History & Geology
The Paragenesis of Gold & Silver Deposits
March 2015 by Chris Ralph
…if you are game for digging in and learning more about the intricate details of how gold deposits form, then let’s jump right in.
Gold, Quartz & Chalcedony—Part II
The specific gravity of chalcedony is 2.58 to 2.64. This is slightly lower than coarsely crystalline quartz because of slight porosity in chalcedony. Being so light, it will easily wash out of a gold pan.
Fabulous Florence—The Golden Town of Idaho
In September 1861, on a round-about prospecting journey homeward, five California gold miners discovered gold in the area now called Florence. While watering the horses, one of the men noticed a golden color on a piece of slate bedrock in the stream...
The Silver Islet Mountains of Utah
I set up my dry washer on the north side of the cut and sampled the bed rock and dumps around me. As I was only sampling, I ran for 20-30 minutes, shoveling from a variety of areas.
The Birimian Greenstone Belts of West Africa
The country we were to visit was Burkina Faso, a small country about the same size of my home state of Nevada with about 10 times more people. The second day I was in Africa, we went out to the goldfields for the first time.
Preserving the True History of the Ivanhoe
My partner had the contacts and it wasn’t long before we had an agreement in place and the company had a geologist on site. I recall a time when he was getting the lay of the land, so to speak, and he broke off a rock sample and inspected it with his magnifier.
Understanding and Prospecting Benches
The most obvious benches are usually near the valley floor, but they can be thousands of feet above the valley floor. Since benches were made by streams, they can contain placer deposits.
Prospecting With The Help of Fluvial Geomorphology
Quiz yourself about the stream in figure 5. Based on your previous knowledge of where gold is found in a stream and in this article, where do you think you will find the most gold?
Subscription Required:
The Bawl Mill
• Our Readers Say
• Ask The Experts
• Ask The Experts
• Ask The Experts
• Just Another Ordinary Weekend
• Small-Scale Hard Rock Mining With Water Recycling
• Getting A Successful Start in Metal Detecting for Gold
• Placer Mining At Chititu Creek, Alaska
• Gold Rush Continues in Africa
• Gold Refining In The Ancient World
• Tasers and Mining Don't Mix
• Thinking Outside The Creek
• Melman on Gold & Silver
• Mining Stock Quotes and Mineral & Metal Prices
