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.

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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

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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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Here’s a great document about Washington State gold mining.  It’s a 1955 document prepared by the Washington State Division of Mines and Geology.  This is pretty much the bible for the Washington gold miner, because it gives 162 pages worth of information on the history and location of mines in Washington state.  A gold miner can’t ask for much more than that.

Washington has had some very good gold production over the years and today apparently the small time gold miners are doing pretty good.

So, check out washington-state-gold-mining   If you live out in that part of the country this is really worth taking a look at.

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Ok, so these Montana gold mines are not really lost. After all, the government employee that wrote this document seems to know right where these gold mines are, but do you.

This isn’t a huge document and I’m not quite certain who prepared it, but it is a nice list of old gold mines in Montana.

So, check out lost-mines-in-montana

Strike It Rich!