Mother Lode Goldhounds Newsletter for March 2019

Presidents Corner March 2019

Wow, another year of Important Dates 2019 expectations is here al- 03/08 Monthly Meeting ready. This year Resolu- 04/12 Monthly Meeting tion seems to be a bad 05/10 Monthly Meeting word, because they are easily broken. Making a 05/14-24 Bear River resolution to get out and 06/14 Monthly Meeting hunt for more often 07/12 Monthly Meeting sure sounds good, and 07/18—23 Roaring Camp maybe throw in a little more camping. The weather so 08/09 Monthly Meeting far this new year has been slowing down new adven- Ice Cream Social

tures, but hopefully that will change soon. The water in 09/13 Monthly Meeting the creeks and rivers will rise offering new opportunities 10/11 Monthly Meetinfg to prospect. In areas where there is no water available except during the winter, should be investigated this 11/08 Monthly Meeting Spring. Dry creeks now have puddles available to pan, 12/13 Pot Luck, Ugly Sweater which has been a successful way of prospecting for In This Issue years... Get out and fight Cabin Fever and that mean old Gold Fever. No matter how much gold you find, Pg 1 Presidents Corner you'll feel better for getting out there. Remember it’s Pg 2 Meeting Notes not the having but the finding that makes it all worth- Pg 12 Pictures while. Pg. 14 Gold Hound Outings Pg. 15 Mother Lode Nuggets Going for that chilly gold, Pg 16 Tales From The Good Your El Presidente, Ole Days Mike Pg. 20 El Dorado Museum Outing Pictures Pg 26 Goldhound Classified Pg 29 Membership Application Meeting Notes

February 2019

Mike called the meeting to order with the Pledge of Allegiance. He thanked everybody for coming and asked for any new visi- tors to stand and introduce themselves and say where they are from. We had 5 guests.

Next Club Outing

The next club outing is this coming Saturday, February 23th at the Placer Fair- grounds in Placerville at 10 am. Matt has already been out there and checked it out. You will be able to view magazines, maps, historical books, basically history of the Mother Lode area you won’t find anywhere else. We will meet at the fair- grounds in Placerville. Matt will give us a little tour first. He will help us go through the maps and books to help us find new places to go goldmining. Mike reminded us that the history of this area has a rich history of gold deposits. Newsletter

If you don’t get the newsletter in your email, you can go by Pioneer and if you buy something, Heather will print it for you. Pioneer is located at 104 Placerville Drive in Auburn. Happy Valentines Day Before I forget, we have flowers and candy on the back table. Please help your- self. The candy is for the guys in the I love you wrappings and the flowers are for the ladies. I said to my wife, I can’t give guys I love you stuff, so she said, just tell them it is from me. Where to Look for Gold

You will learn a about the size of the gold. If you are going out metal detecting, why go to the places where there was nothing but fine gold. There is a couple of chalk bluffs over by Reddog where there was lots of gold found. You will also find that they found 2-pound pockets of gold, but they were all fine gold. You can locate a few small nuggets and then take some of the material home and pan it. For the most part if you do a little research you will get better results. Reddog which is near Chalk Bluffs, has nuggets everywhere. I have been out there at Reddog… The problem with Reddog is that it is so close to town. A lot of people have been shooting out there doing target practice. You might find 10 bullets for every piece of gold. I think that can get frustrating. I’ve learned to ignore the loud signals, those are bullet type signals and to be patient and just listen for the smaller quiet signals. You will spend more time finding gold than digging bullets. Having learned that I might dig up 30 or 40 pieces of gold for every one bullet. Christmas Hill is not very good. I have been at Christmas Hill which is just down the hill from Reddog. It was a lot of sand, a lot of gravel, not many big boulders. There is gold there, but it is still pretty deep. Now you read in books where areas were purely hy- draulic, purely washed well Christmas Hill is a good example of that. When you first go into Christmas Hill there are huge deposits of bedrock where they have power lines going across the top. We were using Goldmaster which doesn’t have the interference problems like you would with a Minelab. With the Goldmaster we were finding gold all over the place 30 feet above the hydraulic area all along the power lines. It was just because it was shallow and the gold hadn’t been washed down. They put their power lines out there in solid bedrock. We did very well there. There is still a lot of gold to be found there. On a Minelab there is a cancel button that will cancel out the powerlines, but it also cancels out the gold, except maybe for a large nugget. I was walking along metal de- tecting and there was this zing and it sounded really good and I dug it up and it was 10 times bigger than I thought it was and I figured there was something wrong. I looked at my machine and I had bumped the cancel button which reduced my depth from 100% to 40% which also made my targets seem a lot smaller. If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have dug it up. Liberty Hill which is just down the road from there has a hydraulic pit that is 2.5 miles long and about a quarter mile wide. It is different than any place I’ve ever been too be- cause there is gold in the bedrock, gold on the side of the hill and there is gold above that on a ridge. What caught my attention when I first went there was the boulders up on the side of the bank. That told me that I should at least investigate and dig around the base of the big boulders. That area has never been worked. They left half those hillsides there to divert the water down through the hydraulic pit and out the back end. So they had to leave that stuff there. I started digging around the big boulders and the best day I had was a half-ounce. One time I got about a hundred nuggets under one boulder, but the total was only about 3.5 pwt. It was a lot of fun digging, every target was gold – no junk or trash. That’s one of the reasons I like digging. Anyone who goes out with me knows that the only person who likes digging more than I do is probably Greg and he is getting away from that lately. He is more of a chisel and hammer kind of guy now – chiseling out the bedrock. So, I move a lot of material. I can dig down 4 to 5 feet sometimes even 6 feet depending on where the bedrock is. It is kind of strange because the bedrock will be a kind of a peachy white color? Material and there is gold on top of that and you dig down a little father and it turns yellow and in some areas you have a blue clay layer. This will be the area where the gold accumu- lates. The miners hated these areas of clay it would gum up their sluice boxes. You know they have hundreds of feet of sluice boxes and they would shovel the clay and it would roll up in balls as it went down the sluice boxes and pick up all the clay and carry it out the back end. They decided that there was easi- er gold to be found. That is why modern miners should pay attention to those areas. I’m digging, I’m down 5 or 6 feet deep and this guy next to me is only down 2 feet and he is finding gold like crazy, so I kind of work my way toward him because it is easier if I don’t have to move as much dirt. It has been like that for 150 years. The miners would move to the easier areas. Yeah, they have been getting $3 of gold a day, but back home working on the farm they were only getting a $1.50 a day and if they were working for mom and dad they might have only gotten $.75 a day and it was really difficult work. So they come here and the guy down from them is making $45 to $60 a day so he would move further down. It’s not that they weren’t finding a lot of gold, it’s that they would go to where it was easier to dig and there was more gold to be found. It is the same today, you work and try to make it easy on yourself. The more dirt you move the more gold you find. Ray Dodd’s Sluice boxes

We have some sluice boxes here in front that Ray Dodds is selling. I’m going to leave it up to Ray as to how we are going to go about this later in the meeting . Indicators of Gold People are always asking, “How do I know where to look for gold?” So I am going to talk about the indicators of gold. In other words, some of the characteristics this is an area where you should look for gold and have a better chance of finding it. The very first step would be reading the history of the area. The Gold Book for example put out by the State of California and the Geologic Survey (USGS). Now the books are different colors because they are all reprints. Some of the information that is in these books is size of the gold that was found in the past 150 years, where the gold was found, the dates of when it was found, plus other relevant information. Of all the states that have gold, California might be considered the best. Would you consider water an indicator of gold? Have you ever found a place in California that had water, but didn’t have gold? If you look for gold in some waterways and can’t find it that probably means somebody beat you to it. More than likely the Chinese came in after the 49er’s worked it and reworked it again and got out all the gold. I wouldn’t consider water an indicator of gold. Would you consider round rocks and indicator of gold? I mean, that would be a thing that you would look for. If I’m driving down the road and I see they recently dug up an area to put a new road in and I see big huge river rock all over the area, I realize that there was once a creek or river bed going through there thousands or millions of years ago. It could be an indicator of gold. You might want to stop and check it out. For example, at Remington Hill in the 1850’s they found a nugget that was 134 ozs. Then a few years later they found a nugget that was 186 ozs. After that they stopped keeping track because there were numerous nuggets over 70 ozs. That’s some big gold. It would only take one of those to really make your day. Dig around the big boul- ders. You can tell where the miners worked by how far down the bedrock they got, how much junk, how much iron was there. There was a lot of cement? and gravel and a lot of time they would just bust it up to get it out of the way and in that cemented gravel would be a lot of gold. They couldn’t see it, they just knew it was in their way of getting to the bedrock. Metal detectors work great in cemented gravel. I have found a lot of big nuggets in cemented gravel. One day I took my brother on a prospecting trip. He had never been metal detecting be- fore. I told him to just go around and pick up stuff and you might get lucky and pick up some gold. At the end of the day he pours out his backpack and he has 10-15 hot rocks. I could tell because they were bright red, iron rusty looking stuff. On a metal de- tector they will sound off but they don’t sound off like a nugget would sound off. I could see that these were all pieces of hot rocks, just a concentration of iron, but there was one piece he had that I could tell wasn’t hot rock, it was a conglomerate. It was slightly red but had a mixture of other rocks. I waved it in front of my metal detector, and it was screaming. It just overloaded the metal detector. I look at it on all sides and when I turn it over and you could see the half ounce nugget on the other side. The nugget was iron stained red – the same color as the rock so it was hard to see. He ended up trading that for a metal detector with one of the guys that was with us. So my brother was out with us one day and got a metal detector. That was a fun trip. If you find a red, rock, a brown rock and it makes a noise, it doesn’t mean it has gold in it. I see it on line. I see a lot of people that have a rock that has a little bit of flake on it. Most of the time it is going to be pyrite. One of things that is a good indication of whether you have gold in a rock is if the rock really sounds off in one spot and you turn it over and it doesn’t sound off at all. A hot rock will sound off on all sides. Hold the rock out about 6” or 8” from the coil and wave it in front of it and then turn it over and wave the other side in front of the coil. If it sounds the same that is a good indicator that it is a hot rock. If you get a rock that sounds off on one side of the rock and you turn it over and nothing, it is more than likely gold. If you find a rock that’s and it sounds off, you don’t want to throw it away! Don Robinson went on an outing above the Bear River. One of the people in the group kept asking Don where he should go to find gold. Don said take your metal detector and check that flat up there. So he goes up there and checks it out and comes back with this rock that is probably 35 to 40 pounds. Looking at it you couldn’t see any gold on it, you couldn’t even see what kind of rock it was. When you started cleaning it up, you could see that it was quartz. He gave it to Don to crush up for him. He came to one of our meet- ings. Don had crushed the rock and melted the gold out of it and he gave the guy a 5- ounce button and the guy was thrilled to death. Then Don gave him another 5-ounce but- ton and the guy was really was really stoked. Don ended up giving him 5 5-ounce buttons and kept 3 more for himself for the work he did. You never know. I sold a quartz rock to a guy and he gave me $800 for it. At the time gold was about $350. It was a beautiful rock, you could see gold all over it. I could tell by my metal detector that there wasn’t a lot of gold inside of it and I told him that. I did a continuity test, where you take a meter connect a wire to one end and then connect it on the other end and if there is a continuous signal it beeps. I laid a wire across this rock and didn’t get a signal. I had found a lot of rock in the same area in the past and they had the same characteristics. Despite what I told the dealer, he broke it up and ended up with $400 worth of gold and he had already given me $800 so he wasn’t too happy. I don’t like not having people unhappy so I gave him another rock that I found, and I could tell that it had a little more gold inside. It wasn’t as big of a rock, but I gave it to him, just to make him happy. He ended up with almost $2500 worth of gold out of that rock…that made me unhappy. Nuggets Events

Gary Shaver reminds us that the 18th of February at Mount Vernon Me- morial on Madison off Sunrise there is a Nugget event. This is an An- nual Event for us. We still need volunteers. I still need someone with a pickup truck to haul the tanks, saw horses and some miscellaneous stuff to the event from Foresthill. We will reimburse gas up to $20. We are also getting ready for Roseville the 4th weekend in March (23- 24). At that time, we will need all the hands we can get. At this event there are usually a couple hundred kids a day coming through the ‘camp’ to learn how to pan. Indicators of gold (cont.) A friend of mine, Woody Woodward was a big metal detectorist and was in magazines for years and years. He lived in Coarse Gold, California. He found a 9.5-ounce nugget in a place they had plowed for a house. The indicator for him was that there was river rock they had pushed aside when they put the house in. So rounded river rocks would be an indicator. Would bedrock be an indicator of gold? There needs to be other signs such as other kinds of rocks. It might be worth investigating, but that in itself is not an indicator. It would tell you that if there was gold there it would be rather shallow. Red Dog would be a good example, they have washed it all the way down to bedrock over the whole area. So you know the gold will be shallow, good for a metal detector.

“And now the tar weed, sweet vagrant of the valley, Useless, unloved, but offering its golden discs by millions To waste places, filled the air with its poignant tang, Bringing back childhood with a pang of pain– Old dreams of childhood lived in this lovely val- ley.” ‘Long Valley’ by Margaret S. Cobb 1911

You know what the miners looked for when they came to California? Tarweed plants… They would grow in areas of highly mineralized ground which was an indicator of gold. If there was iron in the ground, it was red. See http://raregoldnuggets.com/?p=5936 for other examples. You go down in Folsom, in the fields out there you will know you have found it by the smell of tar as you are walking through the plants. By the end of the day, your pants and shoes are waterproofed. How about quartz?

It might not be river worn quartz, but there is quartz just littered all over the place. In Australia it looks like salt and pepper. Everywhere you go you have white quartz with black rock just scattered everywhere. It is an indicator of gold in Australia. We have those kinds of areas here in California too, we just aren’t looking for them. Quartz is a good indicator of flow gold. Areas where gold came off the side of the hill from erosion. The quartz would be an indicator of that kind of gold. Now at the last meeting Mike Hunerlach talked about the Sierras where once seven miles taller than they are today. Millions of years of erosion have brought the Sierras down to the level that they are now. Because of that gold is being found in areas that you wouldn’t think it would be looking. All that erosion carried the gold down. When you find gold and say to yourself it shouldn’t be here. Why is it there? It was carried down by erosion and carried down by the rains and snow run-off. I found gold on the top of a hill when down in the creek there wasn’t any gold at all, because the miners had beat me to it. I went up on the side of the hill and I started finding gold. In Folsom, the gold I have found is up against the slate that is sticking up. https:// mrdata.usgs.gov/mrds/show-mrds.php?dep_id=10310613 A couple of members were down where they were putting in the Auburn dam and the young guy with the metal detector decided he was going to wade out in the water to check a few rocks that were sticking up by the water. He gets one rock that is just screaming, just overloading the metal detector and it was quartz. As I have said, if you ever find quartz that is sounding off make sure you check for gold in it. Some granite has gold in it, but it is rare, pretty spotty. It is usually the quartz that is in the granite that has the gold. Country rock, the rock that is natural to the area you are in. When you find sample that are colored, but have no crevices in them, but are just round rock. Quartz on the other hand is always fractured. It has holes in it. Some of it has red iron stains on it. So quartz is fractured, it grows as crystals and actually has a place for the gold to hide inside. Geologist have beaten themselves up over the years as to how gold gets so fine in quartz rock. So fine sometimes that you can’t even see the gold. Some of them believe that in high temperatures and high pressure that gold and quartz turn to a solution and then cools and that is how the gold gets into quartz. Some people believe that under high pressure, the quartz fractures and the gold, which turns to a liquid at high temperatures is forced unto these cracks and crevices. It is just amazing. You pick up a rock and go over it with a metal detector and you don’t see anything and yet these huge mines are crushing it down to powder and they are getting gold out of that rock. It might only be $10 to the ton, but when you are put- ting thousands of tons of rock through a crusher, I guess it all adds up to money for them. As gold miners we aren’t really interested in that kind of stuff, we just know it is there. I see people who go around and just break up quartz rocks all day. You go into some areas and there are quartz rocks everywhere that someone has just been beating on with a hammer. They are just opening them up to see if there is any gold on the inside of the rock. I was in up in Al- legany and there is a huge outcropping of solid white quartz and I was just go- ing over it quickly with my metal detec- tor to see if I could hear anything. At the bottom corner of this rock it is just screaming, as a matter of fact – it was overloading. So I came back the follow- ing weekend with a sledge hammer and chisel and I beat this rock till my heart was about ready to fall out. I end- ed up with a big bunch of quartz laying all over the place and I went over each piece with my metal detector and one piece was just screaming. I picked it up and was looking at it. I even got a magnifying glass to look at it. You couldn’t see any gold on this rock whatsoever, every crack, every crevice – nothing – no sign of gold any- where. I took this rock to my dentist and had him x-ray it. Said it was the first time he ever x-rayed a rock. The first time he didn’t turn the power up high enough so he did it again. The second x-ray showed the pattern of a big huge wolf spider in the center of this rock and it was gold. If you get a signal in quartz it contains gold. If there is a cre- vasse and you are getting a signal it could be a bullet or a nail that is stuck in that crevice. I might do a little investigating. Greg and I have both found gold inside the rocks. If there are no crack or crevice and you get a signal 99% of the time it is gold. I donated that rock to the White’s Electronic Museum up in Oregon. They put the rock on the table with no metal around and then put the x-ray next to the rock and they allow the patrons to check out the rock with their metal detectors. It’s still up there. Whites has a fabulous museum. They give you tours showing how metal detectors are made. It starts at the beginning when the machine is folded out of metal. They show you how they put the printing on and how the electronics go together. They don’t show you the circuit board or the software or how it all works to together. I was involved with White’s electronics for about seven years and they gave me all that information. I used to repair metal detectors for a living The oldest coin I have ever found was a 1792 Netherlands Guilder. It was a beautiful coin, silver and there was a woman with a beautiful plumed hat lean- ing on a pedestal with a bible on top of the pedestal. That is up in the White ’s Museum too. Everyone who went out with me that day found the oldest coin they have even found. My dad got a Russian coin that was 1844. My buddy Jerry who has been finding coins for years found a 1760 Spanish Real. Are there any other indicators?

When you go down to a creek or river and it is running straight for 500 feet and it is the only section that doesn’t have a claim on it. Where are you going to start on that? Look for a stream that is coming down into it. Well what if you see a big boulder sitting up on the side of the bank and another one half the size sitting next to it. That may be the place to start, but the probably last thousand miners who came through there started there too. It is still a place to start because it is an indication that something came through that way. There is a reason that boulder is there. I went up to Jim Hutchings claim. I am walking along the creek and finding little pieces of gold here and there and all of a sudden, I see a big boulder sitting out in the middle of the creek. From there I started to do a bit of investigating and I see on the map where the ancient river channel cut across that area. So that big boulder is part of that river channel, because the present day creek doesn’t have anything like that. I’m about 30’ from the boulder and I am at least 30’ from the bank and I get a signal in a hole that is about 4-5” wide that goes down about 10”. My screw driver is about 8” long. I am sticking it down as far as I can trying to dis- lodge the target. My machine is telling me there is something in there. I don’t know what it is, but I’m thinking that it is a bullet. For 30 minutes I am trying to pop it out of the hole. Gloria, one of the other miners who was there came by and I was telling her what I was doing and as she was standing there, I gave it on more try and out came a 8 pwt. Nugget and rolled down the walkway and landed right between her feet. Jim said it is the biggest nugget that has come out of the area in five years. Questions about getting a metal detector?

If you want a White or a Minelab you can go to Pioneer Mining, but really, to start out, look for a used one. Usually any used detectors you find will only have 10-15 hours on it. Sluice Boxes with Ray Dodds We are going to be talking with Ray Dodds about his sluice boxes. He has been designing and building them for years. Ray Dodds: There is reason behind each design. This originally was a juicer for McDonalds and I saw how it worked. Later I went to a gold show and saw a sluice box that was similar. It was straight. I started measuring it with my hands and the owner found me a pencil and paper and I started drawing it – he knew I was going to go home and build it. I put a swivel handle on it so it rocks. If you are in a place with no water, or no running water, you can dip into a little water and add your gravel and rock it back and forth and use it like a pan. The gravel goes over the black ripples in the center and catches the gold there. You can work more Material with a regular sluice box if the water is running, but you can process a lot of material with this. This one I made like a stream. It flares out so the water comes through and then slows down so if you are losing any fine gold, it will head for the edges, because the water is slowing down. There is a fin to keep the sluice box clean. There is miners moss in the bottom, the whole deal. These are all for sale, by the way. Here is another one that was part of my motor home. I took it to the shop to get it smogged and it failed so I cut it up and made slots of stuff from the metal. This is a double drop. The material drops, is sucked up under here, it comes up through the ripples, goes into another drop and that fills water and it kind of keeps it open at the bottom. Everyone of these works This is one of the first drops I made. This went all the way to Pickering bar. I think the drop works well because just like a gold pan, when you tap it that’s where the gold goes. Mother na- ture taps on this when the water is coming through. So when the water comes through it sucks it up. When I took it out on the water, I didn’t have a lot of gold showing, just black sand, when I poured it in a bucket all the big pieces dropped out right there, I picked them up like grapes. I couldn’t get back to that spot to do any more digging. How to determine the best angle for sluice box in the creek? Is it the flow of the water through the sluice box, or is it the depth of the water? Your angle is up to 1 inch of drop for every foot of sluice box. One trick a lot of people don’t know is where the balance point is on the sluice. It is where the handle attaches to the side wall of the sluice box. So if you put material in a sluice box and it kind accumu- lates toward the middle it indicates that your angle isn’t right. You could try putting a couple of scoops of material in there to test the flow before putting in a large quantity. It is amazing, you can have material roaring through the box and the gold will be up in the little traps. When you have the water coming in, you want it to make a V from the sides to the center. If I throw a half inch rock in the box, I want it to try to get out. If the ripples are a half inch, it probably won’t. The indicator which is this carpeted walkway. If you put a shovel of dirt in the top of the box and it just sits there, you want to in- crease the angle of the box until you see it actually washing away. I myself like to work a sluice box a little differently. I set it up for a greater fall than the one inch per foot. When you read suggestions in the magazines about using a sluice, and you read how much material you can process at one time, you find out it isn’t very much. You would be there all day long with a single bucket of Material. You have to be careful. When it says it is a great thing to buy it says how much material it will process in one hours’ time. I like to have my box process material as fast as I can shovel it in. I have a mas- sive Keene dry washer. I can’t dig fast enough for it. These are all things to consider when in a river, what angle do I use, how much water do I put in it, do I have to build a dam to get the water through the sluice box. It is all part of the learning process. Everybody does it differently, but you can ask some of the guys that have done it for years. When you are in the water build a little dam, it will give you a little more height and you will get better flow of material. And to prove that the Goldhounds had an outing with the Girl Scouts. I took a 4x4 plank down and we staked out three sluice boxes on that 4x4 on flat ground and it backed up enough water that we could run those three sluice boxes. If you back up the water 2” or 3” you have flow even if most of it flows around the side. I am trying to come up with a float that you can regulate by air or water that you can put on a stake that will hold a sluice box up in the river without having to carry a whole lot of gear. Call Ray Dodds if you are interested in buying some of his gear. He’s sell- ing a lot of his gear because he can’t get out there and mine as much as he used to. Well Thanks for listening and here’s Mike. Sadly Elijah’s jar is closing.

They have lost a lot of their volunteers and the couple that originally started it is get- ting on in years. The club will discuss who and where to donate for Christmas next year at another time. Raffle Time

Oh No! This is number 3

Not a raffle prize

!!!!The Grand Prizes!!!!! Goldhound Outings

Roaring Camp

We have reserved five tent sites at Roaring Camp on July 18-21st.

We are almost at the maximum number of people for this trip. If you have not signed up, please email me or talk to me at the next few meetings.

The price will be $100 per person. The price includes the Saturday night steak dinner. A deposit needs to be paid soon. If you could pay half or the full amount soon that would really help.

If you have not been to Roaring Camp or would like to see some pictures. You can visit their website. https:// roaringcampgold.com

Please reach out to me directly at the next meeting, email, call or txt for any questions. Thanks, Mathew Morris [email protected] (360) 930-9266

Membership News

Cindy Pekarek is doing much better. Her foot is almost healed. She was at the Meeting on Friday and getting around quite well. We are so glad to have her back. Jean Kohlhoff

MOTHER LODE NUGGET NEWS Gary Shaver and Ray Dodds From Gary Shaver’s Pan:

Pssst you don’t have to be a Nugget to Gary help the Nuggets. You don’t even have to know how to pan, we will teach you! Stories From The Good Ole’ Days

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining#cite_note -VANBRUUN-1 January 24, 1848 was the 170th Anniversary of the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill. But did you know there were several other gold rushes in North America before it was known as the United States? How far back does go? Let’s look at the global history of that shiny yellow metal that drives men mad enough to leave their families in search of striking it rich!

Did you know that gold was the main means of money exchange in Rome in the first cen- tury AD? But the use of gold goes even further back in history. The oldest known gold artifacts were found in the Varna Necropolis in Bulgaria that go back to 4600-4200 BC. The Necropolis is considered one of the key world pre-history sites, holding the oldest gold treasure found to date. In the Bronze age 3000-1000 BC, gold was mined by the Roman state and some mines were leased to civilian contractors. How was the gold mined back then? By a method called Hushing, a precursor to hydraulic mining.

The method was described by Pliny the Elder in Book XXXIII of his Naturalis Historia from the 1st century AD.

An Illustration of HUSHING Pliny the Elder said it was used for prospecting and during mining itself. It was used by the Romans for hydraulic mining of alluvial gold deposits, and in opencast vein mining. Also for removal of rock debris, created by chipping open the vein and setting fires that would crack the rocks. He describes how water tanks and reservoirs are built near suspect- ed veins, filled with water from an aqueduct, and the water suddenly released from a sluice-gate onto the hillside below, scouring the soil away to reveal the bedrock and any veins occurring there. Obviously, they didn’t have to deal with being sued by environmen- talists. Gold was first mined in India about the 2nd-3rd century AD In the area of the Kolar Gold Fields in Bangarpet Taluk by digging pits. And is still India’s main gold producing area today. It is estimated the total gold production in Karnataka to date is 1000 tonnes. In Medieval times the Hungarian gold deposit (present-day Slovakia) primarily around Krem- nica was the largest of the Medieval period.

And we all know that during early 19th century, there were many gold rushes in remote re- gions around the world that created large immigrations of miners, such as the California of 1849, and the . [1] Let’s not forget Australia and the . The Victorian gold rush was ap- proximately between 1851 and the late 1860s. It led to a period of extreme prosperity for the Australian colony, and an influx of population growth and financial capital for Mel- bourne, which was dubbed "Marvellous Melbourne" as a result of the procurement of wealth from the gold found and money made from the gold rush itself by merchants.

Figure 1 Prospector's Hut Upper Dargo, Victoria In 1799 gold was discovered in Cabarrus County, , at (the later named) Reed’s Gold Mine by twelve-year-old Conrad Reed, the son of Johannes Reed. Not knowing what his son had found, Reed used the 17-pound nugget as a doorstop for the next few years, until a jeweler recognized it as gold and offered to buy it. When word got out about the sale of that nugget in 1802, the Carolina gold rush was on.

Many amateur miners were farmers who also did part-time , or shallow surface mining, on their property when not busy with farm business. North Carolina gold mining swiftly evolved from the placer mining of streambeds to the much more involved shaft min- ing that would become prominent in the . By 1835 so much gold was being discovered in North Carolina that President Andrew Jackson decided to establish a U.S. mint in Charlotte to process it all.

$5 Dollar Coin, , United States, 1838 However, during the Civil War, the mint was shut down and the building was repurposed. In the mid-20th century, the building was saved from demolition and moved. Today it houses the Mint Museum, which displays art and design from around the world.

10 Dollar Coin, Templeton Reid, Assayer, United States, 1830

Figure 2Gold coin with text "Georgia Gold 1830" The second gold rush to strike the Southeast United States was in Georgia. Although it is claimed to have started in 1829 close to Dahlonega, reports of where specifically this rush began are varied. There are at least five different accounts of various people being the “first.” Claims go back to as early as 1540, when Hernando de Soto led an expedition through this area and said that a young American Indian showed his men how they melted, mined, and refined the gold they found in the region. By the 1830s the influx of miners and immigrants to the area spurred on by the gold rush raised tensions with the local Cherokee tribes. These tensions, along with the social and institutional discrimination against American Indians of the time, eventually led to the forced removal of the tribes from the area in what we now call the "Trail of Tears." Initially, professional assayers—those who evaluate the weight and purity of metals—such as Templeton Reid weighed and valued gold for miners. Eventually, as in Charlotte, President Jackson established an official U.S. mint in Dahlonega to handle the influx of gold. The mint operated from 1838, until the first few months of the Civil War where it was utilized by the Confederate States to create Confederate currency. After that time, the mint was shut down and never opened again. It is reported that Georgia paid miner’s to stay to mine gold in Georgia instead of heading west to mine California and Klondike gold. Although I couldn’t find actual accounts in my research, it was claimed the first stamp-mill was introduced to Dahlonega, Georgia by miner’s from Wales in the 1880’s. The mill is still works and can be seen at the Crisson Gold Mine Museum in Dahlonega. [2] Tom Massey of the Gold Prospectors of Association of America visits in Dahlonega and the Crisson Mine and Museum in the 2009 season of his Gold Fever show. There is still lots of gold to be found in the state of Georgia. I visited Dahlonega and was surprised to see the courthouse bricks that were made from dirt surround- ing the area in 1833 literally sparkled with gold dust!

Figure 3 Lumpin County Courthouse photo taken 1833 The Carlin Trend of Nevada was discovered in 1961. It is es- timated that total world gold production since the beginning of civilization has been around 6,109,928,000 troy ounces (190,040.0 t) and total gold production in Nevada is 2.5% of that, ranking Nevada as one of the Earth's primary gold pro- ducing regions. In 2017, China was by far the world's largest gold producer with 429.4 tonnes in that year. The second-largest producer, Australia, with 289.0 tonnes mined in the same year, followed by Russia with 273 tonnes mined. Currently we are experiencing record snowfall in the Sierra’s and looking forward to mate- rial moving run-off this Spring. I don’t wish anyone to be flooded out but I am excited to see how much gold will be found this coming year. How much of it will go into your snuffer bottle???

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining

[2] Striking it rich: American gold rushes of the early 19th century By Kelsey Wiggins, January 22, 2018; http://americanhistory.si.edu/blog/gold-rushes

Pictures from Outing to Placerville

The Mother Lode Goldhounds and Nuggets want to recognize and offer our sincerest Thanks to Hansen Brothers Enterprises for their generous donations of gravel used during the Championships and by the Nuggets during gold panning demonstrations and lessons. OTHER CLUBS AND ASSOCIATIONS Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA) We meet the third Saturday in January, April, July and October River City Prospectors Chapter meets quarterly in Rio Linda, CA. GPAA has member only claims and outings. Their “Pick & Shovel Gazette” contains good information for everyone who supports mining. For GPAA Gold Show dates check: www.goldprospectors.org or call 1-800- 551-9797. Find us on Facebook www.facebook.com/groups/rcpgpaa/ or Contact Jim Hutchings at (530) 367-5108 or the GPAA at 800-551-9797. Visit the GPAA web site at www.goldprospectors.com

Roseville Rock Roller Gem & Mineral Society – Scroll down for rock show information and discount admission coupon. Meetings on the second Tuesday of every month at the Placerville Fairgrounds in Roseville, 800 All American City Blvd. www.rockrollers.com or email [email protected]

Sacramento Valley Detecting Buffs Meetings on the first Thursday of every month at the Sacramento County Old SMUD Building, corner of Elkhorn & Don Julio in North Highlands, CA. www.sacramentovalleydetectingbuffs.com

El Dorado County Mineral & Gem Society Call (530) 676-2472 or visit www.eldoradomineralandgem.org

Gold Country Treasure Seekers Located in Placerville, CA. This is a club for metal detecting enthusiasts. For more information contact Jan Nixon, [email protected]

Gold Pan California, Gold Adventures 1021 Detroit Ave., Concord, CA – For more information call (925) 825-GOLD

Golden Caribou Mining A small-scale mining gold club in Belden, CA. For more information call (530) 283-5141 or visit www.goldencaribou.com

UPI - United Prospectors Meets every other month at outings, [email protected] - Info 209-567-9987. Club can offer outings to claims. 2401 E. Orangebury Ave., Modesto, 95355 - phone (209) 567- 2370.

Shasta Miners Club has claims for members use. Meetings at 7 PM on the third Wednesday of every month at the Moose Lodge on Lake Blvd. in Shasta, CA., just up from Shopko on the left. Call (530) 623- 0744

The 16 to 1 Underground Gold Miners Museum Contact them for tours of a working underground mine and special events. (530) 287-3330 Write: PO Box 907, Alleghany, CA 95910 www.undergroundgold.com Email: [email protected]

Comstock Gold Prospectors Meetings on the fourth Tuesday of every month at the Masonic Lodge, 2425 Pyramid Way, Sparks, NV. Write P.O. Box 20781, Reno, NV 89515 or visit www.cgpgold.org

The Sierrans for Responsible Resource Development (the “Sierrans”) is a non-profit social welfare organization formed to educate residents, businesses, government agencies, and the community about the benefits of responsible and sustainable resource industry in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. (530) 271-0679 P.O. Box 404, Grass Valley, CA 95945 www.sierrans.org

Western Mining Alliance – Miners who fight for our rights to dredge and mine in California. WMA has a great online newsletter and a great people to work with. Visit: www.westernminingalliance.com Email: [email protected]

ICMJ’s PROSPECTING AND MINING JOURNAL - Scott Harn, Editor, and his team works hard to get this monthly mining magazine on line & in the mail. Check them out. www.icmj.com - [email protected] - 831-479-1500. ICMJ offers current news on the dredging regulations, PLP, Miner’s Alliance, and are the best online source of recent gold news. You can search for great “how-to” and “where-to” articles on dredging, metal detecting, mining operations, assaying, legislative updates, geology, history, met- als prices and financial news.

THE MOTHER LODE GOLDHOUND NAME, IMAGES, AND PHOTOS ARE THE PROPERTY of Mother Lode Goldhounds and cannot be used without expressed written permission. Email Jean Kohlhoff at [email protected] for further information

Don’t even try it, remember, we hang claim jumpers.

Public Lands for the People PUBLIC LANDS FOR THE PEOPLE - 7194 Conejo Dr., San Bernardino, CA 92404, (909) 889- 3039, WWW.PLP2.ORG . P.L.P. continues to work on your behalf to keep public lands open. Donations are tax deductible. They have great raffles posted in the ICMJ to help with attorney fees and they need help!

Fighting for your right to mine is very expensive so PLP is auctioning off any donations you can make to help raise money. If you can help they will take just about anything from old heirlooms to vehicles. PLP hosts a running auction for gold on eBay. http://www.publiclandsforthepeople.org/

AMRA - American Mining Rights Association is a 501 (c)(3) Non-profit Association and was created by miners and public land users, for min- ers and public land users to preserve and maintain their rights as they pertain to access to their public lands and their rights to obtain the minerals on those lands. We are not a gold club but rather an advocacy group. American Mining Rights Association PMB #607, 6386 Greeley Hill Rd., Coulterville, CA 95311 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] www.AmericanMiningRights.com https://www.facebook.com/americanminingrights

GOLDHOUND CLUB INFORMATION NAME BADGES: Club name badges can be ordered at any club meeting. See Member Stephen Johnson at the meeting as you come in the door - Badge with Pin Clasp: $4.50 Magnetic Badge: $5.00. ______Please stop by the Raffle table and Thank Steve Johnson for taking over this important task for the club. ______GOLDHOUND T-SHIRTS See Cyndy Burchard if you are interested in a Goldhounds T-shirt. You can call at 530-346-9481 or email her at: [email protected]. Cyndy will need to know what size you need, and for the wom- en, whether you want a Gold OR Pink one. If you worked at the Gold Panning Championships and signed in with the person in charge, you will receive a shirt. Otherwise they are $16 each ______

Announcement on Jackets and T-shirts I have the T-shirts and Jackets from Dancing Dawg Produc- tions. If you haven’t paid me for your Jacket, now is the time! If you see these jackets and would like to place an order, please contact Cyndy Burchard. We need to have at order at least 12 at a time to get them back quickly. The cost is $45 each. ______GOLDHOUND PATCH for your hat or jacket are can be bought at each meeting for $6.00 each. See Jean Kohlhoff ______CYNDY BURCHARD is our club Secretary, as well as our Sunshine Lady. Cyndy also sends emails out for the Goldhounds. A BIG THANK YOU to Cyndy for all her hard work. ______GOLDHOUND MEETINGS are held the 2nd Friday of each month from 7:00PM-9:00PM at the Auburn Veterans Hall, 100 EAST ST., AUBURN, CA. Take Hwy. 80 toward Auburn, get off at Hwy 49 and turn toward Old Town Auburn. Turn right at T-intersection (Lincoln). Go one short half-block and turn right again on to East Street. The Veterans Hall sits on your left, parking is in the back. Invite your friends, the public is always welcome to attend. See you there!!

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GOLDHOUND CLASSIFIEDS Do you have something for sale? For Barter? Maybe you have a request of your fellow miner’s? Or just want to offer something free for the asking?

List it free for all Goldhounds here in the Goldhound Classifieds. Send your ad and contact in- formation to Sherry Andersen at [email protected] along with any photos. Your ad will be in the next newsletter and can go on the Goldhounds Live page on Goldhounds.com web site if requested. Please Support These Members and Supporters Of The Mother Lode Goldhounds

GOLDHOUND MEMBERSHIP APPLICATION 2019

Contact Cyndy Burchard at [email protected] or (775) 294-5769 for questions or concerns regarding your member- ship status. If you would like to join/renew your membership, please print out this form, fill it out, and send the complete form with a check/money order payable to Mother Lode Goldhounds to: Mother Lode Goldhounds P.O. Box 1753 Fallon, Nevada 89407 ( ) $40.00 Individual ( ) $45.00 Family ( ) Senior & Spouse (age 70+) $30 ( ) New membership ( ) Renewal (one year applies to all)

NAME______EMAIL______

ADDRESS______PHONE______

CITY______STATE______ZIP CODE______

I hereby apply for membership/renewal with the Mother Lode Goldhounds. I fully understand Mother Lode Goldhounds and its agents do not provide goods or services for any of my activities including, for example, mining equipment or supplies, lodging, transportation, food, etc. Mother Lode Goldhounds is not liable for any negligent or unwillful act or failure to act by providers of such goods or services during my activities. I acknowledge that there may be certain risks involved with activities as a member in- cluding, but not limited to, rugged or uneven terrain, uncertain or unpredictable river currents, physical exertion for which I am not prepared, or other unknown forces of nature, high altitude, accident or ill- ness without access to means or rapid evacuation or availability of medical supplies, the adequacy of medical attention once provided, or negligence on part of Mother Lode Goldhounds. I hereby agree to be responsible for my own welfare and accept any and all risks of unanticipated events, illness, in- jury, emotional, trauma or death. I acknowledge that the cost of Mother Lode Goldhounds member- ship is based upon participants executing this release of liability. That whatever casual event I, or my family, attend that I am responsible and at no time will have legal or financial claim against, nor will hold responsible, any member or club official of the Mother Lode Goldhounds for any damages or inju- ries. I agree that this release shall be legally binding upon me personally, all members of my family and all minors traveling with me, my heirs, successors, assigns and legal representatives, it being my inten- tion to fully assume all risk associated with my activities as a member of the Mother Lode Goldhounds.

I have read and fully understand this release and membership application

SIGNATURE______DATE______PLEASE PLACE STAMP HERE

Frank, finding nuggets on the North Fork.

NEWSLETTER ISSUED MONTHLY - Issue #366 March 2019 Mailing address: MOTHER LODE GOLDHOUNDS P.O. Box 149, Foresthill, CA 95631 A CALIFORNIA NON-PROFIT MINERALS EDUCATION ASSOCIATION PUBLIC WELCOME! One Year Membership: $45.00 Family $40.00 Individual Editor: Sherry Andersen (916) 812-7813 [email protected] Goldhounds (530) 367-2891 email: [email protected]