pan. The quantity of the black sand and the size of the colors increased with depth. Fill in your big holes.

There are mines everywhere in the hills above the ghost town, but most are private. It’s a gorgeous area, great for a day hike to the town site of Monte Cristo, now barely recognizable. Rockhounds talk about decent quartz crystals at high elevation above Monte Cristo. We took a detour up to a famed garnet collecting area on Sloan Creek, out of Bedal, but the road was washed out and we ended up collecting small garnets until we lost the battle with horse flies near the Sloan Creek trail head.

Traffic gets heavy along this scenic highway during the summer, and many tight passing spots along the loop are dangerous. Not all drivers are as courteous as you’d like them to be. Heavy rains have washed out this road in the past, and there is no way to predict if the road will always be open; be sure to email or phone the Snoqualmie-Baker National Forest at Darrington any time you plan a trip up here.

Beckler River

GPS reading	47.73496, -121.33371
Land Status	US Forest Service
Activity	Panning for small garnets
Warning(s)	None
Waterway	Beckler River
Nearest town	Skykomish

The rest of the locales in this article are south of Monte Cristo, in the Skykomish drainage. We camped in the Beckler River campground, a very nice spot with no road noise from US Highway 2. An outcrop of garnet schist up river from the camp provides lots of garnets in the river gravels, and a little black sand, but we didn’t pull any colors from this locale.

A few years ago, the road looped from Skykomish, up Beckler River, then down to the Index area and back to Highway 2. In 2009, we ran into a sign that indicated the road was open only to local traffic when we were closing in on the old Galena area mines. This means that there is no public access to the Silver Creek district, which is a shame. On the other side of the loop, just outside of Index, the main road to Galena and Silver Creek is badly washed out, also preventing access. It’s a pity, because there is probably a good opportunity to pan from Silver Creek, and anyone interested in a challenging alpine hike can actually reach Monte Cristo by hiking up Silver Creek and across Poodle Dog Pass. Hopefully the road situation will improve in the future if there are enough forests to log up there.

Foss River

GPS reading	47.63053, -121.30924
Land Status	US Forest Service
Activity	Limited panning
Warning(s)	None
Waterway	Foss River
Nearest town	Skykomish

Figure 3. Foss River flood zone.

About two miles east of Skykomish (which has gas and a liquor store) the Foss River Road heads south into the steep mountains. We followed it (also known as NFD 68) for about 6.5 miles, until it dead-ended at the trailhead. There are two old mining claims along the Foss River that date from decades ago, located below Trout Lake. There were hard rock mines around Trout Lake, but the area is accessible only via hiking trail. We walked in a little less than a mile and found a likely spot on the river, but the panning wasn’t that great. We pulled a little black sand, but nothing to brag about, and not enough color to spur us to look harder or longer. Honestly, the area looked like it had witnessed a horrific flood, and most of the small sand was blown away. Before I completely cross it off the list I’d want to hike all the way to the old mines at Trout Lake, but it isn’t high on my list.

Miller River

GPS reading	47.71073, -121.39742
Land Status	US Forest Service
Activity	Panning, sluicing
Warning(s)	None
Waterway	Miller River
Nearest town	Skykomish

Figure 4. Entrance to the Mohawk Mine, near the Miller River.

To reach a good panning spot on Miller River, head west from Skykomish along the Old Cascade Highway about 2.3 miles until you see a left turn, south, on Miller River Road. This is NFD 6410. You’ll join up with the Miller River after less than a mile, and you can start looking for river access. Alternatively, you can turn off of US Highway 2 at the Money Creek campground turnoff, and you’ll see the turn onto Miller River Road after a mile.

We found good gravel bars that contained a tan-brown jasper, and some of it was so swirly that it is called picture jasper. What interested us were the boulders covered with moss, which we sampled with excellent results. There are also several decent bedrock traps, where the black sand was excellent, and the colors got better with depth. Unfortunately, the boulder we were carving under shifted and nearly claimed a miner, so we retired for lunch and moved on. Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Later, we hooked up with Daryl Jacobson of the group Northwest Underground Explorations. They’ve written three books on Washington underground mines, and each is a fabulous resource. Daryl helped us find the trail up to the Mohawk Mine, which was a small prospect along the Miller River. His group had been out recently, and there was flagging along the dim trail, so we easily found the entrance. The miners were apparently chasing a vein of blackened sulphides, and we got a couple samples before leaving.

There is excellent primitive camping throughout the area along Miller River, and the developed Money Creek campground is good, but has a little too much road noise for my tastes.

Money Creek

GPS reading	47.70719, -121.44274
Land Status	US Forest Service
Activity	Panning, sluicing, etc.
Warning(s)	none
Waterway	Money Creek
Nearest town	Skykomish

Figure 5. Mossy boulders along Money Creek.

This was the best spot of the bunch, which must be why it’s called Money Creek. To reach our spot, turn off US Highway 2 at Money Creek, go past the campground, over the railroad tracks, and about a mile from US 2, look for the sign for Miller River. As soon as you turn onto Miller River Road, look for Money Creek Road. This is NFD 6420. Take it for about 2.3 miles to reach our spot, but you can stop anywhere creek access looks likely.

We found more of the tan picture jasper in Money Creek, and petrified wood is reported from the gravels in this area. There is bedrock here, which makes for excellent gravity traps, and the moss mining and crevicing was fantastic. The black sand was abundant, and we got color with the first pan. Again, there is good primitive camping all along the creek, and the developed Money Creek campground is OK, just close to US 2.

If the road isn’t washed out, the Washington State Mineral Council used to mount an annual expedition to the Damon & Pythias Mine on NFD 6422. If you enjoy going underground, your best option is to hook up with WSMC because they get the right keys to the right gates and get to swing their picks in the mine itself. There is nothing like seeing a little pinpoint of daylight at the end of a long mine tunnel, if you’ve never experienced that sensation.

Sultan County Park

GPS reading	48.01887, -121.44429
Land Status	US Forest Service
Activity	Light panning
Warning(s)	No dredging in the park
Waterway	Sultan River
Nearest town	Sultan

Because the water was low and there wasn’t much going on, we stopped at the county park right on the Sultan River, practically in “downtown” Sultan. Take Albion Street north into the park, and angle over to where the river forms a nice elbow. There is an impressive little gravel bar there, and for many folks, this is about as close as you’re ever going to get to the Sultan placers. Since it’s a park, we didn’t go crazy, but we dug a couple holes on the inside bend of the elbow and panned out a lot of black sand before the rain drove us off. This is one of those spots where you might draw a crowd, you’d have to fill in your holes completely, and you might even make a good show of picking up some litter.

The problem with the Sultan River is access. We wanted to hook up with the Washington Prospectors and have them show us around the Sultan basin, but we managed to choose one of the wettest weekends of the year, so those plans fell apart. Way back when I was in graduate school at the University of Washington my wife signed me up for a non-credit gold panning class as a birthday gift. The class met at Horseshoe Bend, on the Sultan River, below the canyon and the dam. It’s on private utility land, and was open back then, but for the last ten years Horseshoe Bend has been off-limits. The spot was listed in old GPAA Claims Guides in the mid-1990s, but again, it is no longer open.

In fact, the best spots on the Sultan are claimed up by the big Washington club, and they wince every time the local magazines and newspapers write a story about weekend panners and the high price of gold. The inevitable result is that too many folks come out, end up getting lost or confused, accidentally trespass or claim jump, and generally cause problems. So I didn’t even stray up the Sultan, and I don’t advise that you do, either, unless you join the club first.

Sultan Bridge

GPS reading	47.86002, -121.81380
Land Status	US Forest Service
Activity	Panning
Warning(s)	Bit of a hike
Waterway	Skykomish River
Nearest town	Sultan

Figure 6. Short beach near Sultan bridge.

Barring access to the Sultan River itself, you can do some decent panning around the point where the Sultan dumps its load near the Sultan Bridge. You should be able to spot a fisherman’s access and parking area just across the Skykomish River from Sultan. At 5^th Street, cross the river on Ben Howard Road, but once you reach the other bank, look for the parking area. There are two trails from the lot – one goes more or less northeast, while the other goes northwest. We tried the northeast route first and reached a steep bank with a small beach, and what looked like the pilings to an old bridge. Just for grins, we scraped some moss into a plastic bag someone had littered, and when we got it back to camp, we washed the moss in a five-gallon bucket and poured a good sample into a pan. The pan held a nice showing of black sand and a fine line of tiny gold pinpoints.

If you go on the other trail, which is longer, you can access a gravel bar directly across the Skykomish from the mouth of the Sultan River. The bedrock isn’t accessible, so you’re limited to float gold trapped in the gravels, or more moss mining.

Skykomish River

GPS reading	47.84517, -121.92648
Land Status	US Forest Service
Activity	Panning, crevicing
Warning(s)	Fishing spot
Waterway	Skykomish River
Nearest town	Monroe

Figure 7. Bedrock along the south shore of the Skykomish River near Monroe.

Because so many mines dot the hills above the Skykomish River, and gold enters in from the Sultan River, Miller River, Foss River, North Fork of the Skykomish, and Money Creek, we gave the big river a chance outside of Monroe. To reach this spot, from Monroe drive south on Lewis Street, which is also WA 203, for a mile until you reach Ben Howard Road. Take Ben Howard for about 2.1 miles until you spot the fisherman’s access point.

This public access spot has a bedrock outcrop at the upper end, and it’s covered with moss. There are gravity traps in the crevices that replenish constantly. The gravel bar itself can be crowded with fishermen during the fall season, but when its less occupied, you can rockhound the gravels for lots of interesting material for the tumbler.

Summary

The Steven Pass area has a lot more mining history than you might think. We sampled from multiple spots in a fascinating three-day tour, then set up a few of our panning machines in camp to figure out which area was best. Hands down, Money Creek was the winner. We ended up with the best colors and the most black sand from Money Creek, but Miller River wasn’t bad. The Sultan is promising, and spots on the Skykomish, such as the Gold Bar area, or our bedrock discovery near Monroe, were decent enough.

The Washington State Department of Natural Resources wants you to have a “Gold and Fish Pamphlet” with you whenever you pan, but the good news is that they finally relented and you can pick it up off their website, rather than get it mailed to you. Without the pamphlet, you can get a ticket, so be sure to follow up with the links below.

Links

Department of Natural Resources

Info on collecting, plus the home of the infamous Washington minerals checklist.

http://wdfw.wa.gov/habitat/goldfish/

Geology Adventures

Bob Jackson leads Washington field trips for newcomers and experts alike, priced accordingly. If you liked Hansen Creek, try Spruce Ridge or Big Rock Candy Mine.

http://geologyadventures.com/

National Forest pages

Crucial for road and fire information; always good to check in before you visit. Links to all Washington and Oregon forest offices.

http://www.fs.fed.us/r6/r6nf.htm

Washington Geology Maps

Those pretty colored maps that show the bedrock geology. Interactive; describes formations.

http://wa_geology.home.comcast.net/

Washington Prospectors Mining Association

Energetic group with tons of gold knowledge. Plus, they own their own claims.

http://www.washingtonprospectors.org/

Washington State Mineral Council

The grand-daddy of all Washington rock clubs.

http://www.mineralcouncil.org/

Bibliography

Johnson, Robert Neil, Gold Diggers Atlas. Cy Johnson & Son, Susanville, California. 1971; 64 pgs.

Koschman, A.H. and Bergendahl, M. H., U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 610: Principal Gold-Producing Districts of the United States, 1968. 283 pgs.

Northwest Underground Explorations, Discovering Washington’s Historic Mines, Vol. 1: The West Central Cascade Mountains. Oso Publishing Co., Arlington, WA. 1997. 230 pgs.

Garret Romaine is the author of Gem Trails of Washington, Gem Trails of Oregon, and Rockhounding Idaho.

Ghost Towns of Wyoming - Bald Mountain

2011-02-21T20:51:00.000-08:00

During my travels to gold prospecting locales across the west, I’m often struck by the cold hard fact that some towns seem born to die out. Promising mines turn stingy at depth, or prices collapse; then the towns dry up and blow away. Often, there’s not much left but a tailings pile and some concrete foundations around the mill.

Sometimes it seems like the vast interior of the country is emptying out, but it’s always been that way. Gold prospectors know the history of the west better than most, as we can almost recite the stories about towns rising and falling with each new rumor. The ghost towns we know about are usually way up in the mountains, at the end of a long, bumpy road, and revolve around a big mine. The trade-off is that the more remote the old ghost town, the more likely that there are still good colors in the creeks and interesting specimens on the tailings piles.

For example, I’ve been spending the winter months researching gold districts in Wyoming. I hope to write my next general rockhounding book on the state, and I’ve been learning a lot as I dig in. One ghost town that came up in my reading was “Bald Mountain City,” which I had a tough time tracking down.

Gold In Wyoming

First, let me give a little background. Wyoming is known for two major gold districts: the Atlantic City/South Pass region, more or less in the upper Sweetwater River drainage, and the Keystone/Douglas Creek area, a reliable producer south of Laramie. The GPAA Claims Guide shows member claims in both districts, and if all you had time for was a trip to haul in some Wyoming gold, those would definitely be your first ventures. With the recent rise in gold, many old claims have been renewed, so it’s comforting to know that your membership provides full, legal access to claims in the two main gold districts in Wyoming.

However, my research takes me in a different direction; I want to know about other mineralized areas where rockhounds can find interesting material. So I’m always looking for locales that might be off the beaten path in order to come up with 150-200 sites in the state to check out. It’s comforting to know that there are additional mineralized areas to explore among all the Wyoming granite.

Using a simple Google search such as “gold in Wyoming,” I located and downloaded W. Dan Hausel’s excellent write-up, named “Searching for Gold in Wyoming.” The booklet is available as an Adobe Acrobat .PDF file and listed as Information Pamphlet #9. In the back, on the gold districts map (see figure 1), I saw a reference to Bald Mountain, located in a northern section of the Big Horn Mountains, north of Greybull. That was where my search started.

Figure 1. Principal mineralized areas and mining districts in Wyoming, from GeoCommunicator. Click on it to make it bigger.

GhostTowns.Com

I checked in another of Hausel’s Wyoming books, and found a reference to Bald Mountain City. When I Googled that, I found a note on http://www.ghosttowns.com. Here’s the report:

“Discoveries of fine-grained gold north of Bald Mountain were made in 1890. ‘Gold Fever’ brought many prospectors to the area over the next 10 years. In 1892, the Fortunatas Mining and Milling Company purchased a group of claims on the head of the Little Big Horn River and Porcupine Creek. The excitement led to the establishment of Bald Mountain City, the most extensive attempt at a settlement in the Big Horn Mountains. The gold rush ended by 1900 because yields were not enough to pay for the effort of panning. No current residents. The city's remains lie just east of the Medicine Wheel National Historic Site in the Big Horn National Forest, just off Highway 14A.
No buildings remain standing, only log foundations, metal scrap, etc. Look for clumps of trees where buildings once stood. SUBMITTED BY: Kevin J. Tupps.”

You might notice that there aren’t any good directions in that write-up. I’ve spent hours in fruitless search trying to find a locale with about the same information. I met a rockhound the other day who searched for an abandoned mine for THREE DAYS and was still upset about the adventure. So I was hoping that Google Earth might show me where the actual city ruins lay.

Here’s a case where Google Earth isn’t that helpful; I typed in “Bald Mountain City, WY” in the Fly To box, and nothing came back. The problem is that Google Earth is completely up to date, and unless a place name stuck, and people still live there, you can’t use their data to search for a ghost town. So I tried a back-door trick with Google Maps, located at http://www.maps.google.com. If you turn on the “terrain” feature, instead of just maps, you sometimes get place names.

Again, no luck. Bald Mountain City just didn’t stick. Instead, I got referred to City Park Drive in Boulder, Colorado. So I worked the old-fashioned way, tracing out US 14 keystroke by keystroke, ranging north and south. I finally located Little Bald Mountain, and then Bald Mountain, right along the road. I figured Bald Mountain City must be on the flanks of Bald Mountain.

GeoCommunicator

So I turned next to my stealthy trick to access topographic maps online: GeoCommunicator. Browse to http://www.geocommunicator.gov and click the link for “Mining Claim Map.” Then you just click your way to happiness. The BLM has performed yet another overhaul of the interface, and you can now drag your way across maps much easier. I use the World Street Map for a base until I pinpoint an area, and then switch to the Topo Map as I zero in. Because I had a good idea of where to look, it didn’t take long to strike electronic pay dirt.

Ranging north from Bald Mountain, I got lucky. I found Porcupine Creek, and it looked like it was open for panning. The next thing I noticed was Gold Creek, slightly east. That was a good start, and then I saw Half Ounce Creek, just to the north. I kept clicking to get the best resolution, and the map finally changed into that familiar topographic map format. And there it was: Bald Mountain City (site). I saw several prospect symbols north of town, a lot of abandoned four-wheel drive (4WD) roads, and sadly, a 20-acre placer claim on Half Ounce Creek. The good news was that the claim didn’t extend all the way to the Little Big Horn River, and Gold Creek was completely open. I snipped a little of the map in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Topo Map from GeoCommunicator shows the location of Bald Mountain City. Note current claim, indicated by rectangular hatched area along Half Ounce Creek. Click on it to make it bigger.

So now, using Google Earth, I tried to pinpoint the “modern” location of Bald Mountain City. I found what I was looking for and clicked the “My Place” push-pin icon, then dragged it to where I wanted it, entered a name, etc. Once in place, I right-clicked on the icon and asked for directions from Lovell, Wyoming, which I figured was near enough. I just wanted to turn off US 14.

From Lovell, drive east on US-14 about 40 miles. Turn north onto Sheep Mountain Road, and drive about 0.6 miles. (Google Earth thinks there is a short-cut here, but I’ve learned over the years that you can’t count on most of them, and if there is a main road, trust it for your mileage reading.) Take a right onto Forest Service Road 125, go about 1.4 miles, then dip down to the right for a tenth of a mile. There should be debris here to mark the old town. The GPS coordinates I’m using (until I can get there and verify them) are: 44.8063502, -107.7892637.

The next step will have to be a personal visit, sampling Porcupine Creek, Gold Creek, Half Ounce Creek, and the Little Big Horn River itself. I’ve never been to the site of Custer’s Last Stand, but I know it was on the Little Big Horn River, so here’s an opportunity to pan for gold on the same body of water. If one of you gets out there before me, please report your find!

Other Wyoming Resources

Wyoming Historical Society

One piece of data that can really aid a search for an old ghost town is the use of historical maps. At the Wyoming Historical Society, I found a page with plenty of old maps: http://wyshs.org/node/35. For example, on an old map for the Fort Bridger area, way stations for the Pony Express jump off the page. The rest of the maps on that page also show forts, corrals, way stations, and other historical information that could come in handy.

Wyoming Tales and Trails

http://www.wyomingtalesandtrails.com

This is a great site for poking around, with 900 photos and well-indexed stories about locales all over the state of Wyoming. The music was a little jarring the first time it kicked in, but I got used to it as I just kept looking around. I unearthed some corroboration for the Ghost Towns.com information on the Meeteetse page:

“Charles L. Tewksbury… was the manager of the Wyoming Mining & Milling Co. Previously, he had been the superintendent of the Fortunatus Mining Company's short lived but expensive efforts at gold mining near Bald Mountain City west of Dayton, Wyoming. In 1895 startling information was revealed as to the discovery of a rich claim at Bald Mountain. Mining machinery was hauled up the steep slopes by ox team from Dayton. In all, Fortunatus poured in about a half million dollars into the effort, all for naught. In late 1896, mining engineer and professor of chemistry and geology at the University of Montana, Fred D. Smith, in the Engineering and Mining Journal exposed the claims as being exaggerated. Although some mining continued near Bald Mountain City as late as 1903 and a revival was tried in 1937, the gold was not commercially viable. Today, Bald Mountain City lies abandoned with nothing to show that it was the site of a gold rush.”

Thunder Mountain Tours

http://www.thundermountaintours.com/tours.htm

If you want to take the family on a guided tour of not only Bald Mountain City but the Hole in the Wall camp used by Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, check out the tours page.

Where to Find Gold

http://www.iowagold.com/WHERE_TO_FIND_GOLD_USA_PAGES/wyoming_gold.htm

This web page has extensive information about most of the gold locales in the western US. Here’s what they say about Bald Mountain City:

“In T54N R87W, the Mosaic Claim produced lode gold. West of Sheridan about 60 miles on U.S. 14 and 14 Alt., on top of the Big Horn Mountains, take the north trending dirt road to the Bald Mountain area in T56N R91W. This is the old site of Bald Mountain City. Sometimes this old city was called "Baldy". It is at an elevation of 9,000 feet on the headwaters of the Little Big Horn River. There were many old mines in the area. North from here toward Montana line, in the disintegrated granite you will find fine grained free milling gold. 1 mile west of Sheridan you will find the old log structures of the old Forunatus Mill. The area around the Mill contains intrusive dikes or chimneys that have minor amounts of gold in them.”

Scenic Driving Wyoming

Here’s an excerpt from the book, which I also found with my Google search:

“The granite rocks in this area contain small amounts of gold-bearing quartz. Prospectors discovered fine-grained gold near here in 1890. Word spread and people flocked to the area, drawn by dreams of wealth. In 1892, the Fortunatas Mining and Milling Company bought some claims north of the highway at the headwaters of the Little Bighorn River and Porcupine Creek. Bald Mountain City, the largest attempt at settlement in the Big Horn Mountains, was founded. The cold, high elevation made life difficult for the miners. Yields were poor for the amount of hard labor required. The boom soon ended because no strikes large enough to be worthwhile were made. After the mining petered out, the town was quickly abandoned and little remains today, other than place names such as Gold Creek and Half Ounce Creek. Bald Mountain Campground, about a half mile down the road from the interpretive pullout, has sites sheltered from the wind by a grove of evergreens. About a mile past the campground is the turnoff on the right for the Medicine Wheel, another worthy side trip…Archaeologists are uncertain about the origins of the Medicine Wheel. Studies indicate that it may have been built sometime between A.D. 1200 and 1700…”

GNIS

http://geonames.usgs.gov

While drifting around looking for more information about Bald Mountain City, I stumbled across the Geographic Names Information System (GNIS). I wish I’d seen it earlier. I clicked on “Search Domestic Names” and brought up a query form. I entered the information for Bald Mountain City and up it came. Not only that, it listed two alternate names: Bald City, and City of Broken Dreams. Over on the right side of the page is box of Mapping Services, including Virtual Earth, MapQuest, Google Maps, TerraFly, and TerraServer DRG, a topographical map server. Best of all, you don’t have to re-key the GPS coordinates, because the system automatically links you. At least I was able to confirm the GPS coordinates I interpreted from earlier on.

Summary

In closing, consider the words of W. Dan Hausel, the expert on Wyoming’s mineral riches that I mentioned earlier. I excerpted some of his advice from Information Circular #9: “The search for productive gold deposits requires a good background in prospecting and economic geology as well as some luck. There are still many placer and lode deposits to be found, although the discovery of entirely new mining districts is rare. In all my years as an exploration geologist, I have only been able to find one new gold district. However, I have found many gold deposits within known districts. Some of the better areas to search for gold are historical mining districts... In my experience, it is rare that any ore deposit has been completely mined out. Many historical and modern mines still contain workable mineral deposits as well as nearby deposits that have been overlooked. Many well-known giant mining companies of the past were notorious for overlooking significant ore deposits. Thus, one could potentially make a living just following up on the exploration projects of many of these past giants [as well as some projects of present giants].”

Garret Romaine is the author of Gem Trails of Washington, Gem Trails of Oregon, and Rockhounding Idaho,

Lake Chelan

2011-02-21T20:23:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite things about gold prospecting is the opportunity to visit and explore new places. I have been to areas so far off the beaten track that the hustle and bustle of civilization seemed like a distant memory. Other times, I’m pretty sure I was the only one in the crowd that was thinking about gold panning. That’s what happened last Labor Day when I took a long, 50-mile ferry ride up Lake Chelan, Washington to the Stehekin River.

To set up the trip, I relied on Internet links to the local chamber of commerce, to various services companies, and for historic information. It went pretty smoothly, too, and there was still enough of a spirit of discovery to stop at local wineries, fruit stands, and viewpoints to keep my partner interested.

Figure 1. Map showing the route through several northern Washington gold districts.

One good link to use when planning a trip to Washington is www.experiencewa.com. You can use the links on this page to to run down activities, lodging, dining, and other tourism-related topics. If you know the state, you probably don’t need this much information, but if you’re new to the Pacific Northwest, these folks can help. Their Travel Planner “catalog” is thick and impressive.

History

The name Stehekin is taken from the Skagit Indian word, which means “the way through.” Crossing the North Cascades proved a challenge for Indians and trappers alike, but it was possible to track up Lake Chelan, follow the Stehekin to its source basin, and drop back over to the western side of the Cascades.

Once mineralization was discovered at the headwaters of the Stehekin River, there were immense challenges in getting any ore to the smelter at Tacoma. According to the Northwest Underground Explorers, “The majority of the Stehekin mining area is underlain by pre-Upper Jurassic gneisses, many migmatic in nature. To the northeast of the Stehekin River lies an exposed, narrow band of pre-Upper Jurassic metamorphic rocks, running from southeast to northwest. The headwaters of Bridge Creek rise in Tertiary-Cretaceous, intrusive, igneous, granitic rock that contacts the gneisses along a broad zone in the region of the McGregor Mountain ridge. The mineral bearing zones were found throughout the gneisses and along the contacts between dissimilar rocks. The area is not heavily mineralized, and with few exceptions, mining never really gained a foothold there. Several of the properties assay highest in gold or silver, but by far the majority assay highest in lead.” (vol. 2, p. 35)

At the Skagit River journal site, found at http://www.skagitriverjournal.com/Portal/MiningSec.html you can get an overview of the history of North Cascades mining, and in particular the Skagit district, which was the first big rush to the area. “Jack and George Rouse [actually Jack C. Rouse and George L. Rowse] were among the first prospectors in the district and located the Boston mine. The district also had its lost mine like other places. A company of solders came over the pass in the early days and one of them found some rock that reportedly showed much gold. It was later searched for and the Soldier Boy claim was located on what was thought to be the place the gold-bearing rock came from. The only ore I took [from] there showed only iron pyrite. . . .”

Although the Rouse was happy mining in Washington, he, too, felt the call of the Yukon:

“…George decided to follow gold seekers to the Klondike river region of southeast Alaska in 1898. He initially staked a claim on Seventy-mile creek and then in the fall, he returned to Dawson to work in a claim on Bonanza Creek. But in 1899 he went first to Nome and then returned to Seattle via Dutch Harbor, deciding that Washington mines were more promising. He missed the Nome gold rush by a year. From then on, according to the 1904 book, he invested ‘his entire time and energy to the development of the properties above mentioned’ at the Boston Mine.”

According to Roy Mayo, in his book Washington State Gold Mines, “Placer gold has been found on beaches in several places on Lake Chelan. Many creeks along the upper part of the lake will produce some gold. Railroad Creek has had several good placers. The Stehekin River has produced placer gold for several miles above it’s mouth.” (p. 58) It was Mayo’s information that first spurred me to explore the upper area of Lake Chelan.

Getting there

The route we took was circuitous, to say the least. We drove up I-5 to Sedro-Woolley and turned east on WA 20, going through Concrete and Marblemount to reach Ross Lake National Recreation Area and the North Cascades National Park. Here’s a link for the North Cascades park complex: http://www.nps.gov/noca. The first night, we camped at Goodell Campground. You can find a map of the site at http://www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/upload/Goodell.pdf. This campground has great access to the river, but it’s close to the highway, and a better choice would probably have been Newhalem, only another mile up the road. Here’s the map: http://www.nps.gov/noca/planyourvisit/upload/newhalem%20loops.pdf.

In fact, the campgrounds are so close together that a National Park Service ranger came through in the morning and invited us over to Newhalem for coffee and cobbler. I poked my nose into the gift shop to see if any of my rockhounding books were on sale there (they weren’t) and picked up an annual parking pass.

For day 2, I did some exploring for an upcoming book on gold prospecting in the Pacific Northwest. There’s no contract and no schedule, so mostly it was a great excuse to check out a couple of spots in Washington’s obscure North Cascades area. Plus, it’s a very scenic route. First, we checked around the Ruby Arm of Ross Lake. We parked at the Canyon Creek trail head, then hiked past the cabin and sampled a few spots up Canyon Creek. Thanks to my membership in the Washington Prospectors Mining Association, I was there by permission. You can check them out at http://www.washingtonprospectors.org.

Figure 2. Scenic Diablo Lake, part of the North Cascades National Park.

This low on Canyon Creek, I didn’t find much coarse gold. There was good black sand, plenty of moss on most of the boulders, and nice exposures of bedrock right in the water. The concentrates also contain beautiful, if small, purple-red garnets. Even this late in the summer, the water was numbingly cold.

After that we drove over Washington Pass and stopped at the scenic viewpoint. The Golden Horn Batholith juts out here, and rockhounds have pecked at the edges of the granite pluton for years, searching for quartz crystals and other specimens. Lanny Ream’s book Gems and Minerals of Washington is a great source of information if you’re interested.

We continued on to Mazama, turned north by northwest, and set our sights on Hart’s Pass. The road is steep and narrow in places, and definitely gets your attention, but the views of the Methow River valley are amazing. I thought the slate outcrops were pretty nice, too. We reached the pass and turned off to the southwest to access Slate Creek. This area is claimed up pretty well, but again I was there by permission, and I did very well. In just under an hour of panning and picking at crevices, I was able to recover some coarse flakes very quickly. I found a spot right on bedrock, with moss, crevices, crooks and crannies, and I came away very impressed. I would definitely go back to Slate Creek.

Figure 3. Methow Valley, from the road to Hart's Pass.

From there we backtracked to Mazama and continued east on WA 20 to Winthrop, a very fun little town that was really hopping for the Labor Day weekend. We skipped several more gold districts on the Twisp River and on the Methow River so that we could get to a motel in Pateros. Just a warning: just about every motel and resort in Chelan wanted a three-night minimum for the Labor Day weekend, and most were completely full.

The third day, we got up early and drove to the ferry by 8:30 a.m., then settled in for a long boat ride up Lake Chelan. You’ll find complete schedule and passenger information at http://www.ladyofthelake.com. We opted for a combo of fast ride up, three-hour layover, and then a slow ride back. It was a warm day, and it felt very relaxing to nod off and feel the heavy sound of the straining diesel engines.

Figure 4. The only way to get to the mouth of the Stehekin River is by float plane or ferry.

One side note – the boat does stop at Railroad Creek, which is a known gold producer. I opted to skip that prospect, but it’s there for another time. Most of the old guides and atlases mention Railroad Creek and the Holden Mine, so if anyone ever checks it out, I’d sure like to hear about it.

Once at Stehekin, we quickly rented bicycles at Discovery Rentals. These folks were fantastic, getting us on the road in no time. Here’s their website: http://stehekindiscoverybikes.com. Next, we headed north on nice 18-speed mountain bikes. We stopped for a box lunch at the bakery, officially called The Stehekin Pastry Company (http://www.stehekinpastry.com). Their sandwiches are hearty and their service is fast. In no time we were headed up river. About four miles from the boat, around the Company Creek Campground, we were finally out of most of the private land. At about five miles up, there was a nice big bend in the river, with plenty of exposed gravel. If you go too far north, at about 10 miles from the boat dock, you’re into National Park land. As most of us know, there’s no panning in any national park or national monument. So we got above the private land and stayed below the park service boundary. I found a fairly decent spot near the bridge to the campground, too, and since the water was low, I could work in and around some big boulders.

Note that this is one of those perfect opportunities for a fold-up sluice. I had recently purchased the Jobe fold-up sluice, which you can see at http://www.jobewholesale.com/jobe-folding-sluice.htm. I bought mine at Blue Bucket Mining Supplies in Bend, Oregon. Their link is http://www.bluebucketmining.com. My contact there is Tina Vickers, who maintains an active Facebook presence.

I have to confess, that water is COLD! It was hard to stay in for very long. I made some pretty good concentrates, panned occasionally to see how I was doing, and was rewarded with lots of black sand and many very small colors. I can officially report that there is decent color in the Stehekin, and I added my concentrates to the “collection.”

On the way back down from the river, we stopped at Rainbow Falls and checked that off the list – it’s beautiful. The trip back on the lake was relaxing, and I got in a good nap. We reached the dock at a decent time and drove south to Entiat, then up the Entiat River to the Pine Flats campground on the Mad River. The link to check it out is at http://www.us-parks.com/camping/wa/pine-flats-campground.html. There was plenty of room, and we enjoyed a good bonfire that night.

The final day, I got up and sampled the Mad River at several places. The campground had a great access point, but with several big mossy boulders to scratch at. Lower down, below Pine Flats, I found some excellent bedrock exposures where the cracks were lined up perfectly to act as riffles. I sampled them quickly, and found excellent black sand and some decent colors. Next, I sampled some claims on Indian Creek, and the concentrates there were not as promising as I would have liked. But to make up for it, I found several small, gray flakes that are probably platinum.

On the way down, we detoured up Crum Canyon, but there is very little water in this area by late summer. Also, there was lots of private land to negotiate. I ran out of time to check the abandoned mine there.

Figure 5. Overview map of North Cascades in Washington, from Gold Diggers Atlas. Click to make it bigger and more clear.

We came home via Blewett Pass, Liberty, Swauk Creek, and Peshastin. I’ve checked many of the creeks up there in the past, and written up the area for these pages. If you’ve never visited Liberty, or tried your hand in the open recreational area along the Swauk, you’re in for a treat.

Summary

This area is fun to explore in late summer. The temperatures still get hot during the day, but you’ll cool off by night-time. There are many, many old districts to explore, and it’s hard to pick one as “best.” I’ve explored up here several times, but I still have a lot of work to do. But that’s the fun part about this hobby, right?

Additional readings

Mayo, Roy F., Washington State Gold Mines, Nugget Enterprises, Enumclaw, WA. 1983. 80 pgs.

Johnson, Robert Neil, Gold Diggers Atlas, Cy Johnson & Son, Susanville, WA. 1971. 64 pgs.

Koschmann, A. H., and Bergendahl, M. H., Principal Gold-Producting Districts of the United States. U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 610. 1968. 283 pgs.

Northwest Underground Explorations, Discovering Washington’s Historic Mines, Volume 2: The East Central Cascade Mountains and the Wenatchee Mountains. Oso Publishing Co., Hamilton, MT. 2002. 336 pgs.

Northwest Underground Explorations, Discovering Washington’s Historic Mines, Volume 3: The Northern Cascade Mountains. Oso Publishing Co., Hamilton, MT. 2006. 315 pgs.

Ream, Lanny, Gems and Minerals of Washington, 3^rd Ed., Jackson Mountain Press, Renton, WA. 1994. 217 pgs.

Smith, Jerry, Boom Towns and Relic Hunters of Northeastern Washington. Elfin Cove Press, Bellevue, WA. 124 pgs.

Garret Romaine writes from Portland, Oregon. You can find him online through his Facebook page.

Product Report: Gotcha Water Table and Magna-Two Magnetite Remover

2011-02-21T20:09:00.000-08:00

As long as I can remember, I’ve been curious about the gold content of Oregon’s beach sands. I’ve collected concentrates by the bucket, and tried to work them down with my existing tools, but it’s always been something of a fool’s errand. There is so much magnetite that the material is very difficult to pan. What little gold there is can make the head of a pin look like a football field. And there really isn’t that much gold to begin with.

Now, I’m happy to report, I finally found a pair of tools that work on every type of sample possible, including extremely fine beach sands. Reader and inventor Bill Martsolf contacted me recently and asked if I would be interested in trying out the Gotcha Water Table and the Magna-Two magnetite remover. I had collected many concentrate samples over the last couple of years, so I agreed, and he sent them to me right away.

Magna-Two Magnetite Remover

First, I checked out the Magna-Two, which works on dry material. I dumped a few pounds of beach sands into my largest plastic pans, let them dry for a week, and then ran them through my fingers. The material was dark, heavy, and powdery.

Whenever I’ve used magnets to clean sand, I’ve always been nervous about pulling out gold. Indeed, about every time I’ve panned the magnetic sand removed by a magnet, I’ve found pinpricks of gold in there. Maybe you’ve tried it and found the same thing – you grab your big magnet, drag it through the concentrates, and create this big, long, black beard. You just know it’s robbing you.

The Magna-Two solves for that by adding vibration to its magnetic system. You can see from Figure 1 that the contraption is simple. It works on gravity and electricity, and is easy to operate. Turn on the power source, made of eight 1.5V batteries, and the action begins. Powerful magnets reach through the sheet aluminum, while the motor rattles the tray vigorously, vibrating away any non-magnetic material.

Figure 1. Magna-Two magnetite remover, sitting in a shallow plastic tub (not included).

When I worked with my beach sand sample, several big, dark magnetite “blobs” or “islands” soon appeared, as black magnetite was pulled to the magnet, while the pay dirt poured off the end into a tub or tray. From Figure 2, you can see that the magnetite starts to grow spikes and tendrils when it’s ready to dump. Once you have built up a lot magnetite, you stick a small pan or plastic tray under the ramp, lift it from the magnets, and the magnetite runs off.

Figure 2. Small magnetite "islands" starting to build.

It doesn’t take long to figure out how to sprinkle your concentrates lightly so that the magnets can work most efficiently.

I ran my beach sand material through the Magna-Two several times and got it as clean as I could. Finally, it was time for the Gotcha Water Table.

Gotcha Water Table

The water table works on gravity, with a water pump in a large tub that re-circulates constantly. Once you get it set up, following the easy instructions, you add a few drops of Jet-Dry automatic dishwasher conditioner, which serves to reduce the surface tension of the water. This makes sure that your finest gold doesn’t float away.

A very thin sheet of water flows across the green table surface, fast enough to carry away light material, but not so boisterous as to move the heavier gold. There are no riffles – the surface rough enough with its painted surface, full of micro pits and bumps. Bill painted the surface with the familiar green chalkboard paint, which gives the surface a little roughness, and improves your ability to see even the tiniest gold colors. Refer to Figure 3.

Figure 3. Gotcha Water Flow Table.

After so many years in the field, I had collected quite a shelf of concentrates from all my travels. In additional to my big bottles of beach sand, I had saved material from Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, some marked, some that only I knew, and a few “mystery” jars that I could only guess about. Some of the bottles in Figure 4 were themselves collections from a weekend trip or from an entire summer. It was time to throw caution to the wind and start working them down.

Figure 4. Full sample jars from various outings.

All of these samples were still wet, but they were quite small, and I didn’t think they’d choke the Water Table if I was careful. I was right. By just sprinkling material onto the top of the table, I could control how fast the system worked. The water flow pushed slowly but surely against the concentrates, and the lighter material flowed quickly downwards.

Sure enough, I could tell almost instantly if there was significant gold present. I had watched Bill’s YouTube video about the process, located at http://www.youtube.com/user/nuggetbill#p/a/u/1/16REqjjWGKw, and it helped a lot. (I know that’s a long URL; you can just search on “nuggetbill” and pull up his four videos.) I found that it wasn’t that hard to figure out how to use the included paintbrush to move material around, and because it’s a closed system, you can’t really lose anything.

By treating the side closest to me as “the gold zone” and moving material toward it carefully, I soon began to accumulate a small pile of gold from my first sample. There were some bigger flakes, and I started to wonder where this bottle was from. Then I realized it was a ringer – I’d picked up a sack of Tom & Perry’s gold concentrates at a recent gold show, and cleaned it using my Gold Magic panning machine. No wonder it was so rich. See Figure 5.

Figure 5. Carefully brush the clean gold to one side for easy pickup.

Still, using a sample with gold in it really helped me learn the system. I slurped all the gold into a small snuffer bottle, which I tested to make sure had no gouges or scratches. Otherwise, you’d have to sand the snuffer end smooth. The green surface is really sensitive, and you can easily scratch it if you have big rocks or a rough snuffer bottle tube. I put a scratch in mine just unpacking it.

As I kept cleaning up small sample jars, old snuffer bottles, and other odds and ends, I got the hang of the action really fast. The paint brush revealed buried gold with a small flick, and the water pushed the waste material away with brutal efficiency.

Some of my samples were devoid of gold, and some had just one or two tiny pieces of flour gold. The water table was cleaning everything up quickly, and it was fun to go through bottles that I’d been saving for just such a day.

Soon, I felt confident enough to try the beach sands I’d collected the last time I was at the coast. The entire process was as follows:

1. Collect material and put into pop bottles

2. Dry the material in a big gold pan

3. Remove the magnetite with the Magna Two unit

4. Run the concentrates through the spiral pan

5. Run the remaining concentrates through the Gotcha Water Table

I cleaned five pounds of black beach sands down to a half-cup of what I hoped was pretty good stuff. I started slowly sprinkling it out, and sure enough, I began to see small pinpoints of gold in the material. There wasn’t much, and it was all very small, but I could see them. I began slurping them up with a snuffer bottle, and saw that I was getting a really clean sample. At last, I had found a way to liberate gold from beach sands without using mercury, nitric acid, or any other environmentally questionable method.

Here’s the result of all my labors for the afternoon in Figure 6:

Figure 6. Clean gold extracted in a single afternoon from multiple samples.

Some of my ideas would probably run the cost up, and Bill is trying to keep the unit affordable. According to the ad at http://gpex.ca/ads/gotcha.html the unit costs just $215, plus shipping, which is a bargain as far as I can tell. There is a very nice discussion there, where experts argue the advantages of blue bowls, spiral pans, water tables, and plain old-fashioned panning.

There is also a discussion about the Magna-Two: http://gpex.ca/smf/index.php?topic=2685.0;wap2. The cost for the Magna-Two is $142 plus shipping. If you want more information, Bill’s email address is martsolf22@msn.com.

Summary

Back in the earliest days of the GPAA television shows, founder George Massie used to tell a story about cleaning up his concentrates in an outside shack, where it was cold and drafty. He didn’t mind too much, he said, and he’d take his time, cleaning up buckets of gold-rich black sand with all kinds of contraptions. Still, he admitted, it would be better to be able to do his cleanup inside the warmth of his own house.

If I remember the story right, when he found a big bonanza hole on the Stanislaus River, and recovered about 800 ounces of gold in one summer, he was finally allowed to do his clean-up in the front room. Which just goes to show – if you find enough good material, a lot of your problems will be solved.

Garret Romaine has been writing for GPAA since 1996. He is the author of Gem Trails of Oregon, Gem Trails of Washington, and Rockhounding Idaho.

Meteorites, Magnets, and Metal Detecting

2011-02-21T19:41:00.000-08:00

I’ve probably been watching too much “Meteorite Men” on the Science Channel. I’m starting to see little rusty rocks everywhere I go, and since I visit a lot of gravel bars in the course of rockhounding and gold prospecting, I’m getting nervous that I’ve passed over a valuable piece of space debris. If you haven’t caught meteorite fever yet, try this website: http://meteoritemen.com and check out the stories there. You can even purchase a space rock of your own, such as the Gibeon fragment from Namibia worth about $3,300, shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1. (Left) The Gibeon meteorite, from Namibia, weighs about 3,600 grams and is for sale at www.aerolite.org for $3,300.

In one of the latest episodes, the two meteorite hunters traveled to the Atacama Desert in Chile to visit a known “strewn field” where they had found fragments in the past. Many times, they use metal detectors for their work, including one time when they rigged up a giant ten-foot array detector that they towed behind them in a Kansas wheat field. They found a huge space rock about six feet beneath the soil thanks to that contraption.

This time, they rigged up a drag board fitted with dozens of powerful rare-earth magnets, and hooked it to their pickup truck. They repeatedly raked the red desert floor and managed to attract dozens of little pieces of iron, worth between $5 and $10 per gram. They also devised another big array detector and found a larger piece, worth almost $20,000.

We all know there are about 31 grams in a troy ounce, and with gold at about $1300 per ounce, that works out to around $40 per gram. Some of the very rare pallasite meteors are worth about the same amount.

Obviously, a metal detector that can search for gold and iron would be a nice purchase. More on that in a minute. My low-tech solution was to purchase a used golf putter at the local Goodwill store, and pick up a fancy round magnet at one of the many online sources, such as http://www.magnet4less.com.

Before going further, here’s something you should know – these neodymium-based magnets are much more powerful than you’re used to. At www.UnitedNuclear.com, they provide this warning:

“Neodymium magnets are very powerful, much more powerful than magnets most people are familiar with and need to be handled with proper care. The magnetic fields from these magnets can affect each other from more than 12 inches away. Please note that these magnets are fragile. Even though they are coated with a tough protective nickel plating, do not allow them to snap together with their full force or they may chip, break, and possibly send small pieces of metal flying on impact. Our magnets can easily bruise fingers and the larger ones can break finger bones and even crush hands as they attempt to connect together.”

I can attest to that, but the way. I had two rectangular neodymium magnets about two inches long, an inch wide, and a half-inch thick. They looked like fat dominoes. Or, one still does. When I was dinking around with them, they flew together with a loud “clap” and one of them busted into halves, with additional fragments flying around. One went whizzing past my ear like an angry hornet, and another carved a deep scratch in my finger, drawing blood. On that same Atacama desert episode of “Meteorite Men,” prospector Steve Arnold got his fingers pinched between two magnets and he, too, donated blood.

My New Magnet

So, here’s what I put together, as shown in the figures below:

Figure 2. (Left) Giant neodymium-based ring magnet. You can see it’s been dragged through the dust already, and has picked up some magnetite, black sand, or iron.

Figure 3. (Right) Used golf putter with various magnets attached to the head of the club, and the big ringed magnet sitting on top. Total cost was about $40.

Figure 4. Trash, black sands, and hot rocks picked up around the campfire. Nickel is for scale – magnets don’t pick up most coins.

Famed comedian W.C. Fields once observed there were two ways to travel: first-class, and with children. I sometimes feel the same way about camping. Kids are great fun, and opening up a world of science and discovery is a treat. But the way they run around without any shoes, risking a rusty nail and subsequent tetanus shot, is enough to drive me crazy. I’ve decided I can justify dragging my putter magnet around the campfire a few times because I’m sure to clean up a lot of rusty nails and other trash. I’m a one-man camp cleaner. You can see one of my hauls in Figure 4. In the more popular US Forest Service campgrounds, I’ve run a quick pass over the gravels where I park, and I’ve picked up quite a few nails from perilously close to my tires.

Here are some more links and some background information about neodymium magnets, found at www.kjmagnetics.com.

Rare Earth

“Neodymium magnets are a member of the Rare Earth magnet family and are the most powerful permanent magnets in the world. They are also referred to as NdFeB magnets, or NIB, because they are composed mainly of Neodymium (Nd), Iron (Fe) and Boron (B). They are a relatively new invention and have only recently become affordable for everyday use.

Grades of Neodymium

N35, N38, N42, N38SH...what does it all mean? Neodymium magnets are all graded by the material they are made of. As a very general rule, the higher the grade (the number following the 'N'), the stronger the magnet. The highest grade of neodymium magnet currently available is N52. Any letter following the grade refers to the temperature rating of the magnet. If there are no letters following the grade, then the magnet is standard temperature neodymium.

Platings/Coatings

Neodymium magnets are a composition of mostly Neodymium, Iron and Boron. If left exposed to the elements, the iron in the magnet will rust. To protect the magnet from corrosion and to strengthen the brittle magnet material, it is usually preferable for the magnet to be coated. There are a variety of options for coatings, but nickel is the most common and usually preferred. Our nickel plated magnets are actually triple plated with layers of nickel, copper, and nickel again. This triple coating makes our magnets much more durable than the more common single nickel plated magnets. Some other options for coating are zinc, tin, copper, epoxy, silver and gold. Our gold plated magnets are actually quadruple plated with nickel, copper, nickel and a top coating of gold.

Demagnetization

Rare Earth magnets have a high resistance to demagnetization, unlike most other types of magnets. They will not lose their magnetization around other magnets or if dropped. They will however, begin to lose strength if they are heated above their maximum operating temperature, which is 176°F (80°C) for standard N grades. They will completely lose their magnetization if heated above their Curie temperature, which is 590°F (310°C) for standard N grades. Some of our magnets are of high temperature material, which can withstand higher temperatures without losing strength.”

Neodymium Magnet Information

More background information about neodymium magnets: http://www.kjmagnetics.com/neomaginfo.asp.

Neodymium Glossary

More than you ever thought you could learn about magnetism and magnets. Here’s a full glossary with more details about magnets: http://www.kjmagnetics.com/glossary.asp

Picking a Metal Detector

Magnets are cheap and easy, but I’m planning to replace my old Minelab metal detector in the coming year. I’ve been haunting the websites of two manufacturers: White’s at http://whiteselectronics.com and Fisher at http://www.fisherlab.com.

Getting back to the Meteorite Men, they had this to say on their website about their metal detector:

“If you've watched the award-winning series Meteorite Men on Science Channel, Discovery, Quest, or one of our other networks, then you've seen Geoff and Steve using the remarkable new Fisher F75. This extraordinary, top-of-the line detector is lightweight, perfectly balanced, extremely sensitive and the Meteorite Men's hand-held detector of choice. And it's a meteorite-finding machine.

The Meteorite Men used their F75s with great success at Canada's amazing Whitecourt Crater, at Gold Basin in Arizona, at the famous Odessa, Texas meteorite crater, on the search for the legendary Tucson Ring, and at many other secret locations. If you want to up the odds of finding your own space rock, then you need to be using the best equipment out there, and that's the F75.

The Meteorite Men are delighted to offer the very same unit that they've worked with throughout Season One and Season Two. Purchase directly from us and you will receive an exclusive color photo of Steve and Geoff, along with a genuine Sikhote-Alin iron meteorite (witnessed fall, Russia, 1947), so you'll know exactly what a meteorite sounds like when your detector goes over it.”

Cost is about $1,249. That’s a little steep for most of us to justify to our Chief Budget Officer, so they advertise a “starter” GoldBug for about $550.

The White’s GMT costs about $800. I logged onto their site and got this report:

“The White's GMT is a good choice for a low-end gold detector. By using the term ‘low-end’ I don't mean cheap quality, just low price. The GMT can be purchased for about $800.00 new and $500.00 used. It does have some problems with Arizona's heavily mineralized areas but can handle them decently with effort and practice. It can find gold as small as .02 gram with my experience and of course larger pieces. The fact that the GMT is a VLF or very low frequency detector means it can discriminate iron trash very well. In fact from my experience I'd say the discrimination is 99.9% accurate on trash. The digital scale normally shows gold at 25 or lower. What I am referring to is the digital ‘scale’ called ‘Probability of Iron’….

“The real upside to this unit is if you hunt old mine dumps or tailings piles. This is where the true dual purpose of this gold detector comes into play. While the more expensive pulse induction (PI) gold detectors will outshine the GMT or any VLF for the most part in the washes and hillsides, they won't be able to match the GMT's performance in mine dumps and tailings. Not only will the GMT find more gold in old mine tailings and mine dumps it will also tell you when a target is just an old nail or piece of iron junk accurately. It is also not affected by power lines like the more expensive PI units. It is also much lighter in weight than the more expensive PI units if that is a concern for you.

“So if you are looking for an entry level gold metal detecting gold prospecting machine that will do ok hunting washes and hillsides for gold and will absolutely shine in old mine dumps and tailings the GMT might just be the ticket.” (http://whiteselectronics.com/gmt.html)

Fisher F75 Special Edition

Alaska Mining and Diving Supply is a great spot for deals, background information, well-written stories, and more. As of this writing, they had a sale going on F75 units.

http://www.akmining.com/mine/fisher_f75_metal_detector.htm

Fisher Gold Bug 2 - About $800

As stated above, this is a solid detector that works for meteorites, gold, and coins.

http://www.kellycodetectors.com/fisher/fishergold-goldbug2.htm

http://www.akmining.com/mine/fisher05.htm

Coin hunting

I ran across a nice website recently devoted to coin hunting with a metal detector.

Figure 5. This 1875 Swiss half-franc silver coin popped up in southern Illinois recently. How it got there is a mystery… Check www.coinhunting.net for more info about recent finds.

Summary

No matter what tool you’re using out there, practice and experience is a big key. Good luck!

Garret Romaine writes from Portland, Oregon.

New video - Washington State Jade Rendezvous

2010-11-17T19:47:00.000-08:00

In this episode, I traveled to Darrington, Washington for the first-ever Washington State Jade Rendezvous. I had documented the Oso area, among others, as a prime jade locale in my "Gem Trails of Washington" book, but this was even better. We hooked up with several local experts, and you'll see about a ton of nice material collected from the area. In addition, I met up with Ed Lehman, famed wagon-master for the Washington State Mineral Council, and also interviewed Lanny Ream, author of "Gem Minerals of Washington" and one of the premier field geologists in the Pacific Northwest.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DustyFingers5#p/a/u/0/Rr8b_GJ2LJo

Zeolites in Washington video

2010-11-17T19:45:00.001-08:00

Check me out in a pith helmet! In this video, we banged on the walls at Robertson Pit outside Shelton and also the "Lucky Strike" pit near the Kamilche casino. After that I visited Rudy Tschernich at the Rice Museum in Hillsboro, Oregon, and viewed his world-class zeolite collection.

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=DustyFingers5#p/a/u/1/5OqQqLj-WYg

New video - Beverly Beach

2010-04-15T11:08:00.001-07:00

On the day the tsunami hit the Oregon coast, we were down at Beverly Beach searching for fossils and other treasures. Here's the report:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uu1GW4vc-5g

Enjoy!

Last video for 2009 - Ellensburg Blue Agate

2010-01-14T21:10:00.000-08:00

Thanks to another big assist from Dusty Fingers Productions, the final edition of "Garret's World of Geology" for 2009 is ready for viewing on YouTube. We went back to Williams Creek Campground, near Liberty, Washington, which is a great staging area for the trek up to Red Top and a drive over to the Rock 'n Tomahawk Ranch, an easy fee-dig area. We combined both onto one video, tossed in the relevant geology, and voila!

Our special guest was Jake Riley, who came home on leave from Iraq and was rewarded with the biggest agate.

Here's the URL:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wszbP6xQXsM

YouTube gold panning video

2009-11-16T09:54:00.000-08:00

Just finished another edition of "Garret's World of Geology," which covers gold panning and prospecting up around Steven's Pass, east of Seattle.

It rained just about the entire time, so you'll hear a lot of background noise in most of the scenes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NsKdYmeEBXU

Second video - Hansen Creek, WA

2009-07-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

OK, another video link, this time for Hansen Creek, Washington, where quartz crystals litter the ground:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugYIH0x75CM

Here's an easy link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugYIH0x75CM

Enjoy!

Check out the new YouTube video

2009-06-05T00:23:00.000-07:00

Marty Schippers (a.k.a., Dusty Fingers) put together a great 10-minute video covering our recent trip up First Creek, near Cle Ellum, Washington. Here's the link:

You Tube

Check it out, leave us feedback, and tell your friends!

-Garret

Wolfenstein article

2009-04-23T12:01:00.000-07:00

I've been working on Intel's Visual Adrenaline magazine. Here's a piece I finished about the new Wolfenstein game:

http://intel.saltmine.com/sites/billboard/game-gallery/wolfenstein.php#/featured-article

Mining the Internet – Mother Lode 2009

2009-04-07T23:11:00.000-07:00

California’s famed Mother Lode district is one of the easiest gold mining areas to research using Internet tools. For the last ten years I’ve written annual columns on the Mother Lode, and each year the online information gets better.

Before going further, let me reiterate the three main tools all electronic prospectors should have access to:
1. Google Earth, the free program that lets you zoom in and out on aerial photographs, provides GPS coordinates, shows roads and highways for an area, and provides ground cover information. Download Google Earth at http://earth.google.com.
2. GeoCommunicator, otherwise known as the Bureau of Land Management’s LR-2000 online mining claims database. The claims information is invaluable, and as an extra bonus you can set the base map to be a topographic map. You can also find information about abandoned claims. Go to http://www.geocommunicator.gov and click on the mining claim map.
3. Minerals Database, the online source that lists locales and the material found there. Go to http://www.mindat.org.

Although long-time readers will notice a few duplicates in the list below, we have a lot of new members who may not be familiar with all the resources available. So I’m going to stick with a complete list of my favorite web pages. I’ve divided the links into four main areas: history, geology, prospecting, and tourism.

History
Highway 49
http://www.historichwy49.com/
This has always been one of my favorite web pages for the Mother Lode area. The page is commercial in nature, with a big business directory, but it has a decent map and a lot of content. There are links to historic photographs, including James Wilson Marshall, whose work on Sutter’s mill sparked the initial rush into California.

Gold Rush stories
http://www.ncgold.com/History/california-gold-rush.html
Don Baumgart has amassed a nice collection of short tales from the Gold Rush days. He covers topics such as the end of hydraulicking, the use of mercury, high-grading, and mine salting. Here’s an excerpt from his tale about early reports from the gold fields:
“One eastern newspaper writer claimed mining gold in California took no skill at all. ‘The workman takes any spot of ground or bank he fancies, sticks his pick or shovel at random, fills his basin, makes for the water, and soon sees the glittering results of his labor.’
If only it were that easy! Perhaps the newspaper stories were sparked by stories such as this one, which Baumgart relates from the days just after Marshall’s initial discovery, when he was still trying to keep news of the discovery from leaking out:
“The men were unsure how big the gold strike was and were reluctant to give up their well-paying jobs to go prospecting full time. ‘...but when Sunday came, down into the tail race we would go. No other place seemed to strike us so favorable, and there we would pick and crevice with our jack and butcher knives, and we hardly ever failed to get three to eight dollars each and sometimes more.’"

Gold Rush History
http://comspark.com/chronicles/mines.shtml
This is an excellent, comprehensive site that defies easy labels. There is plenty of historical information, references to old towns and mines, discussions about mining methods, and lots more. One thing that helped was where the important names are spelled out for easy pronunciation. For example, if you’ve ever stumbled over the word “placer” this is what you should remember:

Placer - plass' er; American Spanish: gravel or sand deposits containing precious metal deposits.

Or here’s another tongue-twister:
Tuolumne ~ too-all'-um-nee; Miwok Indian: Stone Houses

Geology
About.com
http://geology.about.com/lr/california_geology/253260/1/
My personal favorite for geology information about the Mother Lode is still Andrew Alden’s About Geology web page. He has plenty of links for maps, discussions, articles, treatises, etc. Let me warn you up front – his site is addicting if you have even a hint of an interest in geology. There is so much content here, it will take you a long time to exhaust all the possibilities.

California State Mining and Mineral Museum
http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=588
I was expecting more pictures about the exhibits here, but this may be a place better visited in person than online. I’ll quote from the front page: “You are invited to discover for yourself California’s mineral wealth, colorful history and geologic diversity as you view the official mineral collection of the state of California. The collection, which began in 1880, contains over 13,000 objects including mining artifacts, rare specimens of crystalline gold in its many forms, as well as beautiful gem and mineral specimens from California and around the world. The collection was moved to Mariposa in 1983 after residing in San Francisco for over 100 years. The museum became a state park in 1999.”

I found a link to the museum with pictures: http://www.mineralmuseums.com/mmm/mmm.shtml. There is a photograph of an outstanding platinum nugget from the Trinity River area, plus a nice shot of crystalline gold.

California Department of Geology
http://www.consrv.ca.gov/cgs/geologic_resources/gold/Pages/index.aspx
There are two excellent documents on this page: “Hints for Gold Prospectors” and “Placer Gold Recovery Methods.” Each is an Adobe PDF file, easy to download. There are drawings, maps, and more information. I also like the Map of California Active Gold Mines and the Map of California Historic Gold Mines, two more PDFs. In addition, there are links to the publications database, a page for ordering reports and maps, and a database of reclaimed mining properties.

Prospecting

Chris’ Gold Prospecting Encyclopedia
http://nevada-outback-gems.com/prospect/chris_prospect.htm
This is a great new page for me, and well worth your time. Chris has a degree in mining engineering and spent the early years of his career as the geologist for underground and heap-leaching operations. His site has information on prospecting, metal detecting, build-your-own equipment, and lots more.

California Gold Maps
http://www.goldmaps.com
These maps come in very handy before heading out to the gold fields for your next visit. Here’s a quick tease from the webmaster: “The largest true California gold nugget weighed 54 pounds. A 195 pound mass was also found. The 6,600 gold deposit sites shown on our six California gold prospecting and panning maps are continuous from Mexico to Oregon and to the Arizona and Nevada state lines. All gold sites on the prospecting and panning maps are from official records.”

Treasurefish
http://www.treasurefish.com/california%20metal%20detecting.htm
This page has good information about publicly accessibly gold panning areas. If you’re unfamiliar with California’s Mother Lode area, the site gets you started with this snip:

“Gold was first discovered by the Spaniards as early as the 1500s, but mining operations did not begin until the 1780s along the Colorado River. Gold was next discovered in the San Gabriel River (near Los Angeles), San Francisco, Palo Alto, Santa Clara, San Jose, and Santa Cruz by Mexican prospectors who kept these finds secret. Of course, gold was then found at the infamous Sutter's Mill near Sacramento in 1848 and made headlines worldwide. The ensuing great California Gold Rush spawned massive gold discoveries in 40 counties. The richest, Tuolumne County, boasts 8 million troy ounces of gold taken since then.”

Some of the sites listed by Treasurefish are off-limits to dredging, so think of them as “beginner” spots. GPAA members have access to much better areas thanks to the locales listed in the Claims Guide.

Whipple Well
http://www.calsign.com/mining
Here’s a site I haven’t seen before, dedicated to not only mining but also metal detecting. The database includes information about old population centers, mines, cemeteries, and more. Warning: the music on the opening page can be annoying to some folks.

Tourism
Whenever I’m planning to visit a new area or state that I’m not familiar with, I spend a little time poring over the sites dedicated to tourism. I’ve found that much of the information is geared toward visitors, and I can get an idea of which towns have services, such as gas stations. That can come in handy when you look at a map and see a small crossroads halfway between two points, where you hope you can fill your tank. Sometimes those promising points on a map can succumb to economic forces, dry up, and blow away.

Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_lode
For general information about the Mother Lode country, try the Wikipedia page. The site boasts lots of additional links for newcomers, and can help to prepare you for in-depth research.

Virtual Guidebook
http://virtualguidebooks.com/CentralCalif/MotherLode.html
This site is a collection of photographs, and breaks down by county for quick searching. If you were concentrating on Placer County, for example, you could quickly zoom in on that spot. I always like to see what a place looks like before I visit, just to get a mental image of how crowded it might be or how developed the land is. Sites like this are a lot of help if you are traveling long distances for your first trip to a spot.

Nevada City Chamber of Commerce
http://www.nevadacitychamber.com/play/area_gold.cfm
As an example of what you can expect from a good web page run by a chamber of commerce, check out Nevada City. For example, the site points to some gold panning locales: “Some of the most accessible gold panning locations are on the South Yuba River at Bridgeport, Edwards Crossing and Washington, and on the Middle Yuba River at Oregon Creek. These are public stretches of river so you don’t have to worry about claim-jumping.”

Glittering.com
http://www.glittering.com/contact_info.html
Here’s a helpful spot for more recreational opportunities. The page is a list of links for additional information, on a county-by-county basis and more. I list it here because I have to keep reminding myself that not everyone prospects like I do – constantly on the move. I like to hit a lot of sites in a day if I’ve never been to an area, and it’s hard for me to sit still. For example, I’ve long had it in my head that it would be great to visit all the GPAA claims in the guide book. I don’t usually end up in a campground, either – I like to camp on the claim if at all possible. But some of you may be planning a trip to the Mother Lode as a family vacation, and you’re going to want to toss in everything from a trip to Yosemite to a stop at a winery. So tourism links are crucial to maximizing your family fun.

Summary
Researching a trip into California’s Mother Lode country is a lot easier thanks to the avalanche of information available on the Internet. Whether you are dredging, panning, sluicing, or metal detecting, you should be able to narrow the odds considerably if you have enough time to study your options carefully. Whether you are doing additional research to determine which of the GPAA claims in the Mother Lode area to visit first, or you want more details about a spot off the beaten track that appeals to you, the links here should open the right doors to get you going.

**

Garret Romaine has been writing “Mining the Internet” for 12 years. In 2007 he completed his first book, Gem Trails of Washington, and in January 2009, his rewrite of Gem Trails of Oregon was published. His next book, Rockhounding Idaho, is scheduled for publication in 2010. He can be reached at gromaine3@comcast.net.

Metal Detecting

2009-02-18T15:31:00.000-08:00

Mining the Internet: Detector Treasures
By Garret Romaine

Combing through the vast backwaters of the Internet for metal detecting information is no easy task. For each tantalizing clue about lost treasure, there are pop-up surveys to evade, political news to ignore, and ads for drugs that I can’t even pronounce. But this issue, I’ve got a nice collection of links to new (and old) reports that should make every detector owner smile.

Ancient gold wreath
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26455572/
Greece continues to be a source for ancient artifacts, although tomb raiders and looters are running ahead of the authorities in many places. In August 2008, an ancient gold wreath fashioned to resemble olive leaves was uncovered in northern Greece, at the ruins of ancient Aigai. The city of Aigai was the first capital of ancient Macedonia, and was the city where King Philip II — father of Alexander the Great — was assassinated.

The story goes on to note that nearby, “in a royal cemetery at Vergina, just west of Aigai, Greek archaeologists discovered a wealth of gold and silver treasure in 1977.”

Ancient coins found in Philadelphia
http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?_r=1&res=9B0CEFDD1739EF34BC4F51DFB7668389669FDE
This old article, dating to 1872, mentions a large trove of gold coins found while workers excavated a cellar. At first the young men believed the coins were brass, and they admitted throwing the coins at each other for fun. A local jeweler soon straightened them out. The coins dated to the earliest days of the Pennsylvania colony.

Roman coins in England
http://www.ancientcoinnews.com/2008/07/treasure-hunters-delight-at-discovery.html
Three treasure hunters using metal detectors located a nice cache of 1,700-year old coins in 2007. The coins date back to the reign of four emperors: Diocletianus, Maximianus, Constantius and Galerius, who ruled Britain between 296AD and 305AD. The find wasn’t just luck: “Mr Staples, 32, said he had been searching for treasure with a metal detector for more than 15 years. He said: ‘The coins were found below the surface of the ground where the land had been ploughed quite deep. We were hovering the metal detectors above the soil when it started beeping really fast to indicate there is a real hoard of metal. We found 20 coins on the first day and a similar amount the following day. Then it was a case of a couple here and there after that.”

Australian coin mystery
http://www.yowiehunters.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=229&Itemid=72
“In the first week of December 2004, two New South Wales amateur prospectors searching for gold unearthed an unidentified ancient coin amongst rocks in uninhabited forest country near a mountain ridge to the north-east of the claimed Gympie Pyramid site with a metal detector. It was found under nine inches of soil amidst old metal fragments. The Dhamurian Historical Research Society at Gympie was alerted to the amazing discovery by an E-bay auction in late January 2005. A successful negotiation with the owners resulted in the final purchase of the historic artifact so that it remained in the possession of Gympie regional researchers.”

Tons of coins found in China
http://www.coinlink.com/News/world-coins/15-tons-of-ancient-coins-discovered-in-shanxi/
“A cellar containing 1.5 tons of ancient coins, including some 2,000-year-old ones, [was] discovered by a villager in Changzi County, North China’s Shanxi Province.
The man in Qianwanhu Village discovered the cellar with some 10,000 coins, ranging from 3 cm to 1 cm in diameter, on August 23 when he was digging a channel to place pipes for tap water, said Li Lin, an official of the Changzi Center of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. The “money cellar” was 1.5 meters under the earth, with coins being piled orderly into a cuboid of 1.3 meters long, 0.65 meter wide and one meter high, Li said.
Most of the coins were made during the Northern Song Dynasty (960-1127) with the remainders made during Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD) and Tang Dynasty (618-907), Li said.”

Roman coins on British beach
http://www.coinlink.com/News/ancients/ancient-coins-discovered-on-beach/
“Ancient coins have been found on a beach in the Western Isles giving new clues to the far reaching influence of the Roman Empire. Archaeologists believe the pieces of copper alloy date from the middle of the 4th Century. They were found in a sand dune, but the location in the Uists has been kept secret to protect the site. Archaeologists said it was a “lucky find” as the coins were at risk of vanishing in a high tide. Just seven other Roman coins have previously been found on the isles. A Roman brooch and pieces of pottery have also been uncovered in the past.”

Roman hoard in Portugal
http://www.coinlink.com/News/ancients/archaeologists-in-portugal-net-haul-of-roman-coins/
“Archeologists in Portugal have found more than 4,500 Roman coins bundled together inside the wall of a blacksmith’s house dating from the fourth century.
Antonio Sa Coixao, who is leading excavations in Coriscada in northeastern Portugal, said Wednesday by telephone the 4,526 copper and bronze coins were inside a hollow wall and covered by dirt and tools. The coins had apparently been put in a sack which had mostly disintegrated, he said.”

Old coin found in Wales
http://www.coinlink.com/News/ancients/metal-detector-roy-unearths-the-oldest-coin-found-in-wales/
“Retired butcher Roy Page, 69, of Coedpoeth, found the detailed 2,000-year-old coin on a farm near St Asaph when he went on a search there with the Mold-based Historical Search Society. Roy handed the tiny silver coin to the Portable Antiquities Scheme, who identified it as dating from the second century BC. It is believed to have been brought over some time after the Roman invasion of Britain in 43 AD, or during earlier visits in the first century BC. Roy, who has been metal detecting for five years, said: ‘The person who held the coin was probably a Roman.’”

Roman hoard in Wales
http://www.coinlink.com/News/ancients/exceptional-roman-coins-hoard/
“Nearly 6,000 copper alloy coins were found buried in two pots in a field at Sully, Vale of Glamorgan by a local metal detector enthusiast in April. After the ruling by the Cardiff coroner, a reward is likely to be paid to the finder and landowner. It is hoped the coins will be donated to National Museum Wales, which has called the find ‘exceptional’.
Two separate hoards were found by the metal detectorist on successive days, one involving 2,366 coins and the other 3,547 coins, 3m away. The 1,700-year-old coins dated from the reigns of numerous emperors, notably Constantine I (the Great, AD 307-37), during whose time Christianity was first recognised as a state religion.”

New Roman emperor
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/oxfordshire/3518621.stm
“A coin that solved the mystery of a little-known Roman emperor is going on display at a new exhibition. The base silver coin, bearing the face of Emperor Domitianus, was found by Brian Malin as he combed a field in Oxfordshire with a metal detector.
Only one other such coin exists, showing the face of the man who ruled Britain for just four days, but was dismissed as a hoax. Mr Malin's coin is on exhibition at the British Museum in London. Experts say his discovery proves the earlier coin, found in France 100 years ago, was genuine and that Domitianus did exist. The coin, estimated to be worth more than £10,000, goes on display on Wednesday at the British Museum in London.”

Gold coins of usurper found
http://www.numismaster.com/ta/numis/Article.jsp?ad=article&ArticleId=4606
“The number of known gold coins of would-be Roman Emperor Carausius recently increased from 23 to 25 specimens. The two newly uncovered examples depict Carausius, who helped himself to Roman Britain as his own private fiefdom in 286 A.D.

There is excitement among museum curators, collectors and the machinery sales manager who found the two coins in a field near Ashbourne, Derbys, but the real story is the proof that once again Britain's Treasure Trove laws work, while demands in other countries that all antiquities and coins found in the ground are cultural patrimony and therefore must be turned over to the government without any reimbursement possibility to the finder simply drive the finds underground.”

Emperor Valens gold coin
http://article.wn.com/view/2008/04/15/Gold_coins_of_Emperor_Valens_found_in_Egypt/?section=BigPhoto&template=cheetah-search%2Findex.txt
“The Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities announced an interesting discovery. Gold coins forged by Roman Emperor Vales were unearthed at the astonishment of archaeologists; these findings represent the first of this kind in the Land of the Pyramids.
The two coins were found during excavations in the west part of St. Catherine's monastery in Sinai. The image represented on the front side of the coins is very similar to that of Valens' and specialists agreed that he is indeed. Valens ruled the Eastern Roman Empire between 364 BC and 378 BC; his reign was nothing close to peaceful. He had to black-out the revolt by Procopius, and then fight the Sassanids, but the war with the Goths meant his end. Gold coins of this type were known in Valens' time as solidii. This type was introduced by Constantine I in 309 and was used until the 10th century. Formally, a gold coin in Roman times was known as aureus.”

Islamic coin found near Oslo
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article2452938.ece
“An Islamic coin from 805 AD, found on the Hurum peninsula just west of Oslo, is causing a stir among Norwegian archaeologists. The silver dirhem, minted in Iran, is one of the earliest examples of coins to turn up in the Nordic countries. Several other hordes in the area have contained similar coins, but none date back as far as this. The previous finds have been 100-150 years younger. According to Houshang Khazaei, a researcher at the University of Oslo, the coin was minted in Mohammadiyyah in Iran. The ruler at the time was Harun al-Rashid, the fifth and most famous of the Abbasid caliphs. For several hundred years dirhems were minted in countries in North Africa and the Middle East. They were used in Europe too, much like the US dollar or the euro today, and likely came to Norway with Viking traders. The dirhem contains about three grams of silver. Payment was made by weight rather than according to the denomination on the coin. Therefore many were cut in half or into quarters to make small change.”

Steamship discovered with gold coins
http://www.hunttreasure.net/rare-gold-and-silver-coins-from-sunken-steamship-examined/1079
“Rare gold coins discovered in a sunken steamship off the Louisiana coast have been put under the microscope of sorts, by coin experts. The SS New York was a 165-foot side-wheel steamship that was found under some 60 feet of water in the Gulf of Mexico.
It carried within its hull coins made in old U.S. Mints of New Orleans, Charlotte, N.C., and Dahlonega, Ga. -- mints that have not been in action for many years. David Bowers, co-chairman of New York-based Stack’s Rare Coins and coin expert, said some of the coins are in uncirculated or mint condition and could be worth $50,000 to $100,000 each.”

Unfortunately, the full text of this article is now removed.

Viking treasure trove
http://www.hunttreasure.net/viking-treasure-trove-found-on-swedish-island-of-gotland/1019
“The island province of Gotland is a part of Sweden so when torrential rain pours down and unearths a few coins, you’d expect them to be of Swedish origin.
With two old coins emerging after the downpour, archaeologist interest perked up and exploration began.
“The result? The discovery of 52 more coins. And more interesting, all but six of the coins came from other regions and countries. They weren’t Swedish. How did they get there?
“Given that the coins were dated between the late 900s to early 1000s and taking into account the history of the island, the answer… from the Vikings.
“At one time Gotland was a Viking hub of sorts. And Viking were notorious for their travels and the "acquiring and hoarding" of multiple country coinage.
“As a point of fact, Gotland has had more Viking treasure and archaeological findings than nearly anywhere in the world.”

Rogiet hoard
http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/en/1903/
In September 1998, thousands of Roman coins from the third century AD were discovered by Colin Roberts at Rogiet, Monmouthshire. This was one of the finest hoards ever recorded from Wales and were declared treasure in December 1998.
The 3,750 coins had been buried, possibly in a wooden box, around AD 295-6 (we believe this to be the date since there were no coins later than this in the box) and span a forty-year period, with twenty-two emperors represented, a sign of the political instability of the times.

Ancient coins in America
http://www2.privatei.com/~bartjean/chap11.htm
This is excerpted from a chapter called “The Coincidence of the Coins,” from the book In Plain Sight, by Gloria Farley. The write-up is about curious coin discoveries in the United States. The coins were ancient, and some were found buried so deeply that it strained imagination to think a modern collector could have lost them. “Although some of the coins presented in this chapter do not have a verifiable context, still there is enough evidence to be considered that coins were brought here anciently. It is hoped that more coins will emerge as the readers of this book become aware of what they possess. The report of coins by many authors bolsters the validity of the inscriptions, in many ancient scripts, recorded in America.”

Ancient torc discovered
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/science/sciencenews/3484377/Metal-detector-mans-350000-Iron-Age-neckband.html
“A metal detector enthusiast discovered a 2,000-year-old golden neckband worth £350,000 while out looking for bits of Second World War aircraft. Maurice Richardson discovered the Iron Age gold and silver choker, known as a torc, in a Nottinghamshire field near his Newark home. Archaeologists believe the torc, the most expensive single treasure find since 1996, was made by the Iceni tribe, once headed by Boudica, which had its power base in present-day East Anglia.
“Four other similar torcs have been discovered, but they were all found some 100 miles away in Norfolk. Dr. Jeremy Hill, head of research at the British Museum, described the Newark torc as ‘probably the most significant find of Iron Age Celtic gold jewelry made in the last 50 years’".

Summary
Many of the websites listed here are reliable sources of good information, so you might want to bookmark some of the home pages and check back occasionally. As detectors get better and go deeper, you can expect more of these important finds to pop up in the news. If you can’t make the discovery yourself, at least you can read about it. Sometimes that’s all the motivation you need to plan your next junket into the field.

Arbuckle Mountain, Oregon

2008-10-24T14:14:00.000-07:00

Last weekend the North America Research Group (NARG) sponsored a fossil dig at Arbuckle Mountain, about 20 miles southeast of Heppner, Oregon. The big attraction here is a giant palm frond, Sabalites eocenica, from the Eocene Clarno Formation. In addition to palm fronds that can reach four feet in size, the area is noted for avocado, magnolia, willow, and other leaves. There is a weak lignite zone through the area, with some short-lived coal beds worked at nearby Coal Mine Hill.

Some of the NARG team camped at Arbuckle Corral on Friday night; others stayed in town or made other arrangements. Digging began in earnest before noon on Saturday. Soon the team had zeroed in on a productive strata. Tim Fisher, who lists about ten separate GPS coordinates for this area on his invaluable OreRockOn DVD and website (http://www.orerockon.com) soon got into a nice zone and pulled out an unidentified flower, along with palms about a foot in length. The team also recovered nice specimens of cypress and metasequoia.

Tim's zone extended across the top of the road cut, and at least five different excavations produced good material. The team continued digging until dinner, retired to an excellent meal around a roaring campfire, and settled down to a cool evening in the pine forests of eastern Oregon.

The next morning, the team went back at it. We cleared some more material, gathered up the best stuff, emptied out the ditch along the road to keep the Forest Service happy, and generally cleaned up. A nice lady came down the road in an ATV with a big harvest of Shaggy Mane mushrooms, but she reported that there was a new gate at the top of the road.

For an October fossil search and rescue, the weather was ideal. Maybe that was why the camaraderie was so great, but I don't think it's the only reason. I'm always struck by how easy it is to get along with other fossil hunters, rockhounds, and gold prospectors. We shared a ton of information over the campfire, pressing each other for insight into new areas. I like that part the best; there are so many spots to hit out here.

I know I should put the GPS coordinates in this article, but I'm going to resist the temptation. Join NARG at http://www.narg-online.com and you can visit the area with us next year!

References

The Ore Bin, June 1961
http://www.oregongeology.com/sub/publications/OG/OBv23n06.pdf

The Oreg Bin, May 1969
http://www.oregongeology.com/sub/publications/OG/OBv31n05.pdf

Idaho's Yankee Fork dredge

2008-10-10T15:17:00.000-07:00

Mining the Internet: Yankee Fork Dredge

By Garret Romaine
(this article will appear in the next issue of Gold Prospectors magazine; sorry about the length)

Driving west last summer from Challis, Idaho, toward the interesting town of Stanley, I took ID 75 as it followed the Salmon River for mile after scenic mile. The Sawtooths loomed on the horizon, while alpine forests dipped down to transition into sagebrush hills. Some tantalizing gravel bars were just emerging from the low water of late August, offering opportunities to search for agate, jasper, and petrified wood, or wash some gravel for black sands and fine gold. Mentally plotting the mileage from here to Portland, Oregon, I reached the tiny crossing at Sunbeam and saw a sign for the Yankee Fork dredge. Somewhere in the dim recesses of my gold-fevered brain, a light went off. I seemed to remember this area was once a major producer. Besides, there was that word ‘dredge.’ On the spot, I detoured north onto Yankee Fork Road. And I’m really glad I did.

In this article, I’ll describe the Yankee Fork district in detail. I’ll provide you with the history of the Yankee Fork gold rush, culled from some dependable research materials. I found two excellent descriptions of the actual “eureka!” moments when prospectors located fabulous quartz veins. In addition, I’ll share some web links that briefly describe the recreational activities available to current visitors during those brief summer months when the area is most hospitable. With ghost towns, museums, abandoned mines, and that magnificent dredge as a base, the Yankee Fork of Idaho’s Salmon River has a lot to offer

**

First off, let’s answer the basic question: how rich was it? According to the U.S. Geological Survey:

“Anderson (1949, p. 14) credited the district with a total production of gold and silver valued at $13 million to about 1948. Of this, $12 million was mined before 1910. Umpleby (1913a, p. 78) estimated that about 40 percent of this was in gold (about 252,000 ounces). From 1948 through 1959 the district produced 14,253 ounces; most of it was from dredging operations. Total gold production through 1959 was about 266,600 ounces.” (USGS Bulletin 610, p. 128)

That’s a good haul, by any yardstick. Interestingly, the district started slowly, as access was difficult, there were no railroads anywhere near the area, and the Boise Basin discoveries were much easier to reach. The original discovery in this district was at Loon Creek, about 30 miles north of Sunbeam, as Sparling describes in Ghost Towns of Southern Idaho:

“When Nathan Smith discovered placer gold on Loon Creek in 1869, he set off another rush into the back country…Near the mouth of Canyon Creek, the tent and log town of Oro Grande began to take shape... In 1879 five Chinese miners were killed by Sheepeater Indians. There is some doubt as to whether Indians committed this crime or white men intent on robbing the Chinese of their gold, but the incident helped touch off the Sheepeater Indian War... The town site was burned over years ago and nothing remains today. The next settler at the mouth of Canyon Creek was Billy Casto, and on most maps, the site of Oro Grande is shown as Casto.” (Sparling, pgs. 95-100)

Loon Creek proved to be a flash in the pan save for the Lost Packer mine. In his classic book, Gold Camps and Silver Cities, Merle Wells picks up the story:

“Yankee Fork got off to a surprisingly slow start. Joel Richardson and a party of Yankee prospectors examined Yankee Fork while traveling through that part of the country in 1866 or 1867. Aside from bestowing a name on the stream, they left little imprint before retiring to Montana. By 1868, a few men were washing out gold at nearby Robinson Bar [on the Salmon River]. After the rush to Loon Creek in 1869, mining was under way on both sides of Yankee Fork.

“Prospectors radiated out in all directions from Loon Creek. D.B. Varney and Sylvester Jordan brought a group of miners over to Yankee Fork in 1870, where most of their claims proved a disappointment. Only one of the new Jordan Creek claims yielded enough (in this case, $10 per man a day) to justify working. The next spring the decline of Loon Creek inspired two more gold hunters to cross over to Yankee Fork. They had a hard time of it. According to Clitus Barbour, ‘Arnold and Estis (Estes) the discoverers of Yankee Fork camp, toiled in the snow and storm twenty-five days transporting their supplies in there on sleds from Loon Creek, a distance of only twenty-five miles, over a divide thousands of feet high.’ On the strength of opening discovery claims good for $8 a day, about twenty miners organized a district and went to work. By the end of July, five companies were preparing their claims for mining. Fifty or sixty men, mostly from Loon Creek, were on hand. Some of them ‘were busy opening their claims, while others were running up and down the river, uncertain what to do, and waiting for the turn of events.’ Not until the new claims turned out profitable did the doubters go to work. Even then Yankee Fork attracted little outside interest. Only fifteen men spent the winter, and no grounds for a stampede materialized in 1872. Lode discoveries, in fact, did not come on any important scale for three more years.” (Wells, pg. 118)

So early placer mining was barely productive. Because these were experienced prospectors, they knew the source for the gold must be nearby, and the search would heat up again each spring once the snow melted. Here’s the description of the big discovery, again from Wells:

“Searching on a Sunday afternoon in June 1875 for the lodes from which Jordan Creek’s extensive, but otherwise unimpressive, placers originated, W.A. Norton came across the vein that every prospector dreams of finding one day. Very few ever had his kind of luck. In a high-grade vein he found a seam of exceptionally rich ore only two or three inches thick. With the help of a partner or two, he was able to pound out $11,500 worth of gold in a hand mortar in thirty days. That was enough to pay some oppressive debts and to start developing the mine. No rush to Yankee Fork attended Norton’s discovery of the fabulous Charles Dickens, as it was called. His find went by almost unnoticed. Then, when winter struck early, Yankee Fork was depopulated almost entirely. Packers had no opportunity to supply the high mountain camps. Yankee Fork was reduced to a population of only three, while neighboring Loon Creek declined to four.” (Wells, p. 118)

Winters in this area can be deadly, as elevations start at about 6000 feet where the Yankee Fork meets the main stem of the Salmon. Snow often piles up over ten feet deep, temperatures drop below zero and stay there, and opportunities to hunt for game are scarce. That must have been one dismal camp. But surely one of the reasons the men stayed put was the opportunity to find another ledge like the Charles Dickens.

Wells picks up the story the next year:

“When prospectors resumed in 1876, other extremely rich lodes followed the Charles Dickens. Most notable of all was the General Custer which James Baxter, E.M. Dodge, and Morgan McKeim discovered on August 17. In a manner somewhat different from the Charles Dickens, with its wealth of ore suitable for hand mortaring, the Custer also rated as a prospector’s dream. In this discovery, most of the vein happened to lie exposed on the surface. (The way miners describe it, most of the hanging wall simply had slid off the vein.) Thus the miners could avoid much of the expensive development work (that is, driving tunnels and raises or shafts deep into the mountain along a mineralized vein in order to verify the presence of enough ore to justify bringing in a mill) ordinarily required before a prospector could sell out his discovery. Erosion had done most of the development work. Moreover, the relatively low cost of getting out high-grade ore from the Custer enhanced its value greatly. One man could pull down twelve tons of ore a day. E.W. Jones reported in 1877: “The owners merely break the ore loose…tumble it down in large masses to the dump, break it up, sort it and sack it.” At that point, the ore was ready for packing to a mill in Salt Lake City, where $60,000 was realized from the small open cut. Somehow even this marvelous discovery did not generate an old-fashioned gold rush to Yankee Fork.” (Wells, pgs. 119-120)

Now stampeders flocked into the area. Soon the nearby towns of Bonanza City and Custer sprang to life, as described by Sparling:

“The rich placers along the Yankee Fork and up Jordan Creek encouraged the miners to build Bonanza City in 1876. By 1880 the town had fifteen hundred people, a post office, stores, hotel, many houses, and a newspaper, The Yankee Herald. Prior to 1880, Bonanza and Custer were supplied by freighters using pack strings of horses or mules, and the demands of these towns was largely responsible for the growth of Challis as a supply center. Since nearby Custer didn’t have a cemetery, the one back in the hills behind Bonanza served both communities. Some log building remain along the road in Bonanza, but many have tumbled down and been destroyed…

“Situated about two miles upstream from Bonanza, Custer grew with the development of the rich quartz mines. The Charles Dickens was the first big mine, and others nearby were the General Custer, the Lucky Boy, the Black Mine, and the Montana Mine. With the defeat of General Custer in 1876 still fresh in their minds, the miners named the town in his honor. A toll road over Mill Creek to Challis was opened in 1880 and allowed freighters to bring in the heavy machinery that a mill required. The Custer Mill started operating in 1881 and closed down in 1903, and at one time it had thirty stamps going. A tramway was built up the mountainside behind the mill to carry down the ore. Unfortunately the mill has been burned down and only the foundations remain.” (Sparling, p. 97)

As happened in many remote districts, land ownership issues cropped up early in the development of the better properties. However, the legal problems were nothing that a little outside capital from California couldn’t solve, as Wells describes.

“By the spring of 1879, Joseph Pfeiffer of Rocky Bar had brought in San Francisco engineers and capital, and had arranged purchases enough to enable work and production at the Custer to resume. ‘People generally thought him crazy’ to be investing so heavily in an undeveloped prospect located hundred of miles from a railroad and on a practically unimproved pack trail ‘in a wild, sparsely-settled country, surrounded by hordes of hostile Indians.’ Yet Pfeiffer had recovered his initial $60,000 investment by shipping ore to Salt Lake City, and his California associates, who included George Hearst and the president of Wells Fargo, supplied the balance (over twice that amount) to straighten out title. The next step was to stop hauling ore by pack mule to distant mills in Atlanta or Salt Lake; freight costs to Blackfoot, where rail service was available by 1879, ran $100 a ton. Then George Hearst induced Alexander Toponce to build a toll road to Challis, over which stage service to Bonanza commenced on October 3, 1879. Toponce’s road made it possible for Pfeiffer’s San Francisco capitalists to bring in a thirty-stamp mill for the Custer. In spite of all the excitement, production at Yankee Fork mines amounted to only $420,000 in 1879. Then, ‘after many unavoidable and tedious delays,’ the Custer mill was completed at the very end of 1880. Production in 1881 rose immediately to over $1 million. The Yankee Fork mines at last were showing their great potential.” (Wells, p. 123)

Government geologists soberly relate the rest of the story:

“However, these high-grade deposits proved to be shallow, and the district began to decline in the 1890’s, and its mill closed in 1905. There were sporadic attempts to revive some properties, but no significant activity occurred until the reopening of the Lucky Boy mine in 1939. Placer mining along the Yankee Fork was also renewed about that time. World War II curtailed activities, but a few properties were reopened in 1946 and 1947. Production in the late 1940’s was almost entirely by a dredge that operated along the Yankee Fork, although small-scale production from lode deposits continued through 1957 (T. H. Kiilsgaard, written commun., 1962). The most productive placers in the district were along the Yankee Fork of the Salmon River, from the mouth of Jordan Creek almost to the mouth of the Yankee Fork.” (USGS, p. 128)

Geology
No detailed description of a mining district is complete without at least summarizing the geology reports. If you get a chance to explore some of the abandoned mines and their tailings piles, you need to know what to look for. In addition, the gravels that have been turned upside down along the Yankee Fork are worth exploring with a heavy hammer, in hopes of busting up a quartz chunk and revealing some interesting minerals. So even though this next paragraph can be heavy slogging, I feel duty-bound to include it in this writeup. All the usual players for Idaho are present: old rocks from the Paleozoic and Mesozoic Ages, and a healthy dose of that great lump of granite, the Idaho Batholith:

“Bedrock in the Yankee Fork district, according to Anderson (1949, p.8-11) consists of contorted Paleozoic and Mesozoic sedimentary and volcanic rocks that are intruded by quartz monzonite and granodiorite of Mesozoic age. The Paleozoic rocks are the Wood River Formation of Pennsylvanian age and the Casto Volcanics of Permian (?) age. These are cut in the northwest part of the district by quartz monzonite of the Idaho batholith. The Paleozoic rocks were subjected to two periods of deformation - one at the close of the Jurassic and one at the close of the Cretaceous. During Oligocene time the Challis volcanic flows covered most of the older rocks, and these were intruded in Miocene time by relatively small masses of dacite and rhyolite porphyry (Anderson, 1949, p. 8-10). The Challis Volcanics were gently warped and fractured, and these fractures were filled by epithermal silver-gold deposits. Most of the lodes are simple fissure fillings, but where the rock was complexly fractured, the ore minerals are disseminated and the deposits resemble stockworks (Anderson, 1949, p. 15). Typical vein filling is quartz, which may be fine grained, coarse comb, or drusy. Veins characteristically contain pyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, tetrahedrite, arsenopyrite, enargite, galena, stephenite, miargyrite, pyargyrite, argentite, aguilarite, gold, and electrum; some calcite may be present. In the weathered zones, native silver, argentite, cerargyrite, azurite, malachite, chalcocite, and covellite are present in various amounts.” (Anderson, 1949, p. 16-17).

Dredge Links
By far the most interesting aspect of a drive up the Yankee Fork is the big dredge near Custer. There are several links on the Internet that can direct you to historical facts about the massive dredge, plus information about the fascinating museum at Custer that attracts thousands of visitors each year. Entry fees are quite reasonable for both the dredge tour and the museum visit, and they’re both family-friendly. I’ve weeded down and snipped a bit of representative text for each link below.

US Forest Service
http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/sc/yankeefork/pointsofinterest.shtml#dredge
“In 1979, the Yankee Fork Gold Dredge Association was chartered by former employees and their families. This dedicated, hardworking group of volunteers has restored the dredge and it is open for guided tours. This fascinating tour is open from Memorial Day through Labor Day weekend from 10:00 A.M. to 4:30 P.M. They will even show you how to pan for gold!”

Sun Valley Guide
http://www.svguide.com/s06/s06_history.htm
“Ghostly remnants of another Idaho mining boom-and-bust linger along the nine miles of dirt road just north of the Sunbeam Dam and Yankee Fork turnoff on state Highway 75. Wooden shards, remnants of homes that once occupied the exuberantly named settlement of Bonanza, lay between the trees. Cabins, better-preserved icons of what passed for civilization in the 19th century wilderness, stand farther along the road in Custer. Between these relics of the Old West looms a brooding artifact, a younger cousin to those mining yesteryears that seems, at first glance, to be just a mirage in the backwoods of lush forests and richly stocked fishing streams.

“The word behemoth is insufficient to describe the giant Yankee Fork gold dredge. It is a grayish monster languishing in its final resting place, a mechanical dinosaur idling in a perpetual pond, now serving only as a fascinating curiosity for tourists. Turn the clock back 60 years and the dredge resembled a well-lighted, four-story hotel; and it had a purpose. It spent its days swinging a giant arm to gouge and sift earth by the tons per minute in search of gold.”

Oregon State University pictures collection
http://digitalcollections.library.oregonstate.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/streamsurvey&CISOSORT=title|r
I know that’s a lot to type; you can Google for ‘Yankee Fork Dredge pictures’ and get there just as fast. Great old black and white photos here.

Suite 101 motorcycle adventures
http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/motorcycles_adventure/114450/2
“Designed by the Bucyrus-Erie Company for the Snake River Mining Company to suit the specific geology along the Yankee Fork, work crews constructed this 988-ton, 112-foot long, 54-foot wide and 64-foot high dredge next to the river where it floated in a pond of its own making.

“From 1940 to 1953, the dredge traveled relentlessly upriver for a total of five and one-half miles. It operated 24-hours a day except from late fall until early spring when ice and cold caused its shutdown. During its 13 productive years, the dredge turned six million cubic yards of stream gravel into more than 1 million dollars worth of gold and silver. In 1966, its last owner donated the dredge to the Forest Service.”

Yankee Fork Dredge State Park
http://parksandrecreation.idaho.gov/parks/yankeefork.aspx
“At Sunbeam, interpretive signs describe the beautiful Salmon River and the remnants of the Sunbeam Dam, the only dam ever constructed on the Salmon. The dam was built in 1910 to generate electricity for nearby mines. The operation went bankrupt in 1911 and the dam was breached in 1934.”

Off Road Explorers
http://www.offroadexplorers.com/html/yankee_fork_dredge.htm
“Despite being abandoned for a half century and having the occasional band of hippies residing in it during the 1970’s, the dredge is amazingly intact. It has been somewhat restored by a group of volunteers who work with the forest service and give tours of the dredge for a small fee.”

Historic Photo Archive
http://www.historicphotoarchive.com/capsmonner/monner4895.htm
“In the early 1930's several placer miners joined together to form a company to see if they could get someone interested in dredging their claims on the Yankee Fork. Twenty-nine claims were involved. During 1938 and 1939, the Silas Mason Co. of Shreveport, Louisiana became interested. When tests indicated approximately $16,000,000 worth of gold was recoverable, they formed a subsidiary, the Snake River Mining Co., to manage the dredging. The Bueyrus-Erie Company was awarded a contract to build the dredge in 1939 and completed it in the fall of 1940. The Olson Manufacturing Company manufactured most of the steel work in Boise, Idaho. The parts were shipped by train to Mackay, then hauled by trucks to Yankee Fork and assembled in 1940.”

Vital Guide Books
http://virtualguidebooks.com/Idaho/MountainsOfIdaho/SalmonRiver/YankeeForkDredgeOne.html
Short QuickTime movie about the dredge.

Go Northwest
http://www.gonorthwest.com/idaho/central/Stanley/stanley.htm
Information about the town of Stanley:
“In summer, the small town swells with visitors who use Stanley as a base for exploring the Salmon River, the Sawtooth National Recreation Area, and other public lands. Popular in summer are rafting, float trips, hiking, fishing and hunting, and in winter, snowmobiling and cross-country skiing… The town takes its name from the surrounding basin, itself named for Captain John Stanley, a Civil War veteran. He was leading a party of prospectors who passed through the basin on their way to Idaho City. The party found a small amount of placer gold, and Stanley didn't return but one of the party, A.P. Challis, did and mined around Stanley for many summers.”

Camping
There are developed campgrounds between Sunbeam and Bonanza City, plus more campgrounds near Casto. I see more camping areas on the road from Custer to Challis, and there must be eight developed sites along the Salmon on either side of Sunbeam. Contact the Chalis-Yankee Fork Ranger District office at Challis: (208) 879-4100 or on the web at http://www.fs.fed.us/r4/sc/yankeefork/index.shtml. Many campgrounds in this area can be reserved over the web.

Summary
There are some current claims being worked in and around the massive dredge tailings below Bonanza City, where apparently some unworked ground escaped the big dredge. I witnessed one person with a metal detector walking through the tailings, but there were probably a dozen fishermen out that day. Many small streams that empty into the drainage are worth exploring, particularly above Custer and further up the rough road to Loon Creek/Casto. Topo maps for this area show many mines and prospects worth checking out if you have time. There is a huge open pit operation west of Custer, along Jordan Creek, so watch for heavy truck traffic during normal business hours.

Bibliography

Anderson, A. L., Silver-Gold Deposits of the Yankee Fork District, Custer County, Idaho. Idaho Burau of Mines and geology Pamphlet 83. 1949. 37 pgs.

Koschmann, A.H., and Bergendahl, M.H., Principal Gold-Producing Districts of the United States, U.S. Geological Survey Professional Paper 610. 1968. 283 pgs.

Sparling, Wayne C., Southern Idaho Ghost Towns, Caxton Printers Ltd., Caldwell Idaho. 1996. 135 pgs.

Wells, Merle W., Gold Camps and Silver Cities: Nineteenth-Century Mining in Central and Southern Idaho, University of Idaho Press, Moscow, Idaho. 2002. 233 pgs.

Umpleby, J. B., Some Ore Deposits in Northwestern Custer County, Idaho, U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 539, 1913. 104 pgs.

Too Much Rockhounding?

2008-07-08T11:05:00.000-07:00

Maybe I've been traveling too much, putting on too many miles. Maybe I almost caught my brother-in-law's cold when we went to Lincoln City, Oregon, for the Fourth. But upon coming home, I was exhausted, and I soon fell into a fitful nap with some amazing images.

No, I didn't dream I was surrounded by fossilized T-Rex skulls. Instead, I imagined I was putting together a short expedition for a few folks and found myself as the lead organizer. Wanting to get some kind of vehicle that would have a strong low gear, I found myself borrowing an air-conditioned wheat harvester from Arnold Schwarzenegger. And seated next to me in the navigator's chair was Queen Elizabeth. I know it was her because she was wearing a nice little hat.

Thank god I woke up soon after shifting into second gear. I have no idea where that dream was headed.

Links

2008-07-03T16:29:00.000-07:00

Got a nice note from Jason, the operator of a good Idaho rockhounding site:

www.1rockhound.com

Check him out.

Travels in Idaho

2008-07-03T16:17:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a whirlwind tour of the Idaho Panhandle area. Four of us started up at the Roosevelt Cedars grove, near the Canadian border out of Nordman/Priest Lake, and pretty much criss-crossed Idaho until we got as far south as Fabulous Florence. Amazing trip: 2600 miles, 60 GPS readings, as many as 31 sites to write up for my Rockhounding Idaho book.

As far as wildlife, we saw moose, bear, coyote, elk, deer, rabbits, squirrels...about what you'd expect. Maybe one eagle, lots of hawks, and a group of four turkey hens that looked very tasty. Oh, and my first wild turtle. It was a big red eared pond turtle, booking across the dirt road in front of me as I was angling toward a feldspar crystal area near Sagle.

Some things I learned:

1. Priest Lake is beautiful
2. Copper Falls is very nice
3. Moyie Falls is hard to photograph
4. Wallace is a neat little town
5. Pierce is also worth visiting, but Headquarters is a little empty
6. The Clearwater River is a ragin' torrent
7. Elk City is still charming
8. Red River Hot Springs is worth the drive
9. Dixie is dying; the saloon is closed

The last time we visited Dixie, there was a dartboard near the door with the smiling face of a young Bill Clinton, peppered with darts. I was looking forward to buying a round in there again, but no dice. We didn't have time to drive the loop or head for the Salmon from there.

Many of the rivers and creeks were near flood stage. Out on the St. Joe River, we tried to hit the Mammoth Springs Campsite, but ran into a bank of snow a mile from camp and had to turn around. That also meant Bathtub Mountain and Freezeout Ridge have to wait for another day.

The Emerald Creek garnet area has been tamed down to a place where you dig from a pile of garnet-bearing dirt the operators brought in, screen it, and wash it in a common trough. I remember when you could dig around in the creek yourself. I guess those days are gone.

I tried to make the trip on four-ply tires and ended up driving into camp, late at night, on two occasions with hissing tires. One of those was a Saturday night, so when it turned out to be unrepairable we had to buy a tire at Wal-Mart instead of Les Schwab.

Rock Walks Around Portland

2008-05-08T15:28:00.000-07:00

I was recently asked to "capsulize" some of the rockhounding locales around the Portland area for an article in "Metroscape," published at Portland State University. It was a fun task, as it basically meant taking my book text and cleaning it up a little. It was also a nice little nostalgia tour to think about some of those areas that I haven't been to in a year or so.

In all, I wrote up six sites:

1. Clackamette Park, where the Clackamas river joins the Willamette. Good supply of rounded river rock with agates and jaspers throughout.
2. Memaloose Bridge, far up the Clackamas almost to Ripplebrook Ranger Station, with mostly agate and jasper but also some zeolites and other oddities.
3. Independence Island, my favorite canoe trip from last summer when the water was low. More agate and jasper, plus excellent petrified wood.
4. Cedar Butte, a noted locale for black crystals of augite. The material is lying in the dirt and in the cliffs, and kids love it.
5. Nehalem River, another river walk that has the usual suspects plus fossil concretions and Indian artifacts.
6. Washougal River in Washington, with good agate and jasper from the Columbia River.

I'm anxious to see what the editor does with all my hand-drawn maps. I'll let you know.

Electoral Curse

2008-05-07T16:35:00.000-07:00

Well, I lost my election. I didn't just lose - I was obliterated, finishing in last place by a handful of votes. All in all, I would have needed about 150 more votes to win a position on the board, but it was not to be.

I'm not all that broken up. Sure, the public humiliation hurts, and it's tough to be rejected by your peers. But so few members vote -- about 1100 out of 14,000 members -- that I don't have to accept that it was an outright repudiation.

Anyway, I wasn't really sure where the time was going to come from anyway. I still have the field research for Idaho to complete, and then I have to write the locales up and finish that manuscript. There is going to be an editing phase on the Oregon book, as well. Plus I have a lot of magazine articles to write over the next year. So...it could be a blessing to lose the election.

Meanwhile, I have to finish my presentation for the Philadelphia conference in June. It isn't like some of my STC duties will go away. But at least they won't be increasing exponentially.

Turkey trouble

2008-05-02T12:59:00.001-07:00

I've made five trips so far to Idaho, and so far I've had to stick mainly to low-altitude areas. The snowpack is at least 150% of normal this year, ending a long drought. The farmers and ranchers are thrilled, but I'm caught in a bind. Most old ghost towns and mining camps are way up in the hills, and snow blocks most of those old roads. Plus the waters are roaring off the hills and it isn't as easy to find material in the limited gravel bars exposed so far.

The final challenge has been wildlife. Three weeks ago we saw a herd of elk, a herd of deer, and a herd of antelope within six hours of each other. There have been birds swerving in front of the car, rabbits dashing across the bumper, and eagles soaring through the skies. But the worst has been a crotchety old gobbler at Mineral, Idaho.

To reach Mineral, drive west from Weiser about six miles and head north on Rock Creek Road. Eventually you cross through a pass at about 4200 feet and wind back down into the Snake River canyon, sort of the southern end of Hells Canyon. The road dumps out on a small windy track that parallels the river, and just before a private lodge, a set of tracks comes in from the east along Dennett Creek. This leads to the old mining camp at Mineral. There are three buildings still standing, plus lots of tailings piles and mining artifacts. Best are the adits driven into solid rock, which are much safer to climb into than anything shored up with rotting timber.

My Dad and I drove hard all day, hitting several new sites, and arrived at Mineral fairly tired. There was a lot of firewood on the ground, and nobody around, so we camped at a very prominent point along the road and got a roaring blaze going. But I heard rocks crashing down on the slope across from us, and my flashlight didn't really reveal anything. We started swapping old stories and laughing and releasing a little stress.

Dad started in on some improbable tale that made him laugh so much he forgot the punchline, and he finished with cackle that echoed across the old camp. Suddenly, from about 300 yards away, we heard a turkey gobble that was decidedly unfriendly. "Gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble" in no uncertain terms.

It's funny how you know immediately what made that noise. We laughed, quietly, and decided to toss on another log, open another beer, and ignore him. I heard more rock moving on the hillside, but it wasn't any mystery so no worries there. Then Dad laughed way too loud again, and there came that admonition: "Gobble-gobble-gobble-gobble." And he was even madder this time, as if to say, "Now listen. This was a nice quiet town before you hooligans showed up. Let's keep it down over there."

And this time the turkey was a lot closer - maybe 75 yards. My idea was to toss a rock at him, or maybe chase him with a stick for a turkey dinner. But there was downed barbed wire all over out there, and it would have been dangerous to go rampaging after him that late at night. So we quieted down a little, and soon, Dad went to bed. Then so did I. Under the watchful eye of a wild turkey posing as a small-town sheriff.

First trip of the season

2008-03-20T12:01:00.000-07:00

Here we go! In about 24 hours I'm off to Marsing, Idaho, on my first collecting trip of the season. It's an absolutely crazy thing to be contemplating -- the snow is still falling at the higher elevations, the snowpack is thicker than its been in a generation, and by all forecasts the weather will be freezing on Friday and Saturday nights. But it's time.

I haven't been on an overnighter since November, 2007, and I've got a serious case of cabin fever. All through the winter I've been trying to plot out a regimen of seven-day, three-day, and two-day trips that will cover Idaho. My contract with Falcon Guides requires a manuscript by December 31, 2008. While I have extensive experience up and down the state of Idaho, I have a lot of work to do. I need to visit at least 200 spots and collect photographs, samples, and GPS readings. From that superset of readings, I'll whittle down the grand total to 100 sites. But I may be able to collect geographically proximate locales and really pack them in.

Tomorrow I'm headed for southwest Idaho. From Portland I'll head out I-84 to Ontario, then take Exit 3 south on US 95 to Homedale, then Marsing. US 95 curls back into Oregon, and I'll probably drive all the way down, then double back. I have about 17 places plotted out, in conjunction with a field trip sponsored by the Idaho Gem Club, which I just joined last month.

If you know a little about Idaho, there are some amazing locales out along the Oregon border. Graveyard Point Road actually starts from US 95 and ends up in Oregon, so I won't have to go all the way out to those spots along the rim -- wrong state! There is an old mercury mine out along Poison Creek Road, and an agate locale as well, but those aren't my main targets. I will be collecting petrified wood at Coal Mine Basin (if not covered in snow) and opal and agate along McBride Creek. The last spot I visited last year was on the Idaho side of the road along McBride Creek, so there is a nice symmetry there. Then I'll head out Sommer Camp Road for a jaunt to Opalene Gulch and connect up a couple spots documented by the Great Lanny Ream in his 2004 guide.

I was hoping to camp at Jump Creek Falls trailhead, but it turns out that is a "day use only" spot. Too bad - there is an outhouse, some picnic tables, and a fire pit there. We'll be roughing it out along Sommer Camp Road, I expect. At least we don't have to worry about fire season restrictions in March. If I have room in the car, I'll bring a little wood.

My son Nelson, his friend Jake, and my uncle Doug will be in my car, while my friend Marty "Dusty Fingers" Schippers, a noted soapstone carver, will come down from Seattle. Marty and I have hooked up so many times in the dead of night that we're not too worried. Usually one of us gets to a pre-organized spot early, and when they spy a set of headlights bumping up the road, the connection is made.

Over-packing is a big concern. I try to keep it down, and there is not going to be any lashing of gear to the top of the rig, as it will probably rain. But tent camping out of a car isn't too demanding; as long as you have room for a couple coolers, you're fine.

Anyway, it's good to be headed out.

Candidate Statement

2008-02-20T16:59:00.000-08:00

[One more document for the STC election in March...]

Candidate Profile: Garret Romaine, STC Director-at-Large

Looking to the Future

By Garret Romaine, STC Associate Fellow

My credentials, experience, and passion for our profession make me an excellent choice as an at-large director on the STC board. This short article reviews my background, explains some of the challenges as I see them, and explains my goals for our future.

I hope your career as a technical communicator is rewarding, whatever your expertise. Most of us make a good living, and salaries are holding up. Having thrived during the boom in the technical writing field of the late 1990s, we have expanded our expert skills and abilities. Our toolset is incredibly robust, and those of us in the technology world have core capabilities that rival software engineers. We have come a long way as a profession, and part of that is thanks to the efforts of STC members.

Significant Issues Ahead

At the same time, though, our professional organization faces serious issues. There is a continuing challenge to deliver value to individuals. We need creative solutions if we are to expand the organization. The economy is slowing, and our members will need the most current skills and abilities in order to compete.

We face this opportunity from the vantage of a Society with many moving parts. We are more than just cutting-edge XML experts in high demand; we are also the academics who keep classes relevant and send forth graduates of interest to hiring managers. We are writers in the public sector, facing tight deadlines with dwindling resources. We are the editors who mark up text and make others look good in any media. We are the illustrators and designers who marry visuals to words and shimmer across platforms. We are the managers who send employees to annual conferences as wise investments. And—finally—we are the members who show up at local meetings or log on to virtual communities and participate. Our needs are different, but our goals are the same: we want the time we spend as volunteers to directly benefit our careers.

We all rely on STC for expanded networking opportunities, cutting-edge classes, lectures, and workshops, and enhanced professional advocacy. Through STC, we have the opportunity to share ideas, learn new tools, and make ourselves more productive and efficient. New and prospective members ask me all the time, and sometimes in just these words: “What’s in it for me?” It takes longer and longer to answer that question, because there are so many different STC communities to join.

Relevant Experience

My experience as an educator, active STC volunteer, and experienced technical communicator is relevant to this election. I have taught technical writing and editing at the university level for the past 12 years. My goal has been to deliver information that bolsters the careers of neophyte undergraduates as well as seasoned communicators in graduate studies. I have taken advantage of STC volunteer opportunities as chapter president, mentor, employment manager, competition manager, and workshop organizer. I have presented at conferences, written for Tieline, Intercom, and Technical Communication, and served as a judge for local and international competitions. In 2005, my colleagues both honored and humbled me as an Associate Fellow, and since then I have attended board meetings, worked on the Fresh Eyes team, and served on a committee. I am ready to step up to the job of director.

While teaching and volunteering, I have worked steadily as a senior writer, lone writer, author, contractor, consultant, and manager. My STC experience has been a key talking point for me, and I am sure it has on occasion led directly from the interview to the job offer.

Helping Your Career

I hope you can say that STC has made a positive difference in your career. Knowing STC members, I would expect to hear from you if that has not been the case. High expectations are good; none of us should be complacent.

I thus ask for your vote—and I also ask that each of you help move our profession forward. We are all in this pursuit together.

Gold Panning in California's Mother Lode

2008-02-20T16:57:00.000-08:00

[Latest Gold Prospector magazine column]

Mining the Internet: California’s Motherlode Country

By Garret Romaine

The Motherlode country of California, situated along state Highway 49, is thoroughly represented on the Web. In fact, there is probably no other gold prospecting area on earth that has so many Internet resources devoted to it.

This issue, we’ll take a look at some popular starting points for virtually exploring California’s golden heart. It doesn’t matter what your background is: if you are a seasoned, professional dredger, a long-time hobbyist, or you are planning your first trip to the area, there are plenty of places to research the Motherlode on the Web.

Getting Started

Probably the first thing you should do is make sure there is a folder for your newest gold links. If you are in Internet Explorer, place your cursor on your Links folder and right-click the mouse. You should get a large menu of options, with one that lets you create a new folder. Call it something catchy like “2008 California Gold” or similar. Now you have a spot for all your new links.

Note that you can drag old links in here, or you can make another folder specifically for those older links.

Before going any further, I’d like to make sure you have links to my favorite spots that I use no matter what area I’m researching:

topozone.com for topopgraphic maps
maps.google.com for satellite images
geocommunicator.gov for expired and current mining claims

[Here’s the full link for the Land and Mineral Use Records Viewer at geocommunicator: http://www.geocommunicator.gov/NILS-PARCEL2/map.jsp?MAP=MC.]

Now, on to some specific California links.

About.com

http://geology.about.com/od/geology_ca/a/aaCA_geotourism.htm?nl=1

Lately I’ve been haunting About.com’s geology pages quite a bit. There is a pretty good set of links for “California geology destinations,” as they call them. You can download an excellent 3 MB geologic map for the state, or jump over to details about the Sierra Nevada batholith. At http://geology.about.com/od/geophoto_tours/ig/CAtransecttrip/keymap.htm there is a good group of field trip stops, including Stop 27 at the “auriferous gravels” that are so famous.

Mining Gold

http://miningold.com/states/ca.html

This is Bill Westcott’s old site, and I have mentioned it in the past. Web keepers with more time and money may have more up-to-date formats, but one of my favorite spots for information about places to pan is the user-entered information on gold locations. The following is one example, but is not attributed to a specific reader:

“The American River was mined very early in the gold rush since it is where gold was first discovered in Northern California. A few years ago, the state bought up most of the claims and private property on the lower stretches of the river (below about 1100 feet elevation) in anticipation of the construction of the giant Auburn Dam. The dam was never built and hopefully never will be so most of the area is now the Auburn State Recreation Area. Here you can pan, sluice, highbank and dredge all year. You can get a little color almost anywhere you look. There is exposed bedrock everywhere with a wealth of cracks and crevices to clean out. Many of the gravel bars always contain fine flood gold even in the top layer. And don't overlook the bedrock and benches high above the river. I have found small nuggets forty feet above the water level.”

Geological Survey

http://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/geologic_resources/gold/Pages/Index.aspx

Although the banner says Department of Conservation, this is the California Geological Survey gold page. There are great links for the California State Library’s gold rush exhibit, the Oakland Museum’s gold rush exhibit, the San Francisco Museum’s gold rush exhibit, and much more. There is also a link to the California Minerals and Mines CD-ROM, full of historic gold mine photographs and related images.

You can wander around on this site for hours, downloading free publications, reports, and maps. You may have to pay for older or more obscure publications, but there was a “special” going on the last time I was there.

Gold Map

http://www.conservation.ca.gov/cgs/geologic_resources/mineral_production/Documents/Big_AUMap.pdf

Here’s a map of California’s historic gold mines – about 13,500 of them. The document was created in 1998 for the Gold Discovery to Statehood Sesquicentennial. It is available for free download as a PDF, and shows 4,112 placer mines, 9.359 lode mines, and 18 active mines. Naturally, the biggest concentration of mines is in the Motherlode area. There isn’t pinpoint accuracy or great detail, but if you have a little color ink in your printer it might be worth printing out and pinning to the wall.

Gold Fever Prospecting

http://www.goldfeverprospecting.com/cagocoexprfo.html

The Gold Fever site keeps getting better. It has good links, interesting pictures, used equipment for sale, and more. Here’s a nice snip from the front page, about a trip to the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park:

“I picked up a free hiking map and headed into the hills for a view of Coloma Valley before taking a stroll along the riverbank in search of stray gold nuggets…Failing to strike it rich, I followed the highway into Placerville. Hundred-year-old buildings line Main Street, making the town, like Auburn, a good place for a leisurely walk and some prospecting for antiques. At the Wine Smith, which sells local vintages and microbrews, I found the treasure I was after: a glass of El Dorado County Zinfandel that was worth its weight in gold.”

Sixteen-to-One Mine

http://www.origsix.com/

This is another excellent site to bookmark and come back to again and again. Eventually, you’ll probably want to either buy stock in their mine or purchase a sample of their famed gold in quartz.

Something to really like: a link to one of Dr. Waldemar Lindgren’s papers for the U.S. Geological Survey about the purity of Sierra gold. If you’re not familiar with the name, Dr. Lindgren circulated throughout the western gold fields toward the end of the 1800s, and produced an excellent series of professional papers for the USGS. Here are some of his observations about the quality of the gold found in the Sierras:

“Observations in all parts of the world have shown that placer gold is always finer than the gold in the quartz veins from which the placers were derived. The explanation is that the silver alloyed with the gold is dissolved by the action of surface waters. The purity of the gold becomes greater as the size of the grains diminishes, the explanation being, of course, that the proportionate amount of surface exposed to the action of solutions is greater in the finer gold. The average fineness of the gold of Nevada County is given as 855; of Placer County, 792; of Plumas County, 851; of Sierra County, 858; of Calaveras County, 835; of Tuolumne County, 804. In Sierra County gold from quartz mines varies from 622 to 883.”

Another link from the 16-to-1 Mine concerns Dr. Lindgren’s discussion about pay streaks:

“It has become almost an axiom among miners that the gold is concentrated on the bedrock and all efforts in placer mining are generally directed toward finding the bedrock in order to pursue mining operations there. It is well known to all drift miners, however, that the gold is not equally distributed on the bedrock in the channels. The richest part forms a streak of irregular width referred to in the English colonies as the “ run of gold” and in the United States as the “pay streak” or “pay lead.” This does not always occupy the deepest depression in the channel and sometimes winds irregularly from one side to the other. An exact explanation of the eccentricities of the pay lead may be very difficult to furnish. Its course depends evidently on the prevailing conditions as to velocity of current and quantity of material at the time of concentration.”

Historic Highway 49

http://www.historichwy49.com/goldfact.html

This site is rich with information, and is continually updated. Here’s a nice snip about big nuggets:

“In 1854 the largest gold nugget ever found in California was at Carson Hill above the Stanislaus River. It weighed 195 pounds and was valued at $43,534 in the currency of the day.”

Since this is the main highway that connects the Motherlode region, you can plan a trip that takes you along the entire route, or just concentrate on a portion of the area. This website will have you wanting to drive the entire highway.

TreasureFish

http://www.treasurefish.com/california%20metal%20detecting.htm

TreasureFish has an excellent list of spots you can still prospect, although you’d want to check in with the U.S. Forest Service or BLM, depending on the area. The site also mentions collecting areas for gems and minerals. After reading about that big nugget above, let’s look at what the site says for the Stanislaus:

“From Columbia (North of Sonora on Hwy 50), take Italian Bar Road north to the South Fork of the Stanislaus River (canyon). Prospecting area is 700 feet beyond the bridge over 5 Mile Creek for about a mile. Metal detecting, panning, and a few other methods. Dredging only with a permit during a varying range of dates from the spring to fall.”

Conclusion

Once you have zeroed in on a few areas to investigate, you can start to collect geology reports, topographic maps, aerial photographs, and road maps to guide you in. I like to look at the newspapers during the winter to see if there has been any major flooding on the rivers and streams I plan to visit, as that heavy runoff sometimes churns up the gold and reconcentrates it to places where it might be easier to get to. Be sure to use the GPAA Claims Guide to locate open spots where your membership allows you to camp and prospect. The final suggestion is to contact the relevant Claims Committee and the nearby US Forest Service or BLM office for late-breaking information. You don’t want to drive for hours (or days) and find out a road washout or forest fire is in your way.

Garret Romaine writes from Portland, Oregon. His new book, Gem Trails of Washington, lists over 75 places in Washington state to search for gold, gems, and fossils. He can be reached at gromaine3@comcast.net.

On to Idaho!

2008-01-08T14:28:00.001-08:00

With a last-minute push that took most of the day, I finally finished the manuscript for Gem Trails of Oregon, a guidebook covering rock and gem collecting in the state of Oregon. I thought I'd give you a peek into the frenzy of only missing my deadline by a week.

On December 31, I emailed the publisher with a plea for one more week, and they were fine with that. On January 4, I thought I was done, after putting in a solid weekend that also included taking pictures of various rocks and crystals. But after I made a print, I immediately started making more changes, so it took one more day to really nail it down. Even at that, I imagine I'll keep tweaking until they demand that I stop. Such is the nature of writing docs.

To keep the publisher happy, I created a DVD with the data files for the maps, plus all the pictures, and some Google and Topozone images for the map-maker. (My maps are just a starter; the book publisher's map-maker does an infinitely better job. ) Then I took a look at the Word file and discovered I hadn't run spell-checker in a long time, so I finished that, made some more tweaks even to front and back matter, and then burned a CD with the truly latest and greatest files. I put it all into a UPS envelope and sent it off, then emailed a copy of the PDF file, set at the lowest of the low resolutions.

Actually, I could probably tweak that Acrobat file some more. The Word file is 180 MB in size, which makes me smile, because it used to be that you couldn't trust Word to handle something that large. After all, that's why we have FrameMaker...Anyway, the Acrobat file was about 100 MB after the first time I ran it, so I had to reset the options for "smallest file size." That got it down to 7 MB, but at the risk of no cross-references or links. But I think the pictures are still 300 dots per inch, so there is more room to work. I could probably get my links back and run the pictures down to 72 dpi, but I haven't played with it yet. I'm kind of sick of it right now, actually.

Over the last month, I probably worked on the book every single day or night, and yes, that includes not only Christmas but New Year's Eve. I took my laptop with me to Bend for the family trip, and I used it. Sometimes I'd only get in an hour or two, but I slept better as a result. I think that in total, I probably put in about 200 hours in December to get everything up to where it is. And I can still think of a lot of things I could be doing on it. But now it's time to sit back and wonder what questions I'll get from the publisher, and how fast they can turn it around and get it to the street.

So, I'm pretty happy to be done. I'm ready for another state; we did Washington in 2006, and Oregon is now wrapped up. This summer, the team will be covering Idaho. I expect to use about a dozen helpers, log 15,000 miles, put in about 250 man-days in the field, and take over 100 GPS readings to get to about 75 truly excellent sites. I have a list of about 200 places that serves as a master; we'll see how I do.

Quest for Closure

2008-01-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

By working every day over the break, including the holidays, I managed to get to a reasonable first draft for my upcoming book, Gem Trails of Oregon. The book is a list of 101 top rockhounding spots in Oregon, complete with photographs, maps, and write-ups. Getting to a good place in the end game feels good.

It wasn't pretty -- I was up until four in the morning some nights, and the pressure I put on my family was a bit extreme. But I managed to do it without causing my wife to file for divorce, so I can nearly claim "Mission Accomplished." If this was my full-time job, I wouldn't have to worry so much about squeezing in time for writing alongside walking the dogs, attending family functions, and keeping a household going.

On the other hand, it helped that my day job went on winter break at just the right time. Plus teaching is on holiday, so there weren't any distractions there, either.

Now that I have a printed copy of the entire book, I see a lot of things to fix. Several maps need more work, the print quality is low, and some of the headings are off. But the text is in good shape, and there is a lot of research material for each locale to assist the corporate map-maker. He was slowed down a lot on the Washington book just trying to make sense of everything. I created subdirectories this time with Google maps, topographic maps, and any brochures I could find.

The last days were pretty fun, actually. I had a photographic "studio" set up to take detailed pictures of some of the crystals I found over the summer. Plus I had all my samples out, to make sure the write-ups were accurate. I had maps all over my home office, and piles of books. The whole thing seemed to reach a crescendo right as the University of Oregon was creaming Southern Florida in the Sun Bowl. As the score mounted, I started cleaning up, putting samples away, and taking down the lights for the studio. I folded up a few maps, archived everything off onto a trusty USB drive, and went out for a New Year's Eve party. The next day, I went in to work and used the powerful two-monitor system there to finish off the last map and make a print.

Over the last 24 hours, I've amassed an entire page of corrections to make, but I already begged for forgiveness from the publisher and got an extension to hand everything in over the weekend. So...one more final push and I should be able to relax. A little.

Chicken, Alaska

2007-12-18T16:34:00.001-08:00

In between many other writing assignments, I write a short column about gold prospecting for Gold Prospectors magazine. Here's the next column:

***

Mining the Internet – Chicken, Alaska

By Garret Romaine

Two years ago I contacted Mike Busby about his website, http://www.chickengold.com and wrote up a few details about the new site, which describe his fee-dig operation up there. I’m happy to report that in the months since then, Mike has put a lot of work into his website (and his mining operation). If you have a vacation planned for the Dawson area, this historic gold camp is right on the way.

Chicken, Alaska reaches a population of about 150 in the summer, and boasts a saloon, rental cabins, a gas station, airport, and public gold panning. In 2007, the Chicken gold camp opened its doors to recreational gold miners, with very good results. The year before, the famed Pedro Dredge, rescued and moved to Chicken in 1998, was named to the National Register of Historic Places.

Gold Discovery

Myer’s Fork flows into Chicken Creek just north of Chicken, and Chicken Creek reaches the Mosquito Fork of the Fortymile River just south of town. Myer’s Fork was the site of the original gold discovery in the Chicken Creek drainage, located in 1896. According to Mike, values on bedrock have run slightly better on Myer’s Fork than on Chicken Creek. The mouth of Myer’s Fork and bottom ¼ mile of the creek have seen hand-mining only. The rest of the creek is still virgin territory.

The Chicken Creek drainage has been mined continuously since 1896, yielding about 100,000 ounces. The F.E. Company, a subsidiary of the U.S. Smelting Refining & Mining Co., acquired most of the claims during the 1940’s and dredged 2 miles of Chicken Creek from 1959 to 1967. Since then, several family operations have mined on the creek.

Mike continues: “We began operating the Chicken Creek Mine in 1990 as lessees and purchased ground in 1998. In 2000, we began to implement a sustainable development plan incorporating mining, reclamation, tourism and local history. In 2001, our efforts were recognized by the State of Alaska when we received the prestigious Alaska Governor’s Award for Mine Reclamation. In 2006, we were recognized nationally as the small mine operator of the year by the U.S. Interior Department with the Reclamation and Sustainable Mineral Development Award.

Lately, our mining operation has taken a back seat to the rest of the business, but we continue to operate the Chicken Creek Mine as time permits. When we are operating, you are welcome to view the operation. And when we are not, there is plenty of gold for you to find, since most of the remaining ground is available for panning and recreational mining opportunities.”

Gold nuggets to three ounces are reported from this area. Guests at the claims can work the creek for a daily fee. You can pan, sluice, run a metal detector, or operate a high-banker or sluice. Sluice intakes are limited to two inches in diameter. Rates are subject to change, but run as follows:

$15 per day for panning and metal detecting

$25 per day for hand sluices

$30 per day for high bankers

$40 per day for sluices

Rates are slightly higher for non-camping guests. There are also weekly discounts. The camp offers equipment rentals, concentrate clean-up, and demonstrations.

Pedro Dredge

http://www.explorenorth.com/library/mining/pedro_dredge.html

The Pedro Dredge is open for daily tours and is definitely worth a stop. Mike Busby wrote this article for ExploreNorth.com. The dredge was smaller than most Alaska dredges, as each bucket held only three cubic yards.

Here are a few excerpts:

“The Pedro dredge, originally driven by steam, was built by the Yuba Manufacturing Company in California, and was shipped from Oakland on the S.S. Point San Pablo on April 1, 1938. It was assembled on Pedro Creek and began operating on July 11th. The Dredge operated on Pedro Creek, with the exception of the war years, until October 1958. Having completed its available ground there, it was decided to move it to Chicken Creek, as the Cowden Dredge, also belonging to the company, had suffered from years of neglect.”

“During its production years on Chicken Creek, the dredge washed about 2,500 cubic yards of gravel each day (29 buckets per minute) at a cost of around 30 cents per cubic yard. Between 0.30 and 0.80 ounces of gold were recovered from each cubic yard of gravel. There were normally 16-20 men employed in the operation, with 10-12 involved directly with the dredging and the remainder mostly associated with thawing ground ahead of the dredge. The dredge mined over 55,000 ounces of gold in the eight years on Chicken Creek.”

“Until 1998, the Pedro Dredge was hardly visible, resting on upper Chicken Creek where it had been parked in 1967. In the fall of 1998, the dredge was moved a mile to it's present location in the center of Chicken by it's new owner, Bernie Karl, and the owner of the mining claims, Mike Busby. The million-pound artifact was moved in one piece, and took less than two weeks of preparation and two weeks of actual moving, during which 120 tires were used to support it.”

Tisha’s Grave

At the north end of Chicken is a small grave marker with the following history behind it:

From http://www.explorenorth.com/library/bios/purdy-ann_hobbs.html: “Anne Hobbs Purdy was born on November 10, 1901 in Missouri, and grew up in Longmont, Colorado. She came to Alaska in 1928 and taught for the Bureau of Indian Affairs in Eagle, Tetlin, and Chicken. She married a gold miner, Fred Purdy of Chicken, Alaska, in 1940. The couple adopted and raised eleven children. In 1976, Anne Purdy wrote a popular book, Tisha, based on her experiences as a teacher. She also wrote another book, Dark Boundary, as well as numerous newspaper and magazine articles. Anne Purdy died at Dot Lake on April 15, 1987.”

I haven’t read the book, but Maudeen Wachsmith provided a short review at Amazon.com:

“Anne Hobbs is a prim and proper 19-year-old schoolteacher who yearns for adventure. She finds this and much more in a town with the unlikely name of Chicken, located deep in the Alaskan interior. It is 1927 and Chicken is a wild mining community flaming with gold fever. Anne quickly makes friends with many of the townspeople, but is soon ostracized when she not only befriends the local Indians but also falls in love with one.”

More info

http://www.explorenorth.com/library/communities/alaska/chicken.html

There are additional reference links form this page, taking you to information about the Chicken Hotel, downtown Chicken, several other large-scale dredges that offer tours, and a geologic map of the Chicken, Alaska area. Note in particular the large granitic intrusion north of Chicken, bounded by Devonian phyllite, quartzite, chert, limestone, greenstone, slate and tuff. From my limited prospecting experience, any area with a granite intrusion and local greenstone is ripe for exploration.

Additional References

Myers Fork is cited in the following literature:

Cobb, E.H., 1977, Summary of references to mineral occurrences in the Eagle quadrangle, Alaska. U.S. Geological Survey Open-File Report 77-845, 122 p.

Foster, H.L., 1969, Reconnaissance geology of the Eagle A-1 and A-2 quadrangles, Alaska. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 1271-G, p. G1-G30.

Mertie, J.B., Jr., 1938, Gold placers of the Fortymile, Eagle, and Circle districts, Alaska. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 897-C, p. 133-261.

Prindle, L.M., 1909, The Fortymile quadrangle, Yukon-Tanana region, Alaska. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 375, 52 p.

Prindle, L.M., 1905, The gold placers of the Fortymile, Birch Creek, and Fairbanks regions, Alaska. U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 251, 89 p.

Yeend, W., 1996, Gold placers of the historical Fortymile River region, Alaska: U.S. Geological Survey Bulletin 2125, 75 p.

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