Here’s How! : Prospecting in California Gold Country

This is part of a continuing series of free-lance columns that help explain how to deal with everyday situations in our lives and/or how to make life more enjoyable.

Roy Roush is a gold prospector. He may zip over the landscape in a one-man helicopter instead of trudging over it with a trusty pack mule, but nevertheless he’s a real, live gold prospector.

Although this pastime, whether for fun or profit, is difficult to learn on one’s own, Roush, a 59-year-old technical writer and weekend pilot, believes the fundamentals of prospecting can be quickly taught. His one-day college extension course outlines the basics and includes a field trip.

He says: “It’s hard work, but only as hard as you want to make it.”

Novices must first know where to look for gold (he suggests places where others have dug, but not filed a claim) and, secondly, how to tell the real thing from pyrite, mica, galena and other yellow, shiny materials that glitter.

Lode and Placer

Furthermore, there are two types of gold: lode and placer.

About 95% of the gold found is lode gold and becomes gold bullion. It’s found in rock, where it was formed, but getting at it requires an elaborate and expensive mining and processing operation. This is not for the beginner.

Placer, or “free” gold, is what the weekend prospector should look for, Roush says. It was originally lode gold, but decomposition has freed it from the rock. Each time it rains, more of it is freed. Placer gold, especially in nuggets, is better suited for jewelry and is worth about twice the current price of gold bullion. Although placer gold is initially close to the surface, it quickly sinks since gold is 19 times the weight of water.

Six tools are commonly used for finding placer gold: a gold pan, sluice box, dry washer, wet washer, gold dredge and a metal detector. Roush says: “For any condition, there is a method to give optimum results.”

Panning is the oldest and most basic method of placer gold recovery from streams and rivers. However, it is too slow to be an economically viable method of prospecting by itself. The gold pan, however, is indispensable for testing likely sites for their gold content or for sorting out gold from the residue gathered by the more sophisticated tools.

A sluice box is a simple yet fairly effective gold-finding tool. It is a box with open ends and a trough with ridges, called riffles, at the bottom. It works in moving water, with the water flowing through the box. Dirt is scooped in with a shovel or bucket. The water carries the dirt out, while the gold, being heavier, is caught in the riffles. A sluice box can be easily built or one can be bought for about $35.

A wet washer is a sluice box with legs and a motor-driven pump. It can be set on dry land, with the pump providing the water. A dry washer substitutes gas-powered bellows or air blower for the water and pump. It blows the dirt away. A suction dredge is like a sluice box on floats. It has a hose to suck up dirt from the bottom of a lake or river.

Metal detectors can find objects as small as a BB. Although powdered gold has to be in a pocket to be found, metal detectors are without peer at finding gold nuggets. One was used to find the world’s largest gold nugget, weighing 63 pounds and worth more than $1 million. Roush said he has found a dozen nuggets with a metal detector, the largest being about the size of a marble.

Some tools can process more gold-bearing earth than others. A pan can process about one-half cubic yard a day, compared with about 1 cubic yard an hour for a sluice box, 1 1/2 cubic yards an hour for a wet washer, 2 cubic yards for a dry washer and, depending on its size, between 8 and 25 cubic yards per hour for a dredge.

Roush recommends several local spots for finding gold. He takes his students to Follows Camp by the east fork of San Gabriel Canyon, near Azusa. It was a gold camp during the Civil War and has been set aside by the state for recreational gold prospecting. He also recommends San Francisquito Canyon in Newhall; Lytle Creek, off Interstate 5, west of San Bernardino; Piru Creek, also off I-5, near Pyramid Lake, and an area north of Twenty-Nine Palms, toward Randsburg.