Gold behind Dam?

[Smokehouse_83]

Just found out the city is dredging the river behind a dam they use to catch water for their city water holding ponds and me and a buddy got access to the dirt. I've never panned in the river because I am new to this gold stuff and have been waiting on warm weather and time, but I've heard that people make good money working the river upstream closer to the head waters. What do you guys think the chances of this stuff being full of gold? We had a 100 year flood two years ago on the river, it rained for a week straight. I ran the Grizzly Gold Trap in the river way downstream by my house two weekends ago and found nothing so I'm thinking something is catching or caught all the yellow.
We are contemplating building a self contained 55 gallon barrel trommel on a trailer to run the stuff. So whats the word on gold being caught in front of dam's?

 

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[Tommybuckets]

Are you in an area known for alluvial gold? If theres no gold, theres no gold. If no one before you has found gold on your stretch of river,.. well good luck. There should be gold there from before the dam was built even in the minutest amount. People are great at extracting gold but when it reaches a point of diminishing returns the smart people move to a more productive area. If you are like many places, theres a tiny bit of gold but not worth wasting your time when you could be collecting gold or PMs in a more productive manner. For instance you are probably better off detecting the dredge tailings for old coins and jewelry if people ever swam there. My two cents, I have never dipped a pan but I have found some gold.

 

[Smokehouse_83]

I have heard through the grapevine that some guy is making acouple thousand a month working the river upstream.

 

[arizau]

If there is any gold at all, there will not be any natural concentration of it other than possibly the original stream bed and bench deposits that the lake covers. What they are dredging is probably mostly fine silt and vegetative matter that has had a chance to settle out in the still water and thus effectively reduced the capacity of the reservoir. If the original source for gold in the drainage is in the headwaters then the vast majority of placer gold will not be too far downstream from it. You can pretty much edify yourself where the source(s) are and maybe where the guy is working that is purported to be doing well if you look at the claims map for this area on http://www.mylandmatters.org/.

Good luck.

 

[seekerGH]

Look up stories about the gold found when the Oroville Spillway cut loose

 

[Smokehouse_83]

There are no marked mines on the river, so who knows where it is coming from. There is a uranium mine that is not to far off it though. There were also old claims here in town on the river bottom so I know its washing down. Kinda of a weird area tons of MINERAL claims and mines, but nobody claiming gold. On the other side of the hill there lies one of the biggest gold/silver/copper mines ever, the Tererro Mine. This side of the hill is/was outlaw country though so people probably didnt want anybody knowing if they had a gold mine. Jesse James was shot here by an outlaw named Vincente Silva, Doc Holliday shot a guy here also. He left for Arizona because it was too wild here.

 

[arizau]

My Dad and his oldest brother worked at the Tererro mine back in the late 30's. Nothing like Pecos canyon and wilderness area. Mom's ashes scattered at Cowles.

 

[Smokehouse_83]

Ya I'm on the other side of the hill in Vegas. I love these mountains. I was gonna go up to the Terrero a few weekends back, but the New Mexico rain(wind) has been terrible. I have been wheeling through the Sante Fe visting and looking for Old Mines for the past few months and it has almost taken over my life LOL.

 

[arizau]

Ya I'm on the other side of the hill in Vegas. I love these mountains. I was gonna go up to the Terrero a few weekends back, but the New Mexico rain(wind) has been terrible. I have been wheeling through the Sante Fe visting and looking for Old Mines for the past few months and it has almost taken over my life LOL.

Family history in Vegas and I was born there but only lived there for a week or two afterwards...home was Carlsbad where my Dad worked in a potash mine. Lots of good memories of frequent familial visits to Vegas.

 

[Smokehouse_83]

Small world huh?

 

[arizau]

Small world huh?

Yep and most people don't even know that it is there unless they have traveled through or know the history of the Santa Fe Trail.

 

[Smokehouse_83]

If it wasn't for terrible city management Vegas would be a very well known town. Hell we have a castle here with some of the best hot springs in the country and tons of bad ass hundred plus year old Victorian homes, kinda weird for a southwest town. So you know what dam I'm talking about then? It's the one by the castle, the skating pond, heard it used to be a ice pond for the Harvey Houses.

 

[QNCrazy]

We were recently looking for another claim for our club several miles downstream of our existing claim. Interestingly, there was an old, concrete dam spanning the creek. The dam was destroyed on the side of the creek where we parked. I crossed the creek and stood on top of the dam. It was about a fifteen foot drop on the downstream side to the bottom of hte dam and bedrock. On the upstream side, gravels were built up nearly to the top. I would estimate the top span of the dam to be approximately thirty feet across, missing about ten feet on one side, top to bottom. I did some test pans in the top foot of material collected behind the dam. I found a few specks of gold per pan. Nothing to get excited about. I was intrigued, however, as to what might be lying in wait at the bottom of that dam on the upstream side. Just thought the story fit.

Mike

 

[Smokehouse_83]

That's what I am wondering also, how much gold has been deposited behind the dam cause there is now way its going over the top? I am sure the only reason they are dredging it is because that flood filled the pond in and they can't get enough water out of the river for the holding ponds cause it all running over the top of the dam. I have never heard of them doing this before. One of the operators burried an excavator in the pond so its not like they know what they are doing LOL. I guess I will go grab some material to run through my sluice and see if there is any color in it.

 

[arizau]

I know the ice pond dam well. Have you tried sampling up by El Porvenir or around Mora?

You know this but for other readers....The castle previously mentioned is Montezuma castle. It is adjacent to the topic subject dam and was originally built as a scenic hotel/spa nearby the Santa Fe Railroad stop at Las Vegas, N.M.* and it featured the hot springs. One of those Victorian homes you mentioned featured a floor to ceiling pipe organ and dual spiral staircases. I know this since my Mom lived there as her parents ran it as a boarding house for the owners when she was in her teens. My parents were married in front of the pipe organ. That home was torn down for Highlands University expansion. As far as city management, I was told the Mayo brothers at one time considered building their first clinic there but they were turned down by the city fathers...so yeah PPoor management then too. It could have been as or more developed than Santa Fe rather than a stop along the freeway. Too bad.

*This is the original Las Vegas and was a major stop along the Santa Fe Trail.

 

[Smokehouse_83]

I just took kindly to this whole prospecting thing this last fall. I have friends in Mineral Hill and I have been checking out all the mines around there and collecting samples so I have not made it to Gillinas. I just bought a grizzly gold trap a few weeks back so I plan on maybe heading up there with the family on Sunday/my birthday to run some material. We are planning on 4wheeling up to about every mine in the area this summer to do alittle prospecting(if it rains). We have some interesting prospects also with stuff other then gold. It kinda sucks that the Santa Fe is shut to down to claims. I found a old mine that supposedly has 30-40 tons of molybdenite sitting beside it and Molybdenum is worth around 16k a ton. I would love to renew that claim and haul that stuff out of there. Mora is a weird one I don't know if I would run around the Mora river might end up missing LOL. Might try to get up to Red River and will for sure go to Sipapu this summer though

 

[Capt Nemo]

Sounds like there's gold there. A dead spot in a river is a good place to look. The upstream end where the current dies will cause the gold to drop. A dam can do the same thing.

 

[Smokehouse_83]

Well I ran the sluice for a few hours from a sand bar and didn't find a spec of gold. There was black sands though so probably not a horrible spot run, dug a hole down a few feet. I was in a valley though with no way for gold to run into the river other then from miles up stream. What I did notice going up there through the canyon is that the side hills where they cut the road is super mineralized and there were a few mine shafts on the road and a mile stretch of blue dirt so my hope is that is where the gold in that river is coming from and made its way down the steep mountain sides into the river and down to the dam. Its only a few miles down stream. Its going to take them awhile to dredge out that pond though, the silt is almost to the top of the dam. It is gonnna be alot of material .