But first let me tell ya a little bit bout gold prospecting. There's an old say'n...."gold is where it was found before". Well, that's true and it gonna be no where else. Ya see, back a hunert seventy year ago, gold was discovered in California, what brung on a "gold rush" like what ain't nobody ever see. Prospectors come from everywhere....China, England, Austrailia, Alaska and Mexico. Just to name a few. The hills, mountains and valleys was covered with fortune seekers look'n for their pot of gold. Ton upon tons of this precious metal was dig up until it was thought it was all gone. So they left. But, little did they know, they only recovered bout 80% of the gold. The rest is still out there yet to be recovered.
Now.....what is prospecting? Well shoot, prospecting is try'n to "locate" some gold before it's mined. Ya see, here's what ya gotta do. Ya go dig up some dirt, bout a couple hunert pounds, run it through a gold machine,
then pan out and count the colors (little pieces of gold).
If'n ya got enough colors to show some kind of profit for your labors, ya dig more dirt. Bout 250 shovels full is equal to a ton of dirt and a ton of dirt might bring ya $10 or $20 worth of gold. That is if you are lucky. Gold got there by following a "highway" from the "mother lode" up there somewheres. Gold goes down, never up. So ya go dig another hole, pan it out and count the colors. Doing this for days on end, your color count should increase. If not, you are on the wrong trail. In old days, the prospecors would dig holes every 50 feet or so at the bottom of a hill or mountain until they found where the golf came down. It could take months of digging to locate a vein where the gold came from. Then the mining starts. But by todays standards, most of the veins have been located and mined out.
Anyhows, I drove up this old trail what look like it ain't been drove on in a hunert year. I could see some mine shafts and tunnels off in the distance. I were think'n, "I'm gonna be rich". So's I started dig'n dirt....all day long. When I reached a point where I was think'n...."I'm gonna be rich", the sun was low in the sky...time to head for home. Ok, no problem, I'll come back tomorrow and "I'm gonna be rich". Now, I'm sure some of ya heard stories bout "lost" gold mines and stuff like that. Well that what happen. Next day there was no way in hell I could find my way back to that little old trail that led to "I'm gonna be rich". For weeks I looked for that trail, but it seemed to have just vanished into thin air.
The trails do not vanish, but my memory does.
ReplyDeleteHey BB, That is one nice looking dry-washer. Beats the heck out of the ole bellows type and takes a lot less effort. More energy left for digging.
ReplyDeleteGood color in that pan. . .
Dammed shame they didn't have GPS back then, you could have followed it right back to it..
ReplyDeleteGuess you never found the lost Dutchman mine huh?
Barney, trails do vanish if'n ya don't remember how to get back to them.
ReplyDeleteDizzy,I built that drywasher for the third time back in 2003....I think.
Wish I still had some energy to do some dig'n. Great hobby.
Ben, they DID have GPS in 2004. I just didn't think I could ever lose a trail.
Oh by the way Ben, the Lost Dutchman was found many years ago. Weren't nuttin there but a bunch of old bones.
ReplyDeletepretty impressive! but I learned a while back that SOME Women know more about diggin for gold than any of us men do.
ReplyDelete90 year old gold miner
ReplyDeleteHey, I got my bus from a gold prospector who was gonna take the engine out of it and put it in his smaller bus but he got sick and had to sell it all.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, back in the 60's I lived at the base of the Superstition Mountain and an OLD prospector used to come down out of the mountain a couple times a year and pass right in front of my house. at that time there was nothing out there but desert, orchards and pig farms with a dirt road to Mesa. He had a beard to his waste, wore leather chaps and jacket, cowboy boots, raggedy cowboy hat and had a covered wagon pulled by mules, a couple of pack mules loaded to the hilt with gold pans, burlap sacks, rifles, pick axes, shovels....a couple of goats and a dog that followed the team. It sure was an awesome sight tho and we could hear the wagon wheels when he was coming so we'd all run out to the edge of the dirt road and watch him go by in slow motion. It was hot and he was old...they moved at a real slow pace. Last of the true old west stuff.That guy was well into his 90's before he stopped coming down. But even in the 70's and 80's when I'd hike up to Weaver's Needle it was common to old cowboys up there riding and panning...looked like they just road out of an old western movie.
I never heard they found The Lost Dutchman...I thought they just found the bones of some of the men killed up there. Even in the 60's people were still disappearing up there and nobody ever went to look for them either. There were stories that mountain lions got them or banditos hiding up there. Even stories that the old prospector himself was getting rid of anybody that would come up there and that he knew where it was because he was bringing back a lot of gold each time he came down.
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ReplyDeletewell I tried to post the link a few times and the blogger keeps shortening it. I guess if anybody wants the link email me: info at ezrablu dot com
ReplyDeleteEverybody called that old prospector "Superstition Joe"