Gold Prospecting in Cargo Muchacho Mtns - LOTSA PICS

Thanks, bushman, it was fun. Just a bit dusty, though. (Highbanker next time, lol!) And definitely, the gold gods were not smiling on us. But if you just do it with the goal being to have fun, and not get rich, you most likely will not be disappointed.

The greenies have gotten the state of California to ban dredging in the rivers in Northern California as well. Lots of people I know that used to do it, lots of folks pissed off about it. I don't know the details of it, but they found some way to dredge, without it actually being dredging. They are going to do it until they get told to stop.

I recently saw a show on TV (History channel?) about the prospectors during the Gold Rush days. They would have the entire bottom of their rocker boxes filled with mercury!! Then they'd stir it up with their fingers, not realizing it was going right through their skin, poisoning them and causing their teeth to fall out. Probably not a pretty way to die. They'd also heat the amalgam in a pan over a fire to burn off the mercury. Don't want to breathe that, it'll mess you up good.

Oh, the sunglasses were for size reference, gee I thought some deer was wandering around squinting because of the sun...lol. Great pics Jean thanks for sharing.

Liquid mercury is pretty safe, however the vapour is not, and that is what caused the lose of teeth. Many small miners back in the day 'retorted' the mercury /gold amalgam by splitting a potato, hollowing it to hold the amalgam that roasting it in a fire. This left a button of gold in the potato...the mercury was mostly in the potato. Read mostly. Mercury was reused as much as possible due to its expense. The small timers lost quite a bit, the big operations lost very little. The mercury was used to capture the fine gold by coating a polished sheet of copper with it. The gold amalgams with the mercury forming a paste. When it got close to holding no more it was scraped off and a new coating applied. This is how the big stamp mills recovered gold from ore. It is actually quite an efficient process but must be monitored closely to prevent loss of gold when the mercury will not hold any more gold. The miners stirring the mercury with their fingers is mostly TV drama crap.
Woody

Yeah, Bill, I understand about finding the time to have a few different hobbies... Seems like there is never enough time. We just ran some more dirt through the highbanker, panned the concentrates, and then ran that through the Desert Fox. This was about four buckets of dirt that came from one of the prospecting club's claims - about two months ago! Somehow these last buckets had gotten missed. I think everything has been run now.

There was actually some small bits of gold in it, better than nothing! I'll try to get a pic of it later today. Off to my parent's house shortly, to get some work done for them.