WHERE TO FIND . . .GOLD : Clues Are There for Fortune Seeker Who Can Best Play Connect-the-Dots

When the price of gold went over $800 an ounce a few years ago, it precipitated a Gold Rush of another kind in California--weekend panners who figured the Argonauts of the mid-1800s didn’t find every nugget in California’s streams.

But where to look? The Mother Lode streams near Sacramento were well-known from the Gold Rush period, but names of lesser-known gold sites were hard to come by.

Enter Chuck Overbey, a retired NASA moon-shot deputy safety director. He’s published a 2-by-3-foot map of California’s gold country, with 3,558 gold dots on it, each one indicating a site where gold was found.

“The map is for the recreation gold panner, the person who likes a little exercise and wants a chance to find a little gold,” Overbey said.

“The gold dots can represent anything from where enough gold was found for a report to have been filed, to where a major mining operation existed. The indicators provide clues for people who would like to pan where their chances of finding gold are maybe a little better.”

Overbey, 62, spent nearly a year on his California gold map, poring over U.S. Geological Survey, California Division of Mines and Geology, and U.S. Bureau of Mines records in Washington, Sacramento, Menlo Park, Calif., and Denver.

He has published similar maps for Virginia (200 gold sites), North Carolina (300), Georgia (500), Alabama (140) and South Carolina (130).

Gold panning is also popular in the foothills of the Appalachians, Overbey pointed out.

“For 45 years, until 1849, gold production in the United States was concentrated in the Appalachian areas of Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, and North and South Carolina,” he said.

“The Gold Rush in California was such a major event in the history of the country that most people today are totally ignorant of the extensive gold-mining activity that occurred in the Appalachian area. A lot of those Appalachian mines were shut down in the 1850s, when the miners ran off to California, and they were never reopened.”

He uses U.S. Geological Survey topographical maps with the contour lines left off. On the maps, he has plotted the gold dots and other features, including the course of rivers millions of years ago, before 19th Century miners found gold in them. For example, the map plots the course of the American River as it was in the tertiary period, millions of years ago.

Recreational gold panning is an inexpensive outdoors activity requiring no fees or licenses, or expensive equipment. All that’s needed are a shovel, a $5 gold pan, a magnifying glass, a pair of tweezers and a small plastic vial in which to put gold.

Overbey says he has sold most of his maps to rock hounds, treasure hunters, recreation panners, retirees and a smaller number to mining firms.

Overbey’s California map costs $12 and may be ordered through Big Ten Inc., Box 1231, Cocoa Beach, FL. 32931.