Dam It

[OreCart]

I have a stream near me that I am not sure will have gold or not.

It may, because it is in a known gold area, and is a long way downstream from its headwaters where I have found both lode and placer-stream gold. Being the lowest point in the valley, a tremendous amount of water would have funneled through this location during glacier melt. Today it is fairly wide at 15 feet or so, and has a gravelly bottom.

However, it is bookended on both the upstream and downstream side by a swamp, so this stretch of decent stream, is only a few hundred feet long. Until about 1850, it ran free, then had a dam installed for a sawmill. Then about 1890, that dam was removed.

What effect would the installation, then removal of a dam, do in terms of gold migration?

 

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[placertogo]

I have had good experiences finding gold just downstream from old broken away sawmill dams. I expct the gold got caught up in the in the upstream side of the dam and, when the dam broke away, some of the gold washed down for a short distance.