This article originally appeared in the June 2001 SOUNDOFF newsletter. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Eureka! Treasure Hunters Club, Inc. While the name suggests treasure hunting, they obviosly have some pretty fair nugget hunters in the club.
When I was a kid, camping with my family, I spotted some shiny bits at the bottom of the stream. Gold! I thought. But alas, it was iron pyrite. We then visited Bodie, a ghost town out in the desert. There, I learned to pan gold from an old timer. Since that moment, Ive always known there was gold out there to be found. I thought that if you only found a little at a time, it would eventually add up to something impressive.
Although I have yet to accumulate "impressive" amounts of gold, I have come to realize that each piece found is an experience worth remembering, and each small vial from a gold hunting expedition holds a treasure of great memories.
Recently, I lined up all the vials of gold Ive found over the years. I examined each one; shook it to hear the rattle of gold, opened each up and poured it into my palm. I held up some of the recognizable pieces, and selected, out of those few ounces, a story or two and some nugget shooting tips for the telling.
Up in the gold hills of California, hung high above the Yuba River, on a dry dusty mountainside, is a "diggings" dating back to 1854. Timber Flat (not the real name) was one of the first large, dry placer gold diggings to be developed after the rush in 1849.
Timber Flat was located by miners trying to find the mother load that supplied the Yuba River valley. What they found was an old section (4 million years old) of river channel located 1500 feet above the current river level. At each end of that old section of riverbed, the mountain drops away at a 50 degree angle, all the way to the Yuba River. The 2000 feet in between was rich with nuggets; some as big as your head.
High and dry, it took three or four years to build a water supply ditch which could be used to wash the gravels. The operation then ran, on and off, until 1935, when it was abandoned.
Seen today, it is a lightly rolling landscape of about 200 acres, perched on a saddle between a mountain on the south, and a small hill perched and jutting out from the main mountainside. At each end of the lower "old riverbed" area, there are acres of large and small boulder piles (tailings), which come right up to the cliffs at either end. In the middle is a tree covered rise, and a grassy meadow with a meandering stream. And scattered throughout are those "hot spots", which contain patches of nuggets.
Ive been to Timber Flat about 8 times, and every visit brings new understanding to the art of nugget shooting. The common thought and initial experience of any nugget shooter is to wander around one of these diggings, randomly searching for hotspots. Once found, the nugget shooter usually zeros in on clusters of small nuggets, scattered over areas from two feet square to 100 square feet or more. Then its back to wandering around until the next hot spot is found
Over many visits to Timber Flat, the nugget-shooting group I work with has discovered that the gold can be found in a variety of ways and in a variety of different location types within a diggings. For lack of a better concept, lets call them "Levels".
Level 1- Using common sense, and the wisdom of a variety of nugget shooting manuals, the nugget shooter searches for areas of exposed bedrock, or bedrock covered with a thin layer (up to 10 inches) of decomposed rock and soil. Given that gold finds the lowest level, it is easiest to find gold where it has nowhere else to hide. When the old timers were washing the gravel out of these old river courses, they could not always sweep the last bits and pieces from the bedrock they had exposed, or see it in small, hidden cracks.
Given time, wind, rain, snow and ice, what had been a relatively smooth bedrock surface will sometimes decompose into what appears to be soil. Dont be fooled. You may be on an old bedrock surface and not know it. If scraping around this "soil" brings up small broken rock chunks, you can bet you are at bedrock.
Level 2- Once a Level 1 area has been "cleared" of nuggets by just using the detector, it is time to pull out the shovels and rakes. By raking back any loose soil or broken bedrock, more nuggets usually surface.
One time at Timber Flat, we had zeroed in on a series of rolling bedrock humps located at the east end of the diggings, just feet from one side of the road (the other side being the cliff). Where the road had been graded, the boulders at the edge of the road had been peeled away, and several nice small nuggets had been found. Once we had worked out the obvious signals, we stood back, drank a coke, and looked over the area. What the heck! We grabbed shovels and rakes, and raked away the top 3 inches of rocky soil. Pulling out the detector, we immediately got a series of small signals. One of these signals kept up as we dug deeper and deeper. At the bottom of what was apparently a 7" deep crack in the original bedrock, came a beautiful ounce nugget!! This began a day of raking and shoveling and detecting. Over 180 small nuggets were found by this method.
Level 3- At the edge of every diggings, and scattered throughout, are areas where, for one reason or another, the original miners had to leave what appears to be exposed un-worked pay streak. Maybe the overburden became too thick, or maybe a boulder was so large, they just left it sitting on top of its un-worked gold and gravel. These are areas of potential nugget finds. Usually, you can bet your last dollar that others have been here before you. In an unexplored area, though, you just cant rule these out. The difficulty is that the nuggets may be scattered anywhere within this gravel layer, and in many cases, they are out of the reach of your detector. Try anyway!
At a diggings nearby called Humbug (also not the real name), we came upon a recently dug pit, where significant work had been performed. Knowing that sometimes the last nugget shooter didnt have time to finish getting out all the nuggets before his weekend came to an end, we started digging. Lo and behold, more nuggets came out of this hole, which was obviously a pay dirt streak that had been missed by the original miners.
Level 4- When nuggets are found in a Level 1 area, you can be assured that there are many smaller pieces, and gold dust, that your detector cannot pick up. In this case, using a dry washer, or self contained wet washer, to process the remaining soil, sand and gravel in these nugget rich areas will almost always yield surprising results. In fact, we have found at Timber that the dust outweighs the nuggets in these nugget patch areas.
Washing Level 3 areas is usually far less productive. What looks like pay streak to you, may not have been pay streak to the old timers. Try panning a sample pan with dirt found around any found nugget.
When we finished raking and shoveling the Level 2 area above that had yielded the ounce nugget, we pulled out the wet washer. I cant say that we processed all the raked dirt, but I can say that we came up with a lot of chunky flakes and dust (2 pennyweight) that the detectors had missed.
Level 5 In many cases, Level 1 nugget patch areas are surrounded by tailing piles of large rocks that were easier to pile up than move. If you were to lift these piles, and search the shallow soil/bedrock underneath, you would find that the richest nugget patches are underneath. Why?? Whether you like it or not, other nugget shooters have been here before you. Of course, what they found, were the largest, easiest to find nuggets and nugget patches. Earlier than even the first nugget shooters, were gold seekers using dry washers. They would search out the most likely spots, and wash rich, selected areas.
Of course none of these earlier visitors was nutty enough to start moving the boulder piles. But, the new breed of nugget shooter is hungrier, more gold crazy, and just itching to find what might still be left after all those years (yours truly). And you know what? There really is gold at Level 5. Nice chunky nuggets scattered just about wherever you want to look. Hard work? Oh, you bet. Snakes? Scorpions? Millipedes? Thick with them!!! Nuggets?? OHHH YEAH! Given how difficult the work is, and despite how thick the nuggets are once you remove the rocks, you cant expose enough hotspot area to find a lot; to find what you know is just footsteps away all around you. But you know you will find something worth while for all that sweat.
So far, at Timber Flat and any other diggings weve gone to, the removal of 2 or 3 square feet of boulder pile has always resulted in at least 1 nugget. If that figure is generally correct, there are thousands of nuggets waiting to be found at any diggings you go too. Just bring along your Caterpillar D-9 if you want to find all of them.
Level 6- Have you ever been detecting around a boulder pile, and gotten a signal
from one of the boulders? In almost all cases, these signals are from highly
mineralized rocks. In rare cases, what you may have found is a quartz rock with
embedded gold.
About 7 years ago, we were detecting Timber, and had found a Level 1 hotspot. While working it out, one of our group was messing around, and got a signal off a white quartz boulder about half the size of a VW bug. We all looked at it, and hemmed and hawed, and ignored it. The next year, we came back, and the top of the rock had been blasted off. The following year we came back, and the whole rock was gone, with just a powdering of quartz chips at the bottom of the hole. At this point we realized that maybe we had missed the boat. Pulling out our dry washer, we processed the rock chips, dust and gravel at the bottom of that hole, and came up with 3 pennyweights in raw gold embedded in quartz, which had been recently left behind. Lesson learned? When you run out of hotspots, try some of those quartz rocks!!
Level 7- Given all the gold taken out of these diggings in the early years, it is possible, and even likely that some of that gold was lost (dropped), or hidden and never recovered. Do not leave these possibilities out when considering your prospects for weekend nugget shooting.
On my third visit to Timber Flat, I was working the edge of a tailings pile, just above where the sluice box ran. It was just turning dark, when I got a small signal, and dug up a small piece of amalgamated gold. This is gold dust that had been recovered from black sand by using mercury, then burning off the mercury in a fire. What is left is a rough piece of gold with a slight silvery coating. After I found that single piece, I focused my search. Piece after piece was found scattered down the 4 hillside. Slowly, the light receded, until I was left hunting in total darkness. My friend Mark brought out a lantern, and we searched for another hour. All told, I found ounce of amalgam gold. Probably lost when a miner, recovering dust by the fireside at night, dropped a piece of hot amalgam, which shattered and cascaded down the hill.
Level 8- If there is any primary trick Ive learned to finding gold, it's that more gold is found if two or more people cooperate in finding it together. Levels 2 thru 7 above will all work most successfully if you pair up with someone else, and share the task of detecting, raking, digging, moving rocks, and dry/wet washing. In this situation, who found which nugget is not important. Once its all over, split the gold by drawing straws. In every case, a team working together found more than twice as much as any of the individuals detecting and digging on their own.
Going back to that first gold hunting experience when I was a kid, I would have to say I was right. My small finds of gold, scattered over the years, have added up to something impressive; Great memories from past days, and a wealth of experience for future trips. TIMBER FLAT, look out for the summer of 2001!!
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