How to Find Gold

Prospecting for Gold

In order to find gold the first thing you have to know is where to look for it. You’ll never find gold in your back yard or on the city streets. Once you find the prime locations, then you have to find where the gold is hiding in the stream and rivers that you have discovered. Next, you have to know how to extract the gold from its hiding place. Then, what do you do with it once you’ve found it?

My friend Alex and I spent several days each month prospecting for gold in the Sierra foothills in the mid nineteen eighties. At that time, gold sold for around eight hundred and fifty dollars an ounce. Today an ounce of gold is worth just under one thousand dollars. The higher price makes me think about dusting off the pick and pans and heading up the hill.

Where to look for gold? You can get some answers from acquaintances that are into prospecting. One of Alex’s friends got him interested in prospecting when he showed him a quarter once nugget that he found up in the Sierra Foothills. He told Alex about several creeks where you could find good-sized nuggets, but he would not tell anyone where he found the quarter once nugget. In fact, when a friend of his tried to follow him one morning, he went to another to site to prospect.

The first thing to do is get a BLM map. These maps are put out by the Bureau of Land Management, which manages federal public lands. The maps show you exactly where you can prospect. Of course, you cannot prospect on private property, but you will be amazed at how much land is BLM land especially here on the West Coast. When we were prospecting in the Sierra foothills, we some times drove for hours seeing nothing but BLM land.

Most of the good prospecting locations are in areas that were mined during the mid eighteen hundreds. Once you have your BLM map, drive to the old mining towns. Here in central California that would be Coulterville, Greeley Hill, and Groveland. Stop at one of the local markets or mining supply stores where you will find local maps and be able to get tons of information on who can tell you where to find the best streams and rivers in the area. We received a lot of information from a general store that sold drinks and sandwiches. There, for one dollar we were able to buy a pamphlet, “Where to Find Gold in the Mother Lode,” which mapped out rivers, streams and old mines. It showed all the gold producing areas in the Mother Lode.

We also purchased another pamphlet “How to Find Gold” which was written by William Hawk. A lot of the information that I present in this article comes from Hawk’s pamphlet. It seems that Hawk has expanded his pamphlet into a paperback that is available on Amazon.

We met a couple old timers at Yosemite Sam’s in Coulterville. After a couple of beers, they assured us that the very best place to pan for gold in the area was Bull Creek. They told us that with just a little luck anyone could find color there. And with just a little hard work you could always make wages panning at Bull Creek.

To get to Bull Creek we had to drive through unimproved dirt roads that turned into roads that were over grown with grass and open a couple of unlocked gates. We found that most of the creek was already claimed. However, it was still open for panning. In the three or four times we worked the creek, we came up with several tiny flakes of gold some I still have in the small vial where I originally stored them.

Another area where we prospected in the Sierra foothills was the North Fork of the Merced River at Briceburg. It was here that I found a flake of gold about half the size of my thumbnail. It was the biggest piece of gold that I found in my several years of prospecting. I still have it in the vial with several smaller flakes. The area where we were panning was staked. And after and hour or so in the cold water, I was walking on the dirt road that runs by the river to warm up. The guy who had the claim there pulled up in his pick up truck. He told me that he didn’t mind guys panning on his claim, but that he didn’t allow no dredging on it.

Once you discover where the gold bearing creeks and rivers are, you have to discover where the gold is hiding. William Hawk states that you have to learn how the read the creek or river that you are working. Flowing water carries gold downstream, and drops it at certain places along the flow. Water flows faster where a creek narrows down. Hawk maintains that the gold will drop at the first slowdown along the flow. Gold also tends to drop at the inside of a curve. My friend, Alex talked about glory holes, little waterfall like drops where the gold would because of its heavy weight fall to the bottom and stay there under the black sand and gravel.

Next you have to learn how to get the gold out of the cracks and crevices that it is hiding in. The gold isn’t always hiding very deep. Hawks says that one of the best ways to find gold is through “Sniping.” To Snip for gold you walk up stream and look for crevices that come after a drop. With your fingers or a screw driver, fan the lose gravel away from the crevice. Often you will see the yellow color at the bottom of the crack. I used a basting tool that I borrowed from the kitchen to suck up the black sand and gold that hid in the crevice.

Another way to get gold from the sand and gravel is to pan for it. I used green plastic pans. To pan for gold, you stick your pan in the water and scoop out a measure of gravel and sand. With the pan still in the water, you twist it back and forth in a swirling motion that will allow the heavier gold to sift to the bottom of the pan. After you’ve worked it for a while, you lift the pan out of the water. Holding it with one hand you pick out the larger gravel and dirt. Then you begin swirling it again until there is nothing left in the pan but tiny pieces of quartz, black sand, and flakes of gold. You can pick out the flakes of gold with a pair of tweezers and drop them in your vial.

If you find an area that you think contains a large a large amount of color, you can stake a claim on it. To file a claim you have to know the township, range, section, quarter section, base, and meridian of the area that you wish to claim. You can get this in formation from a USGS Topographical Map. There are certain requirements for filing a claim. You have to prove that you found gold in the area. You have to stake it out so others are aware of your claim. And you have to pay a small fee.

When I was prospecting on Bull Creek, as I said before almost every inch of the creek was staked out. However when I checked on the claims at the BLM office I found that many of them were no longer valid because the prospectors had not paid the required annual fee. It is legal to stake a claim on an area that has in a sense been abandoned. This is not considered claim jumping.

Once you find gold what do you do with it? Most of the shops that sell mining supplies will buy your gold, or steer you to someone who will buy it. You can sell larger nuggets to a jeweler. You can also make jewelry yourself from the larger nuggets. Or, you can keep your flakes of gold in a vial of water and show them off to friends and acquaintances as I do.

Of course, there is a lot more to prospecting for gold that I haven’t explained in this short article. But, the basics are here, and if you get the gold fever, you will discover the real tricks to the trade for yourself. If you can find an old timer to give you advice you will be picking large nuggets out of the stream in no time flat.