The places listed below are user submitted gold prospecting locations. Things change over time - these places may or may not still be open. Be sure to fill your holes, pick up your trash and don't trespass. We are losing good spots all the time.
We really need more info on this state! If you know of any other prospecting locations in this or surrounding areas, please fill out this form. What we need here are fairly specific places like "downstream from where Highway 20 crosses Dry Creek". There are lots of books that say something like "The gold belt runs through ABC & XYZ Counties" or "Gold has been found in ABC River and some of its tributaries". That really doesn't say much about where YOU can find gold, private property issues or Forest Circus rules etc. Please use this form only for suggesting fairly specific places to be added to this page where new prospectors or folks visiting from other areas have a good chance of finding gold. Thank you
From (No name)
I used to pan in the creek that runs under the covered bridge in Pisgah. I
never did any sluicing or dredging but I did well enough to keep going back.
Also
the
creek that runs by the campground on Pisgah Covered Bridge RD was pretty good.
From Kevin Hall
I have been prospecting in Stanley and Montgomery counties for the last 7 years. The Uhwarrie river in Montgomery county is a good place to dredge -- overburden in most places is less than 2 1/2 to 3 feet deep. The only drawback is the LARGE amount of black sand, so much that you have to clean the riffle box every 30 minutes to keep it from packing up.
There are several good areas of the Uwharrie River that are very good for finding gold. First a little about the location of the river itself; it is located in the northwest corner of Montgomery county and it empties into the Pee Dee River between Badin Lake and Lake Tillery. The spots where I have prospected are all in a slate or argillite bedrock (only at most 2-3 feet deep). The best spots are where the bedrock is lying at a downstream angle--just like riffles in a sluice box. There are several of these areas between the Low Water Bridge road and NC 109. Low Water Bridge road is about 1 to 1 1/2 miles northeast of Eldorado, NC. Eldorado is on NC 109 between Troy, NC (southwest) and the Davidson - Randolph - Montgomery county line(s). This section of the river is usually low during the summer and many people canoe through this section. Also about 300 yards downstream from the NC 109 bridge there is a severely cracked (ie. wide cracks 6" -8") section of bedrock from which I recovered a 13 dwt. nugget 2 years ago. The Uwharrie river is open as long as you enter from the road(s) right-of-way; almost all of the property on both banks is either private or state forest land (shudder!)
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