Professor Hausel's Guide to Gold

Be careful of legends! The Superstition Mountains!
Many gold legends are nothing more than legend. Wonder
why no one ever found the Lost Dutchman mine? Well,
maybe there's a mine out there, but why bother when there 
are plenty of known gold mines around the West.

You've probably heard it said before. "Gold is where you find it". Not sure what wise guy came up with that saying - but its true even though it should be obvious. But the problem is finding the location of the "where you find it".  

 I think I have a nose for finding gold deposits and its not as hard as some make it out to be. Some years ago, a group of 7 geologists (including me) was awarded the Thayer Lindsey Award for making a major gold discovery, and prior to that acknowledgement, I was presented the 2004 Distinguished Service Award for the many other gold, diamond, colored gemstone, base metal and similar discoveries. It's not that I'm that good of geologist, its just that I follow up on leads - anyone with a decent geology education could do the same.

Here are some suggestions for finding gold:

(1) Use science (unlike the CDC). Sounds pretty straight forward, but it is amazing how many promoters and scam artists swear by using unscientific methods such as dowsing, witching sticks, legends, wet dreams, feelings, legends and even fraudulent information to find gold (sort of like the democratic party). None of which will work.

The iron stained (gossan) at the Vulture gold mine, Arizona.
Learn what you can about veins and how to follow them
if you want to find gold. There will be many false trails, but
some will be good. Just don't give up!

When I was at the Wyoming Geological Survey, I had one dowser who would read my ICMJ prospecting and mining journal articles and would dowse the paper and ink maps in each article, sketch a couple of pencil lines and then send me a copy of the article to tell me where the mother lode was on each paper map. This went on for a few years and I finally lost touch with him, so he was either recaptured by the authorities, or went to work for the Biden administration. I'm not sure why manipulating ink on cheap paper would allow one to find gold - but that's the kind pseudoscience that some of these guys used.

Another dowser would send me advertisements for his school of dowsing (all hand written) for a variety of courses - each class sounded like and episode of the Twilight Zone. One of his better ones (I tried to get the University of Wyoming to pay for my registration) was how to find lost dogs and other pets with a dosing rod while flying over the country in a 747. Now if you don't laugh, you should see a professional. Not sure if it was me, or my job that attracted these guys - but I must say, I did actually enjoy hearing their stories, and I'm sure I will get lots of people who would like to debate the science of dowsing, but for me, I've seen enough. Yes, I've seen people use dowsing rods and watch the stick swing up and down as they walk, but I've never seen anyone find anything more than sagebrush or dirt with dowsing rods. 

Gold nuggets from Arizona

Then there was 'Barbara' - a little old lady prospector/con artist/democrat from Atlantic City Wyoming who knew where all of the gold was! In other people's wallets. Barbara was well-known for her scams - and yes, at one time she was the chairperson of the Wyoming democratic party. 

She was only about 97-pounds soaking wet, chain smoker, serious drinker, and actually entertaining. She once sold a tourist a jar full of gold at a reduced price. He was so excited to show everyone his jar of gold at the Atlantic City Mercantile, until he discovered he had paid more than $5000 for jar full of worthless mica. Within a few days, the Atlantic City volunteer fire department responded to a fire.  Barbara's old Cadillac was ablaze.



Visible gold in rhyolite from Arizona. When you see this
much gold - you struck it rich. A rule of thumb. If you see
one tiny spec of visible gold on a rock sample, it will assay
close to 1 ounce per ton. A rock with this much gold likely
would assay 100 ounces per ton.

On another day, Barbara latched on to a well-dressed tourist from Missouri who stepped into the Atlantic City Mercantile to ask directions. Barbara sat down with the unsuspecting visitor and did her best to sell him the Mary Ellen gold mine  south of town, until he told her he and his son Steve, actually owned the Mary Ellen mine. 

Then there was a University of Wyoming geology professor. Now this one really took the cake! The professor wrote on UW letterhead paper that 297,000,000 ounces of gold reserves existed and had been identified at Pine Mountain west of Casper, near the Rattlesnake Hills. The only problem, no gold had ever been identified at Pine Mountain even though it has been a popular site for mining scams similar to the South French Creek area in the Medicine Bow Mountains. After this professor and others were investigated by the secret service, no charges were files as no money had yet exchanged hands - so the university promoted the professor.

One way to learn about gold is to read some good gold prospecting books. Then find a gold district near your town you can visit (don't buy and jars of gold) and get out on some mine dumps and start examining the area around the old mines. Look for any lineaments such as narrow quartz veins running towards the old mine dump you are standing on and walk along this vein. If there area lots of prospects on the vein, this start looking at the vein and learn all you can. See if you can follow the vein for a few hundred feet, a few thousand feet. 

The color of natural gold is impressive. These gold flakes from the Dickie Springs paleoplacer
gold deposit in Wyoming, have very high specific gravity. As you swirl water in your pan, these flakes
 will be difficult to move (unlike mica). Mica will seem to stay in place as you swirl water in your
pan, but when you look close, mica tumbles in the water because of low specific gravity.

You might also look for linear depressions. These could be related to faults or shear zones. See if there is much in the way of prospects on these depressions. If there are, it is likely an old mineralized shear zone.

(2) Learn what gold looks like. This is important. Visit museums, look at photographs in books and on the Internet. Usually, the only thing that is mistaken for gold is pyrite and mica and sometimes chalcopyrite. Most people mistaken mica for gold - like Barbara's friend at the Atlantic City mercantile. Years ago, I wrote an article for the ICMJ about a prospector in Centennial Wyoming who had been jumping someone else's mining claim on the Middle Fork of the Little Laramie River all winter long. His name may have been 'John', but he used different aliases when talking to me. Anyway, he mined all winter using snow shoes to get to the claim and recover all of the gold he could, hopping not to be discovered. He told me he accumulated a few barrels filled with gold in his single wide trailer at Centennial. Finally, he brought in a couple of Ball jars filled with the material to verify his riches. You could see the disappointment when I told him he had some high-quality planting soil, but no gold.

Visible gold in quartz and hematite, Carissa Mine,
South Pass, Wyoming

(3) Visit old mining districts. Read about the old mining districts you visit and keep in mind a couple of things - legends are just that - they are legends often concocted by an old prospector in a bar in the past after having one too many drinks. So why waste your time on some one's past drunk when there are still plenty of gold deposits to be found. It is extremely rare (actually rarer than getting the truth from a politician) for any gold mine to be mined out. Gold miners always leave a lot of gold in the mines and in the veins that they mined along. At one time not so long ago, gold prices were only about $18/ounce, then about $20/ounce and then $35/ounce. Just the other day (1/17/22), they were $1,824/ounce. 

When gold prices are low, miners only mine high grade material, typically material that assays better than 0.2 opt Au. Today, some companies mine gold ore at an averages of only 0.01 to 0.02 opt (ounces per ton) and better. So, the past miners left all of the low-grade gold ore and often missed a lot of high-grade gold ore. Think about it, how many times have companies gone back into old mines or old districts and began mining in an old mine. New mining districts are rarely found, so stick to the mining districts until you have a lot of good experience.

It is worthwhile to visit old gold mines that made a profit prior to the War Production Board closing all gold mines in the US in 1942. Many of these mines never reopened after the second world war for many reasons, but these were commercial mines at a low gold price. At today's gold price, which is about 50 times greater than when these mines closed, these should be viable.  Also, search the old US Bureau of Mines publications on mining districts. The Bureau of Mines was an excellent and pragmatic group of geologists, engineers and chemists who were mostly fired from their jobs after producing extremely valuable material on mines, exploration, mining, recovery, etc. simply because of the Clinton Administration who objected to their scientific data - i.e., it wasn't green. Politics like this destroys people's lives and does little to help anyone (other than multi-millionaires like Clinton and Gore).


Giant King gold mine, CA. Note the iron stained (gossan) in the blue serpentinite. Some serpentinites have gold, some platinum and palladium, some will have nickel, and in California, some may have gemstones of benitoite or sapphire.