south carolina

[day dreamer]

Any body have any info where i can possibly nugget hunt in south carolina.

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Agony and Death on a Gold Rush Steamer: The Disastrous Sinking of the Side-Wheeler Yankee Blade - Grab it through Amazon!

[MuddyCreekWader]

Nugget Hunting

There are ALOT of places here in South Carolina to find gold (I have found it in 6 rivers in the Upstate). If you are looking to walk around and pick up gold, I think you will be disappointed.. its not impossible, but improbable. Working old stream beds or rivers will give you some gold...you can do it with a pan or work your way up to a dredge & Sluice. The placer flakes in a pay streak (river/stream bed) will definately make it worthwhile. If you want to just nugget shoot, go to Arizona or California.

 

[day dreamer]

Thanks for the reply muddycreak.

 

[shdwrdr]

howdy neighbor,

welcome to the club, got into prospecting heavy here in the last 2 years, allways watched those gold shows on outdoor channel thought it would be a ton of fun and it is. I've done a bunch of research on GA SC and NC gold prospecting areas and the good news is you got pleanty to do in this area.
Your not gonna find nuggets on the ground in plain view, in fact you probably wont find anything larger than a picker around here but there have been some large finds in the past(see reed gold mine story) GA has some good history too.

If you want to pan, sluice, highbank, trommel in an authentic gold camp (which is a lot of fun) I recommend Thermal City NC (the second broad river) there are several camps there all on the same road. Heather grove, carolina gold and emeral mine, lucky strike, the GPAA/LDMA vein mountain claim, and my favorite Thermal City gold mine. cost will be 50.00 per day to rent a cabin and 5.00 pan, sluice all you want, tent site is $12-15 per day +5.00 prospecting fee. You can buy loads of dirt for your highbanker for $25 a pop. or rent the huge trommel and get 2x the dirt for $50.00. my best day there was 3.1 grams of gold, a punch plate from an old rocker box that i donated to their museum. I did do real well in their panning area one day got 2 nice pickers and a real nice pan of fine gold...hit a streak, was great.

I'm planning on a GA trip this year but i gotta run down there and do some scouting one week end 1st. I never did find any place obvious on the net that said come here camp and prospect to your hearts content like i did in NC, everything in GA seemed to be much more expensive and no camping, with the exception of the GPAA buchanan claim, but like i say....i need to scout it out.
btw the buchanan claim is primitive camping only, and you probably will need a dredge to do well there.

You can also contact the GPAA area rep in NC, but you'll probably need to be a member of the GPAA

North Carolina Carolina Slate Belt Chapter (Aberdeen, NC)
? Jim Jones [email protected]? (910) 215-3606
? Jim Simmons? ?(910) 215-6952
? Meets 2nd Sunday Monthly at 3:00 PM
Piedmont Chapter, (Salisbury, NC)
? Bobby Crawford [email protected]? (704) 855-4975
? David Mengel [email protected]? (336) 699-4176
? Meets 2nd Saturday Monthly. Call for time and place.

best of luck