FOLLOWING A LEAD By William Southern Jr. This little story will give you some idea about just how much research and trial and error go into tracking down a gold lead. Ive spent weeks on the research part of this lead and seem to be no closer to finding out if any gold nuggets have actually been found in this area. There just doesnt seem to be any written documentation of placer gold. Sometimes even in this age of tons of info at ones finger tips it is hard to track down a good lead. The mountain range in question is known for its copper deposits and even a bit of silver, but nowhere is there mention of hard rock or placer gold deposits. In Arizona though if other minerals such as copper or silver are present there is a very good chance of finding gold also. A lot of times if less than $5000,00 worth of gold was found the area never gets mentioned in any publications as a valuable placer area. These areas are in a since lost mines. Now this lead I had was nothing more than a fading memory of a few gold nuggets found by a Grandfather of a friend sometime over 40 years ago, not much to go on to say the least. Don and his brother used some as checker pieces when he was very young, Nuggets were red, and specimens were black. There was a good solid landmark though and if I could find it things may not be so tough. There was to be an old hard rock mine and remains of a stone cabin at the site above where the placer gold was to be found. The first trip in I found several old mine shafts, but no stone house of any kind and no gold. Taking careful note of the GPS coordinates I logged them into a notebook and also checked off all the spots I searched this time in so I would know where not to go next time in. I would call Don in Illinois and describe the area to him and see if any cobwebs would rattle loose. After talking with Don who had spoken to his father I had enough new info to give it another shot. We exchanged info over the phone complete with an X on the map of what was thought to be the area in question. No mine shafts or houses were marked on the topo map, but that didnt worry me to much. Getting to the area on the map was not a problem, but there was again no cabin remains or visible evidence of a mine. After setting up camp I had a bit of daylight left so I geared up and went for a walk to look around. At sunset I still hadnt found anything and detecting some of the washes had yielded no gold so I headed back to camp. That is when I saw the mine, just a small overgrown dump pile at the entrance and the sun was just right to make it stand out like a sore thumb just a quarter mile from where I stood. I hiked over and looked around and there was the stone house still standing, but in bad shape now. Well it was to dark to hunt for the placer diggings as I didnt want to stumble the half mile to camp in the dark. So me and my dog went back to camp and had our dinner and wondered what tomorrows hunt would bring. I was up at dawn and watched the sun rise over the nasty catclaw and scrub oak while I had my coffee. After hiking back to the mine I did some more exploring and it didnt take long to find the drywashing tailing piles. Here I fired up my trusty Gold Bug 2 and began my search starting in the tailing piles. It was the third pile that yielded the first nugget and If I remember right it was about 2 penny weight or so. I found several more very nice nuggets before leaving the area and over the next couple years several ounces were cleaned out of the drainages in this area. I keep meaning to get in there with my SD 2100 and see how many nuggets I missed with the Gold Bug 2, but I just havent gotten to it yet and that will be another story. There has been more than one gold story I have followed up on that produced nuggets that a lot of folks would hear and forget about writing it off as just a story. Oh yes I have followed up a lot of dead ends also, but they are no fun to talk about. Let me tell you though that the thrill of following a tid-bit of a lead to gold in your poke is like no other!
Posted on: Wed, 19 Nov 2014 21:09:57 +0000
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