Here they're digging the Pond downhill from Randsburg,CA in the Fremont Valley.
Here's the Dredge in operation
Close up of the Dredge. The mining Engineer in charge was Mort Richardson of Consolidated Placer Dredging Co.-Irvine,Ca. I had the pleasure of meeting him when we went out to lunch back in the early 2000's and then went back to his office. Cool thing was in his scrapbook of pictures, he showed me a pic of Grandfather's mine from back in the mid 1930's that they dug up. He was impressed that my Grandfather had located the most concentrated/richest area on the slopes of Rand Mountain which led to the 1st dredging operation just after WWII there.I'm posting this as this subject came up on the "Drywashing Forum" of all places and I was looking through my late Aunt's stuff last night and found these pictures. I thought the group might be interested to know that a commercial dredge was used not once but twice in the Mojave desert. Also, Mort told me that the geologist determined that an Ancient River that flowed from Atolia brought the gold based on the way the rocks were laid out across the desert there. There used to be an old Wives tale about some Ancient River that came around Johanesburg to this area. I wrote the late Geologist Thomas Dibblee about that tale and he told me that he was unaware of such a river and then Mort confirmed that the Ancient River came from the opposite direction. Nice to hear it from such big players in the mining/Geology game. Thomas Dibblee died one month after I wrote him,that was close timing!
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