OK, some of my readers seem to believe that the documents I post are to obtuse for the average weekend gold miner.  I don’t tend to agree because the average weekend gold miner is probably an engineer, auto mechanic, or school teacher during the week, and none of this stuff is rocket science.  Also, you know that the weekend gold miners are smart, because they aren’t wasting there time playing golf. 

Well, the document that I am posting this week placer-mining-california-doc-division-of-mines-and-geology is one that should be useful to almost every weekend gold miner whether you live in California or not. 

This document is a very detailed thirty-seven page report on placer mining and from reading it you could pretty well go out and start washing dirt.  It has plans for sluice boxes and lot of other cool stuff.

Strike It Rich!

Today I’m posting a 1997 bibliography from the US Bureau of Mines that lists all of the reports, maps, and surveys that the BM had on Alaska mining.  I guess this is about the time that the Bureau of Mines was being shut down by Bill Clinton and most of the functions merged into the BLM. 

I’m not sure if that was the last big government agency to be shutdown, but I can’t think of any other since then.

It’s not easy reading, but it’s a great research document. 

So, take a look at the list-of-blm-docs-on-alaska-mining

Strike It Rich!

California is obviously the heart of the American gold mining.  The 1848 gold rush wasn’t the first or last gold rush, but it was the most important in American history.  Literally thousands of gold mines with vastly different amounts of production have been established in the 161 years since then and modern prospector appreciate the importance of loacting those old mines. 

The value is that old mines prove that at one time there was gold in place in a given spot and it is virtually certain that the old timers barely scratched the surface of what’s actually available.

So, this map of  cailfornias-historic-gold-mines  is pretty valuable.  It doesn’t give turn by turn directions, but if you do any gold prospecting in California it is worth taking a look at.

I was really surprised at the number of gold mines in Los Angeles County.  Also, this is a big file, so if you are really interested by sure to blow it up to 100%.  You can get a decent idea of the general area of a gold mine from this map. 

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True North is, not surprisingly, a region of Alaska that has produced an enormous amount of gold since 1912. 

It took me a time to figure out just where it was, because this docuemnt, which seems to have been prepared for the Alaska Department of Transportation is apparently missing a few pages.  Most of it is not really related to small gold prospectors, but read it until you get to the part about just how thick the original vein of gold was.

That’s probably worth the trouble of downloading it for most of you guys: alaska-mining-true-north-area

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Montana is a gorgeous state and it has had some outstanding gold production over the years. 

It is also a state with a lot of Federal land, so it is easy find places for gold prospecting.

I am sending you to a copy of a nice page by the state of Montana that is stored on my site, so I don’t have to worry about broken links if they move the page like those boys down in IT like to do.  So, check out: montana-deq-pioneer-mining-district

Strike It Rich!