Almost everyone knows what gold is, its common physical appearance, and how it is valued by society. And almost anyone growing up in the United States has heard of the California Gold Rush and the 49’ers who dashed to the West Coast to find their fortune.
Figure 4. A replica of Sutter’s Mill”{6}
The California Gold Rush started at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma. On January 24, 1848 James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found pieces of shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter, along the American River. Marshall quietly brought what he found to Sutter, and the two of them privately tested the findings. The tests showed Marshall's particles to be gold. Rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. With the news of gold, many families trying their luck at Californian farming decided to go for the gold, becoming some of California’s first miners. On December 5, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress. Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the "forty-niners," invaded the Gold Country of California or "Mother Lode Country."
What most people don’t know is that there have been at least 10 other major “Gold Rushes” in U.S. history!
A common misconception is that after a “Gold Rush”, there is no more gold to be found.
It would be difficult to imagine an idea more flawed than this!
Because most of the gold is concealed beneath earth and rock, usually only a small percentage of the gold actually present in an area is ever found by the miners seeking it. There is one indomitable truth of gold prospecting: “Where Gold has been found before, it is ALWAYS found again!”
There are many examples of this presented in “The Essential Introduction for New Gold Prospectors, Second Edition” available through the author’s website, but here is a classic example:
Figure 5. Swauk Creek, Washington State{7}
George Jordin moved into the Swauk-Liberty region (Washington State) in 1895, accompanied by six grandsons. George initially tried his hand at placer mining, but theorized that the coarse gold in the creeks had originated from lode veins close at hand. He realized that the compressed gold recovered from Swauk Creek (Figure 5), Williams, and other streams in the area was simply mashed lode gold. He and several others set out to locate the motherlode, the source of all the placer gold.
The initial lode discoveries had been made in 1887 when Thomas Tweed and William Johnson happened across a rich pocket of gold bearing quartz. These miners built an arrastra (a simple ore crushing apparatus used by early Spanish explorers/miners and extracted 900 ounces of gold from the quartz. In the summer of 1891, Andy Flodin hit rich gold bearing bird’s-eye quartz nearby. Other miners slowly worked their way eastward until a series of high grade ore strikes were made in nearby Kruger Gulch.
In 1896, in the same area, George Verdin discovered the Wall Street Series, a ledge of narrow quartz veins carrying staggering amounts of “free” gold (gold unalloyed with other minerals). L.K. Hodges stated in 1897 that “George W. Verdin has taken some of the richest ore in camp from the two forks of the widest ledge of the Wall Street Series, and several thousand dollars were cleaned up from one run of an Arrastra. In 1897, the price of gold was $20.97 per ounce. At an average December 3, 2014 gold price of approximately $1200.00 per ounce, these miners would have processed $138,700.00 to $277,431.00 of gold every day or two in their crude ore refining mill!{8}
This auspicious beginning not only launched the career of George Verdin but also focused the search of other prospectors in the area. George Jordin was now convinced that there lay, somewhere in the immediate area, a vast repository of gold ore of incalculable value.
Figure 6 The Liberty mine located in the Swauk Mining District of Kittitas County, WA{9}
51 years after George Jordin found gold in the Swauk-Liberty region, His grandson, Clarence Jordan, after carefully studying the pattern of other gold finds in the area, was prospecting a nearby hillside. He noticed a promising looking prospect that had been passed over by numerous fine prospectors. He called it the Ace of Diamonds mine. One gold pocket alone yielded 134 pounds of gold. Estimates of the total production from his mine workings are 11,000 to 13,000 ounces of gold ($13,305,600.00 to $15,724,800.00 at the approximate December 3, 2014 average price of gold per ounce).{10} He believed this was the “Mother Lode” that his family had been searching for since the late 1800’s. The photo of Figure 6 is a typical mine in the Swauk Mining District where George Jordin, the grandson of Clarence Jordin, located the fabulous Ace of Diamonds mine, over 51 years after the first gold had been found in the Swauk Mining District!