My Gold Prospecting and Mining Pages

If you don't care about panning for gold there are also recreational mining areas (definitely in California, probably all over the country) where you can do whatever you want as long as you do it for personal use without explosives or mechanized mining equipment. They're a bit hard to find so I use a GPS app with a bunch of layers like land ownership and park boundaries.

A couple of rock hounds and I found a promising area in Kern County near Lake Isabella where we dug out a 10 foot deep triangle out of the side of a mountain and found about 100 pounds of beautiful mineral specimens of gold embedded in quartz, along with a 2.5 ft long agate weighing almost a ton that we still haven't figured out how to cut and polish.

Great place to go for intense rock hounding, hot springs, and white water rafting on Kern river.

I have a couple of gold pans and prospector shovels in my camping gear, I’ve collected about 8.2 grams of gold flakes/specks/dust and a single picker over the last 15 years.

If you know where (and when) to look, you can pretty reliably pull trivial amounts of gold out of the Sierras and it’s foothills.

Going gold panning is basically an excuse to go up to the mountains super early, hike to a remote part of the river, and enjoy nature for most of the day while also enjoying some beer, ciders, and sandwiches with some friends. We pan for gold but also collect some rocks.

People who do this seriously are certainly a type.

This is a wonderfully fun site, however, I am a bit weirded out by the mail order bride ads sprinkled throughout.

I've done this a few times here in Washington state. It's a healthy fun way to get outside and explore geology.

Placer mining is one of humanity's oldest technologies. It doesn't have to be environmentally destructive like 19th century California.

I had success by joining a local prospecting society, which provided guidance and access to dozens of actual claims.

I got the worst blistering sunburn of my life panning for gold in Gympie, Queensland: neck, arms and ears fine. That patch above the bum crack which your tee shirt exposes, crouching down to swirl the pan... yup. Missed that.

I suspect I have a nice sample of pyrites in a spice bottle now, to remember it by (25 years ago or so)

This dude’s DIY projects, specifically his solar and wind turbine projects, have been massively inspiring to me! I lost the URLs for a bit, stoked to have this back in my life. Thank you!

This guy's website is a treasure trove! Immediately bookmarked it.

Why are there ads of single women on the page?