Finding the golden field of dreams in Iowa

[UrbanProspector]

Hello!

My husband Marco and I have been amateur gold prospecting for a little over a year now. We thought it would be fun to take a camera with us on our adventures and vlog a bit on our time out on the river/creek.

Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, we have a few vlogs on YouTube of the same locale. We have found our little hidden stream in Iowa and absolutely love it. I have to say, we have yet to find one like it anywhere else in the state! We have scoured southern, eastern, central, north eastern, and some western parts of Iowa and have yet to find a stream like the one we originally stumbled across! If you would like, I recommend checking out my YouTube videos and leaving feedback on what we can do to better our technique 😀 If you search ''The Urban Prospector'' you should find us. But with that said, I am curious, has anyone had any luck in Iowa on streams, creeks, or rivers?

- Chris

 

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[UrbanProspector]

 

[Alex Burke]

Welcome, you are def on a stream with some interesting geology going on. I ignorantly expected a stream running through a corn field I think

Do you have more closeup pics of the sides of the creek maybe post those if you can figure out what the intruding rock (looks like granite) is contacting and maybe look at some geology papers of the area you may find an old fault runs through that area or even some old volcanic activity(?).

It also looked like the other side of the creek if it's the same creek may have different geology completely and that could theoretically be good as it could be an old fault or where two different zones came together with space for mineralization to fill the voids.

Looks like a nice area to spend a day either way and welcome to the forum.

 

[mikep691]

Gold or not, that's a treasure.

 

[BagLady]

Sorry, I've never been to Iowa, but that area (in your pic's) is beautiful!!!
Welcome to TNet.

 

[BagLady]

Check the forum for your state, there may be some Iowans on there.

 

[UrbanProspector]

 

[russau]

In Northern Missouri theres fine gold scattered out the state. Its fine glacial gold that weve been getting and NOT a lot of it. Learn about the kinds of rocks that are in the stream and itll be a road map to the gold! Ive been wanting to get to N/E Missouri to dredge a few holes in a certain stream but ive since sold my 4 inch dredge and got my knee replaced. Getting permission from the land owner is sometimes harder than finding the gold! Be polite and courtious and NEVER leave a mess at your campsite ALWAYS goes a long way !! you found a nice stream and it looks promising.

 

[Asmbandits]

Wow very beautiful! Last night I was wondering about prospecting in Iowa and today I see this! I will be headed there next month for a week for a new job. I'll be in Grimes which I think is close to Des Moines, I doubt I'll have any free time but am contemplating packing a pan and a few small tools just in case..

 

[Peyton Manning]

nice pics, but have you found anything?

 

[Jimmydolittle]

Here is a place for lots of info. WELCOME TO WWW.IOWAGOLD.ORG

 

[russau]

Paul used to own that site ,maybe he still does. I see that he changed the site around a lot. He used to have a picture of my fine gold highbanker but its gone now.

 

[kcm]

My wife grew up in Iowa. She remembers her dad going out with a pie(?) pan looking for gold. She tells of when she loaded down her pockets with big nuggets she picked up in the creek. She was later made to empty her pockets - they wouldn't let her keep a single piece.

My guess is she had pyrite. Thing is, a lot of pyrite has gold in it. However, it's worthless unless you can 1) get the gold out of it, or 2) have TONS and TONS of it!!

 

[UrbanProspector]

 

[Simon1]

Pic 1285230 reminded me of Ledges up by Boone.