|
||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Locating “Arizona” Gold By Robert Mitchell, AZOD Gold Prospecting Leader
Ok, so you’ve done your homework. You’ve found your small piece of Arizona wilderness with no active mining claim and clear of all government-imposed closures. For the sake of this article, we will say it’s about fifty miles from downtown Phoenix, is adequately accessible, and has a small amount of water. You know there just has to be gold there, since you’ve seen the black sand that all the books speak of being associated with gold. The problem is you haven’t found any gold yet. That new gold pan, the shovel from the garage, and all that panning practice in the backyard still hasn’t helped you out here in the wild to find even one speck of gold. You’ve read all the books about the Klondike, Sutter’s Mill, and the vast quantities of gold recovered by dredgers on the Klamath River and even about all those huge nuggets that were found just lying around on top of Rich Hill up near Wickenburg. What those books failed to mention is that finding gold in Arizona can be considerably different than other states and, therefore, require different techniques. This will be the first of a series of articles directed at assisting the “wanna be” prospector locate his/her first “pay streak” and then to recover it with the least amount of effort. First, remember the basics. Gold, being one of the heaviest minerals, will always, always, ALWAYS follow a predictable path in a river, stream, or even in a dry gulch. The problem we are all left with is making accurate predictions of that path. If you don’t know where to look for it, you should leave your shovel at home. Let’s take that little piece of ground I alluded to at the beginning of this article. For the purpose of this discussion we will call it ABC Creek. It’s a small spring-fed creek that usually contains enough water for panning after digging a small pond. ABC Creek winds through the junipers with the occasional small waterfall and some huge granite boulders. Everywhere you look there are streaks of black sand that the books say is an indicator of gold. But pan after pan of this black nuisance called magnetite yields nothing. No doubt you aren’t the first person to look for gold here and likely thousands have performed the same sampling technique before moving on to another stream. I have seen “experienced” prospectors standing right on top of one of this state’s best gold pockets and swear to me there wasn’t a speck of the yellow stuff around as they had spent hours and sometimes days sampling the very spot with no success to show for it. The aerial photo below is ABC Creek. Take some time to study the section of creek in the photo. Try to picture it during a major flood. With the following criteria and everything you have learned elsewhere, try to locate on the picture where you think the gold is likely to be found. (You are free to print the photo.) 1. Gold will try to follow a similar path that a winding driver would use around a racetrack. 2. Gold will settle into slower moving water. 3. Gold will try to settle to the lowest point possible. 4. The surrounding bedrock in the picture is composed of highly decomposed granite. 5. The water flow in the picture is left to right.
Located within this photo is an area where $27,000.00 in gold nuggets were recovered during just two days in 1990 using the methods I will discuss and a tired out old metal detector. Can you guess where?
In the next article I will locate on the photo where the paystreaks were recovered, describe their size, and begin to explain why they formed where they did. - AZOD -
|
|
||||||||||||||||||
About
AZOD.com
|
Privacy Statement |
Submission of info Policy|
E-mail the Editor |
|
||||||||||||||||||||
