Finding Gold Nuggets

Looking for gold in old, abandoned, mining districts - the old prospectors left a lot of gold along
in the abandoned mines and also missed many deposits along structural trends.

Gold nuggets have always attracted the interest of prospectors since the first recorded gold discovery in the US in North Carolina in 1799, when nuggets were found on Little Meadow Creek at what later became known as the Reed gold mine. The largest reported nugget from this area weighed 247.6 troy ounces. Little Meadow Creek produced so many nuggets that it became known as ‘the potato patch’ in reference to the large nuggets.

Not long after gold was found in North Carolina, gold was discovered in Georgia. A rush to Dahlonega, Georgia, in 1829 resulted in discovery of 500 gold placers and mines. Nuggets of 54, 42, 40, 35, 26, 25, 19, 18, 15, 11, 6, 5, 4, 3 and 2 troy ounces being recovered in Gilmer, Habersham, White, Cherokee and Lumpkin Counties.

Gold nuggets from Julian Creek, Alaska

The largest gold nugget found in Alaska was discovered in 1998 in Swift Creek near Ruby in central Alaska. The softball-size nugget, known as the Centennial nugget, weighed 294.1 troy ounces. Another large nugget recovered on Long Creek near Ruby weighed 46 ounces. Large nuggets (182, 107, 97, 95 and 84-troy ounces) were also found on Anvil Creek near Nome, western Alaska. In northern Alaska, nuggets of 146, 137, 61, and 55-troy-ounces were recovered in the Hammond River in the Brooks Range near Wiseman. In the same region, a 42-ounce nugget was recovered in Nolan Creek in 1994. The Gaines Nugget (122-troy-ounces), was found in the Kuskokwim Mountains of southwestern Alaska near McGrath in 1985 and several nuggets weighing up to 11 ounces, were recovered on Julian Creek in the Kuskokwim in 1988. Another large nugget (the Chicken Nugget) was found in 1983 on Wade Creek near Chicken in eastern Alaska that weighed 56.75-troy-ounces. And a nugget of 56-ounces was found on Dome Creek near Tolovana in central Alaska with a 52-ounce nugget was found on Lucky Gulch (Valdez Creek) near Denali in central Alaska.

Large nuggets recovered from Montana at California Gulch near Phillipsburg in the southwestern part of the state include a football-size nugget that weighed 612.5-troy ounces was recovered from California Gulch in 1902. This was followed by discovery of a 77-troy-ounce nugget from the same gulch. The largest nugget found in Colorado weighed 160-troy-ounces. The nugget was discovered Farncomb Hill at the head of the French Gulch placer near Breckenridge in 1887.

The largest nuggets in the US are from California. At Carson Hill in Calaveras County, a nugget weighing 2,340-troy ounces was recovered in 1854: it is also the largest found in the US. Another water worn nugget of 648-troy ounces was found at Magalia, California in 1859. These were too large to transport any distance in a stream and likely eroded from a proximal vein.

Fragile gold nugget attached to rounded pebble recovered from Snow
Gulch at Donlin Creek, Alaska

But it is hard to compete with Australia when it comes to nuggets. Some giant Australian nuggets include the Welcome Stranger of 2,217-ounces found in 1858 at Bakery Hill in Victoria. The Welcome Stranger was found near the town of Moliagul in Victoria in eluvium, and reported by some sources to have weighed 2,316-troy ounces. Other sources indicate the nugget weighed 2,380-ounces and 2,284 ounces. No matter what it weight, it was a very large piece of gold.

A 286 kg or 9,195-troy ounce nugget (this weight was the combined weight of the gold and quartz) was enclosed in quartz matrix and mined from a vein in the Star of Hope mine and was the size of a man. It became known as the Holterman nugget. This giant nugget was discovered in 1872 near Hill End on the side of Hawkins Hill in New South Wales, Australia. The amount of gold in this gold-quartz nugget was suggested to be 3,000 to 5,000 troy ounces.

A few months later, a larger gold mass was found in the same mine and had an estimated content of 5,000 ounces. However, this mass was broken up underground so that it could be more easily recovered. The Hawkins Hill gold deposits are very rich and yield considerable gold in Nuggety Gully adjacent to the lode (Hausel and Hausel, 2011).

Nuggets found in Arizona are small compared to Alaska and California and possibly is due to the lack of active streams in Arizona. But, there are placers known for nuggets including Arizona’s ‘Potato Patch’ at Rich Hill in the Weaver Mountains northwest of Phoenix. Another area known for nuggets is Greaterville south of Tucson in the Santa Rita Mountains. Nuggets in the Greaterville placers include one of 37 ounces. In the Weaver Mountains, samples of quartz with visible gold are found. Nuggets are also reported in the Bradshaw Mountains and in placers along Lynx Creek, French Creek, Big Bug Creek, the upper Hassayampa River, the Groom placers, and at Black Canyon (Hausel, 2019 - in preparation).

Gold from Rock Creek, Wyoming

Gold Processing & Extraction While Bear Hunting

Visible gold in goethite and quartz,
Mary Ellen Mine. (Steve Gyorvary specimen).

If you decide to mine lode gold, you can keep it simple and dig for specimen-grade gold samples from veins and breccias. Although such samples with visible gold are rare and more valuable than the price of gold, if you have the right vein or ore shoot, they are worth pursuing. When ever you see gossans or tawny to brown limonite and goethite in quartz - look for visible gold! Gossans are something prospectors need to learn to recognize. 

If you decide to mine your lode using open pit or underground methods - you will need deep pockets to pay for mining as well as permitting. In this case, it may be easier to start looking for a company that has the expertise and deep pockets.

Detrital gold is by for the best type of gold to search for as a prospector as it has already been mined by Mother Nature, and now it is up to you to figure out how to concentrate it. To extract placer (detrital) gold from a creek using a gold pan (not recommended as it will wear out your back), sluice, trommel, dredge or some other concentrating equipment, you will likely need permits from the State or Feds. The government is totally out of touch when it comes to permitting, as in most cases they will try to permit you to death. Some states may even require a permit to operate a gold pan on public property even though this would be as absurd as requiring a permit to operate a fork in a restaurant; however, Democrats were actually talking about this when I left Wyoming. One of the easiest ways to find out rules and regulations for prospecting in your state is to join a local prospecting club. Many gold prospecting clubs are associated with the Gold Prospectors Association of America: and there are independent groups such as the Wyoming Prospectors Association. 

GRIN AND BEAR IT! And don't forget to support the NRA, unless you are willing to prospect grizzly country without a gun. Just imagine, panning in Wyoming, Montana, Alaska or even Washington DC and you look up just in time to see a grizzly licking its chops while staring at you 50 feet away. Sure, you can use that brand of bear repellant spray your university professor recommended even though he/she/it has never seen a grizzly except on TV. 

In the woods, a bear can easily sneak up to you, particular when it sees you are listed in the specials on the menu. Remember, it can charge as fast as 35 mph! But, you have that handy, dandy spice, errr, repellant in your pocket or back pack. How fast can you get that vial out of your back pack? "Oh, there it ...." "CHOMP".  

If you are lucky, you may have a little more than a second to get that thing out of your pocket, get the cap off, point and squirt, but I'll bet you end up served on the dinner special. That 700 to 1,500 pound grizzly can cover a short 50-foot distance in .... can you believe 1 second! Don't believe me, you can do the math yourself. And if you are lucky enough to point and shoot your little spice vial. I imagine that  bear mass, with all of its kinetic energy, is not going to stop easily - "splat and chomp!" 

So, the next time your hike and bike Berkeley professor tells you to use repellent, remember he/she/it is thinking about human sacrifice to keep the bears well fed. But if you have a gun, particularly a very large gun (12 gauge), 44 or 45 cal., you may stand a chance. But, why not a 357 magnum? Well, because one of our geologists in Alaska shot a typical, everyday, meat-loving black bear in-between the eyes at point blank range as it was trying to eat another geologist. All it did was give the bear a nasty headache. It knocked the bear down, but then it got up, and ran off until the next day, when it decided to come back looking for another geology snack.

GOLD PANNING POLLUTION. When I was in Wyoming, there was a faculty member in the  Geology Department who thought gold panners were polluting Douglas Creek in the Medicine Bow Mountains. Obviously, she never tried to operate a gold pan herself, otherwise she would not have made such a ridiculous statement.  Gold panning is a real, serious, pain in the neck (as well as the back and especially, the lower back). 

Gold Panning in the Medicine Bow Mountains, Centennial
Ridge district. No one found gold at what was known as the
Mother Lode, but some found nice specimens of pyrite
(fool's gold) and some found almandine and pyrope garnet!
Pyrope garnet is a tracer mineral for finding diamonds!
So, somewhere upstream there is an eroding diamond pipe
leaking pyrope garnet (and maybe diamonds) into the creek.

Years ago, I met two prospectors from Lander Wyoming who were working Smith Gulch at South Pass while I was mapping the greenstone belt and old mining districts, and they were recovering about 20 ounces of gold per week. At 1600/ounce, that's only about $32,000 per week. Not bad for two guys.

Often we get use to seeing gold pans filled with gold - this does not really happen in real life; so when we see gold filled pans, remember, the gold was found with some other equipment and placed in the pan for a photo opt.

Panning is an easy - it just takes a little confidence and a couple of pans full of sand and mud, and soon you will be an expert. Gold has a very high specific gravity (15 to 19.3), which means you are going to have to make an serious effort to wash gold out of your pan. So put a little effort into your panning. If you are ending up with a tablespoon or two of what is known as black sand (mostly magnetite with a few minerals such as ilmenite, zircon, etc), with specific gravities around 4 to 5, you are doing good. But be assured, you probably did not wash out much gold as it is 3 to 4 times heavier by volume, than those black sands. 

Stamp mill at Goldfields, Arizona

While panning for diamonds in California, we recovered a gemstone known as benitoite near Poker Flat and chromian diopside from serpentinite in northern California (Hausel, 1996). In Wyoming, we panned many gem-quality garnets, some diamonds, and numerous sapphires and rubies and found dozens of localities where gold had not been reported before (including the Laramie City landfill!) (Hausel and others, 1994). In samples panned in the Laramie Mountains near Vedauwoo, we found fluorite (easy to recognize in black sands - it is purple in this area and crushes easily) and many samples with chromian diopside and pyrope garnet near Eagle Rock. This suggests there are undiscovered diamond pipes! 

While searching for evidence of diamond pipes, we found distinct, small, structurally-controlled vegetation anomalies including one at (41o17'39.96"N; 105o22'46.95"W) along the edge of Eagle Rock. This same area has several beaver ponds to the northwest, any of which could be hiding diamond pipes.

Not too far from Eagle Rock, we identified other possible diamond pipes that remain a mystery. These included the Bowling Pin Anomaly (41o11'15.39"N; 105o19'34.67"W), a circular depression with carbonate in soils that had a couple of bowling pins in the depression. The entire area has many such anomalies including the HJ17 depression (41o12'01.92"N; 105o19'10.46"W). Further south (actually just south of the interstate) we identified 42 highly suspicious cryptovolcanic structure of which anyone of them could be a kimberlite (diamond) pipe. All of these anomalies remain untested due to various access problems.

Arrastra gold concentrator. This was a very primitive grinder with large rocks
attached to a pivot at the center. A mule would walk around in circles pulling
a lever that would continue to drag the boulders over a trough where gold-
bearing quartz would be placed to be crushed.

Other minerals of interest found while panning include a lot of white material that was impossible to pan out. It was too heavy! So I stuck it under a black light and with short-wave ultraviolet light, it exhibited strong, blue fluorescence - it was scheelite (a tungsten ore)! This was recovered from samples (along with gem-quality iolite) near the old strong mine along the 9th street road in the Laramie Mountains.

And what else did we find? At one location in extreme northwestern Colorado, 4 diamonds, 17 rubies and 24 pyrope garnets were panned. Wow, what a find! Actually, this was the site of the historical 1872 diamond hoax fraud which occurred near what is now called Diamond Peak. This diamond scam was amazing as it was an outcrop that was salted in 1871 and 1872 and the crooks scammed US Senators (first time in history that scam artists scammed scam artists). 

A primitive roller mill displayed at the Douglas Museum, Jerome, Arizona.
Eric Hausel stands adjacent to the mill.

References Cited

Hausel, W.D., 1991, Economic geology of the South Pass granite-greenstone belt, Wind River Mountains, western Wyoming: Geological Survey of Wyoming Report of Investigations 44, 129 p.

Hausel, W.D., 1996, Pacific Coast diamonds-an unconventional source terrane in Coyner, A.R., and Fahey, P.L., eds., Geology and ore deposits of the American Cordillera, Geological Society of Nevada Symposium Proceedings, Reno/Sparks, Nevada, p. 925-934.

Hausel, W.D., and Stahl, S., 1995, The great diamond hoax of 1872: Wyoming Geological Association Resources of Southwestern Wyoming Guidebook, p. 13-27.

Hausel, W.D., Marlatt, G.G., Nielsen, E.L., and Gregory, R.W., 1994, Study of metals and precious stones in southern Wyoming: Geological Survey of Wyoming Open File Report 94-2, 61 p.

Exodus 25-11

Gold from Douglas Creek Wyoming. Photo shows gold recovered with the black sands removed (the penny is just used for scale). To remove black sands, simply wait until your panned concentrates are dry. Get a large and strong magnet, cover it with a paper towel and slowly sweep over the concentrates - whamo - nearly all of the black sands will be removed. What you have left is a little gold, garnets, mica and if you look close, you may even find diamond indicator minerals such as pyrope garnet, chromian diopside, picroilmenite, chromite and/or diamond. Diamond has a specific gravity of 3.5 and will often end up in the black sand concentrates. Much of the lighter colored material will be removed during panning: most of which will be quartz with a little feldspar. Quartz has a specific gravity of only 2.7.

Mining on Douglas Creek using a long tom and a
dredge on a rotating platform with shovel.