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!

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. 

Strike It Rich!

Here’s great document for California gold prospectors: A Historic Survey of Shasta County, California Gold Mines.  Really, for this is unbeatable information for California gold prospectors.

This is another TREASURE MAP for gold prospectors and yes I do appreciate all of the nice comments I get for posting these docuements.

This document is from 1995 and 158 pages long.  It’s a general study of the area, but over twenty pages are devoted to  the locations of old gold mines.  This is literally a treasure map!

Of course, be careful about trespassing if you go out looking for these mines, but there is a lot of Federal Land in the area that is easy for gold prospectors to access.

So, check out old-shasta-county-gold-mines

Strike It Rich!

Charlie