How to Prospect for Gold at Roaring Camp

Gold pan

• 1

  Fill your gold pan about 3/4 full. You can scoop gravel and dirt with the pan, or use a shovel. Move some smaller rocks and collect the soil and gravel trapped on the upstream side where storms might have washed the gold down the river.

• 2

  Submerge the pan in a gentle current. Holding the pan under water, sift through the rocks and dirt. The lightest mud and silt will wash away in the current. You will not lose gold because it weighs more than silt and will sink to the bottom of the pan.

• 3

  Swish the pan back and forth under water. The smaller rocks will rise to the surface where they can be washed away. Keep repeating this procedure until either the pan has nothing left in it, or better, you have found some nuggets or flakes of gold.

Dredge

• 4

  Set up the dredge. A gold dredge uses suction to pull gravel, soil and water into the sluice box. The sluice box has riffles that look like an old-fashioned washboard. As water runs through the sluice box, the heavier gold sinks out and gets caught behind the riffles.

• 5

  Suck up materials from bed of the stream, from the banks where water would rush by during flood stages, and from the base nearby cliffs or rock faces, since water could wash down those areas depositing gold during heavy rains.

• 6

  Monitor the riffles every few minutes to see if any gold has gotten deposited. If you kept track of where you got the sample that produced the gold, keep searching in that vicinity since gold tends to accumulate in certain areas.