My Property in Dahlonega, Georgia

[NorthGa]

Hi all.. I posted this in the "General" forum, and it was suggested that I post here. Pardon the "Copy/Paste" look, but here goes.

Wow.. Its been forever since I browsed these forums.. Years and Years I'm sure.

Anyways, I decided to log in and post to get a few opinions.

I'm located in North Georgia, West of Dahlonega. Many of you already know about the Gold in the Dahlonega area.

Anyways, I'm blessed to have some property and for years my wife has claimed that there is gold on it. This has been passed down from generation to generation in her family. This property has been in the family since the original Georgia Land Lottery days.

So, after hearing about this gold bearing area, she and I decided to put this to a rest as I'm prob the biggest skeptic of all. About a month ago, we jumped into the Polaris and headed to the creek. Not knowing a Gold pan from a frying pan, we dug around a bit in the creek bed. I pulled maybe 5 gallons of loose gravel and mud. Also, we're covered up with Quartz.. Lots of Quartz. I know of at least 4-5 huge boulders that are the size of a pretty big car engine. These would take a serious bulldozer to move in my opinion. The other pieces are on the hillside all over the place.

We messed around with the dirt a bit the best we could and came away with a tiny flake of what we believe *may* be a piece of gold. I used a 15x Macro lens clipped onto my iPhone to photograph the tiny speck.

I'm attaching images for your thoughts and opinions before I invest further.

 

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[BIGSCOTT]

yep sure looks like gold to me, how much of that creek do you own? if its never been mined you may have a bonanza.

 

[Hitndahed]

Looks like color to me,,,
I would do a more in depth assessment of the entire property before I "heavily" invested in anything.
Although,, if there is one piece,,, there are more,, I would start small,,small dredge,,,work the bedrock in the creek,,crevices,,
Are there any "unusual" outcroppings? depressions there? Any old history,,other than word of mouth that gold was found or mined?

Man I wish my property had something like this,,,
All my property has is supposed connections to the Underground Railroad,, it was built in 1850.

Good hunting and keep us informed.

Hit

 

[ivan salis]

yes is gold --look behind those big rocks in the river gold will settle in the slack water area at their rear .. that's where you want to collect dirt from to pan out ..also in the turns of the creek quartz is often a sign that there is gold around --gold veins are often found in quartz ...

 

[BurntBear]

Could be. There are several simple methods to distinguish between Gold and Pyrite. That looks like Gold running through the fractures of that piece of Quartz, not Iron!

 

[NorthGa]

We have maybe 600
Feet or so of the creek.. The widest portion is maybe 20' give or take. The area has absolutely never ever been mined at all. Her family was more about farming cattle, raising crops and kids than gold.

 

[NorthGa]

I'm actually in the car at the moment.. I'll answer more when I get back home!

 

[russau]

hang on ! we are loading the dredges now and will be there in 12 hours!

 

[Slingshot]

The gold in that belt runs with the quartz and iron. The quartz looks right, but the nugget looks like pyrite to me, just too angular as the gold there tends to be smoother. Not trying to be a Debbie Downer, just saying what I see, and I hope you can respect that. One way to check it for sure is to put it on a hard surface, anvil, rock, then hit it with a hammer as pyrite will smash into a black powder but gold will just flatten out. Even if it is pyrite don't despair as it runs right along with the gold. I hope you have a gold nugget and all goes well as the quartz looks nice and your location should produce gold being west of Dahlonega. I used to pan on Yahoola Creek and the Chestatee River and know my way around the mountains there. Cheers!!

 

[Buckshotnc]

Good luck my friend, sound like you're starting down the same road I did 15-20 years ago with our family farm here in NC and I've enjoyed it all. Get you a couple of so 5 gallon buckets a 1/4 or 1/8" classifier, a gold pan, snuffer and a vial and then watch some panning videos on internet and youtube and follow up on it. You never know if you don't look and see.

 

[huntsman53]

Like Slingshot stated, it appears to be Pyrite but considering that the property is in the Georgia Gold Belt and you have lots of Quartz and Pyrite, there should be Gold. You just need a Gold Pan, a Classifier and good shovel to find out. Dig as deep in the creek as possible to get to old deposited sediments and possible Gold and maybe even to bedrock where most Gold eventually settles. I live in Central East Tennessee and I have lots of Gold Prospecting equipment if you ever want help to find out if there is Gold on the property. Also, considering that the property is near Dahlonega and in the Georgia Gold Belt, it is likely that you have Gold in the ground across most if not all of the property. While an underground Gold Mine could pay very well, Georgia passed Laws many years ago banning them but of course, there is always Surface Mining.


Frank

 

[NorthGa]

Thanks for all of the replies! We're looking at several options right now. We've gone out and pulled two 5Gal buckets of dirt and rock. We've also rode around and picked up about 200lbs or quartz rocks in various sizes; some with the obvious iron markings, some not. At this point, we're going to look into classifying the material in the buckets and maybe busting up some of the quartz to see what we have. We've been looking at a was to run our little bit of dirt once we classify it; maybe with the Desert Fox gold panning machine? Remember, we're wanting to make a very minimal investment to start with for now. We're also looking at smaller scale rock crushers to break up the quartz. We figure these items would be fairly easy to sell if need be.

As far as pulling that little piece of suspected gold out to see if it is pyrite.. We've not done that yet. Hope to find a little more time later this week to do so. I'll be sure to report back on that too.

What are your thoughts on a rock crusher and the Desert Fox machine?

Oh, and we got on Google maps and checked the length of the creek area; it's roughly 570' or so. And someone asked about any unusual outcroppings, etc. The only thing I can think of is the fact that the quartz is "jutting" out of the ground on the hillside. Now, I'm not sure if this matters or not, but this is some fairly good sized rocks/boulders. They're not placed; rather they seem to be pushing their way to the surface. I'll take some pictures and post before the leaves start coming out.

 

[bobw53]

Remember, we're wanting to make a very minimal investment to start with for now. We're also looking at smaller scale rock crushers to break up the quartz.

You can crush rocks for very little investment... I don't know what kind of mechanical aptitude you have, or what kind of junk you have laying around, but a
simple rock crusher can be made with some pipe and a few pipe caps from down at the hardware store....

Here is my first rock crusher.. Just a piece of plate, a piece of pipe and a rod for pounding... All stuff I had laying around and I didn't even have to modify any of it.

A couple of minutes of work will reduce a handful of rocks to powder....

And just for fun, rock crusher #2... Loosely based on the cobra crusher... I have a hard time buying things I can easily build.
No picking on the welds.

 

[BurntBear]

Thanks for sharing, Bob!

 

[TAKODA]

hang on ! we are loading the dredges now and will be there in 12 hours!

Give'm hell Paw-Paw .

 

[kevin1]

Heat your nugget with a torch, if it doesn't stink it probably is gold.

 

[Dixiegal]

Kind of looks like pyrite to me. But that does not mean you don't have gold in the creek. A lot of GA gold is flour gold. Very fine.

I have panned in the chestatee up in Dahlonega and never got more than a trace of real fine gold in my pan. but a friend of a friend used to take a backpack type gold dredge up there almost every weekend and I was told he was averaging about $500 per weekend.

Somebody mentioned digging around behind the big rocks and that is what I would do. Any gold washing down the creek would collect behind those rocks more than likely.

 

[rebel003]

There are many experienced miners in the North Ga area that you can get to come by and look over the area and do some testing. then let you know the best way to recover base on the layout of the creek and ares around it.

 

[strickman]

dredge would be the way to go . for minimal investment ,with decent yardage capabilities.He might be lucky and have some high ground color as well. Look for iron staining .

 

[ok2raise]

Hi all.. I posted this in the "General" forum, and it was suggested that I post here. Pardon the "Copy/Paste" look, but here goes.

Wow.. Its been forever since I browsed these forums.. Years and Years I'm sure.

Anyways, I decided to log in and post to get a few opinions.

I'm located in North Georgia, West of Dahlonega. Many of you already know about the Gold in the Dahlonega area.

Anyways, I'm blessed to have some property and for years my wife has claimed that there is gold on it. This has been passed down from generation to generation in her family. This property has been in the family since the original Georgia Land Lottery days.

So, after hearing about this gold bearing area, she and I decided to put this to a rest as I'm prob the biggest skeptic of all. About a month ago, we jumped into the Polaris and headed to the creek. Not knowing a Gold pan from a frying pan, we dug around a bit in the creek bed. I pulled maybe 5 gallons of loose gravel and mud. Also, we're covered up with Quartz.. Lots of Quartz. I know of at least 4-5 huge boulders that are the size of a pretty big car engine. These would take a serious bulldozer to move in my opinion. The other pieces are on the hillside all over the place.

We messed around with the dirt a bit the best we could and came away with a tiny flake of what we believe *may* be a piece of gold. I used a 15x Macro lens clipped onto my iPhone to photograph the tiny speck.

I'm attaching images for your thoughts and opinions before I invest further.
View attachment 1127460 View attachment 1127461 View attachment 1127462

i ve got a 3 / 4 inch dredge,,,,,ive dredge the Yahoola, Cheastee , Etowah ,Cane Creek (NO I CANT SPELL THEM ) also i look for Fairy cross in Blue Ridge. i also live in Resaca Ga not far from you.. almost every creek over their has gold in it. just some has more than others. It seam like over their gold washes back into the creek yearly....let me know if you want to check like i said i have a dredge