Hangtowndiggins
Sr. Member
- Oct 1, 2013
- 327
- 1,088
- Detector(s) used
- GBpro. BGT 48" miner, 36" prospector and super mini
- Primary Interest:
- All Treasure Hunting
From my yard!!.
So the wife and I bought a house outside of Placerville about 7 months ago. Lots of old time mining history and remains within a mile of us in all directions. Been noticing plenty of round rock and quartz sitting on the surface in the yard but haven't yet had the chance to poke around. Between all the hubby/daddy do's and all the projects that come with buying a "new" home and everything else going on in life just haven't had the time (have only got out to dig a handful of times since the move)..
Well it was finally time to build a fence around the yard that required digging multiple holes to set wood posts. Was having little to no fun until running into a hard pack layer of some awesome looking gravels that showed all signs pointing to gold! So, little did I know I have tertiary gravels just a few inches deep in my yard until now. I was quick to round up empty buckets to save the gravels for further investigation, ended up bringing 5 buckets worth back to the house.
A few days later (last weekend) the big storm blowing through put my fence building plans to a halt (totally fine by me). Was itchy to get some gravels from the fence post holes in the pan and see how it looked. Got all set up to pan away in the garage, even told the wife to pretend like I wasn't home (as in don't ask me to do anything, I'm busy! Lol) and before I could get the first pan wet it suddenly started pouring harder than I've seen in a long while, so I found myself amused by it for the 10 minutes it lasted.
After the flash flood downpour let up I took a quick walk to make sure all the water around the house was running off ok and noticed a spot in the yard that looked to be a one foot diameter hole pumping a good amount of water from the ground that wasn't there before. So I thought, well hell I'm about to pan anyway so grabbed the shovel to see what I could fish out of the hole. Dug down and started pulling up some sweet looking gravels!..
Worked the first pan down and to my surprise lots of black sands and had one little piece of color looking me straight in the eye, I screamed EUREKA!! Lol, well not really but I did have an instant golden grin at the first sight of that little piece of color
Went on to do 8 or so more pans from the hole, each pan showed at least one color, one pan showed 3 colors (did a little jig on that one).
So ended up not even touching the saved buckets of gravel from the post holes, my back was locking up a while after being hunched over the panning tub and was concerned about a wicked blister on the palm of my hand getting too soggy n funky so called it quits. Plus had enough color in the pan to know I need to set up the recirculating sluice and get down to business (just gotta find the time).
So all in all not bad for digging blind in a hole full of water and finding some new color that I had no idea was there waiting!
Went back to the hole yesterday to see what I could dig up, hole stopped flowing but still full of water so can't see exactly what's going on yet. I managed to pull up a couple more pans worth of gravel (both showed a couple more colors!) but now seems to be I'm bottoming out on bigger cobbles which has me thinking I was only scratching the surface of the gravel layer and good possibilities for the gold to get better the deeper I dig, we shall see...
Anyhow, just wanted to share the story while it's young and update with the finds as I go...
Now for the pics....
The start of the front yard surface operation lol (the hole that produced the bit of color)
Gravels from the hole..
Black sands from 8 or so pans worth..
The bigger washed gravels from classifying to 1/2"..
So the wife and I bought a house outside of Placerville about 7 months ago. Lots of old time mining history and remains within a mile of us in all directions. Been noticing plenty of round rock and quartz sitting on the surface in the yard but haven't yet had the chance to poke around. Between all the hubby/daddy do's and all the projects that come with buying a "new" home and everything else going on in life just haven't had the time (have only got out to dig a handful of times since the move)..
Well it was finally time to build a fence around the yard that required digging multiple holes to set wood posts. Was having little to no fun until running into a hard pack layer of some awesome looking gravels that showed all signs pointing to gold! So, little did I know I have tertiary gravels just a few inches deep in my yard until now. I was quick to round up empty buckets to save the gravels for further investigation, ended up bringing 5 buckets worth back to the house.
A few days later (last weekend) the big storm blowing through put my fence building plans to a halt (totally fine by me). Was itchy to get some gravels from the fence post holes in the pan and see how it looked. Got all set up to pan away in the garage, even told the wife to pretend like I wasn't home (as in don't ask me to do anything, I'm busy! Lol) and before I could get the first pan wet it suddenly started pouring harder than I've seen in a long while, so I found myself amused by it for the 10 minutes it lasted.
After the flash flood downpour let up I took a quick walk to make sure all the water around the house was running off ok and noticed a spot in the yard that looked to be a one foot diameter hole pumping a good amount of water from the ground that wasn't there before. So I thought, well hell I'm about to pan anyway so grabbed the shovel to see what I could fish out of the hole. Dug down and started pulling up some sweet looking gravels!..
Worked the first pan down and to my surprise lots of black sands and had one little piece of color looking me straight in the eye, I screamed EUREKA!! Lol, well not really but I did have an instant golden grin at the first sight of that little piece of color
Went on to do 8 or so more pans from the hole, each pan showed at least one color, one pan showed 3 colors (did a little jig on that one).
So ended up not even touching the saved buckets of gravel from the post holes, my back was locking up a while after being hunched over the panning tub and was concerned about a wicked blister on the palm of my hand getting too soggy n funky so called it quits. Plus had enough color in the pan to know I need to set up the recirculating sluice and get down to business (just gotta find the time).
So all in all not bad for digging blind in a hole full of water and finding some new color that I had no idea was there waiting!
Went back to the hole yesterday to see what I could dig up, hole stopped flowing but still full of water so can't see exactly what's going on yet. I managed to pull up a couple more pans worth of gravel (both showed a couple more colors!) but now seems to be I'm bottoming out on bigger cobbles which has me thinking I was only scratching the surface of the gravel layer and good possibilities for the gold to get better the deeper I dig, we shall see...
Anyhow, just wanted to share the story while it's young and update with the finds as I go...
Now for the pics....
The start of the front yard surface operation lol (the hole that produced the bit of color)
Gravels from the hole..
Black sands from 8 or so pans worth..
The bigger washed gravels from classifying to 1/2"..
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" Either way, will keeping having fun with it as I don't see crime in getting some color (hopefully chunks) from the yard. 
Maybe you can find some way to offset your expenses.
