How far will gold travel in a creek?

aa battery · Mar 12, 2008

I know this is dumb question without details but i have a natural creek behind my home and is it possible for gold to travel miles. The closest gold found is about 5 miles away. The soil is sandy and i live on a corner where the creek changes direction. My daughters dug a hole for fun and found evidence of small river rock about 5 feet down. Another thing we discovered was a fire pit at 4 feet. The name of the creek is Dry Creek and most people think of it as just another irrigation canal. Thanks

Lookin · Mar 18, 2008

aa, what did you find? Be glad that you can at least get out and get into the dirt! Lookin is looking forward to seeing some pics of yesterday's gold!

aa battery · Mar 18, 2008

I dug down 3 feet nothing. I was going to sample deeper but the wife wanted to go out to eat so i will try later.

kuger · Mar 18, 2008

Are you panning as you go or searching for bedrock??Gold is often throughout that old stuff and if you are looking for he bottom you may be there for a while. :wink:

nuggetshooter323 · Apr 10, 2008

My copy of of the Colorado Goelogical Survey's information series pamphlet #33, "Gold, Panning, and Placering in Colorado", by Ben H. Parker Jr., says that when placer gold is eroded out of the lode, in about 25 miles down river it's eroded into fine gold.

aa battery · Apr 10, 2008

nuggetshooter323 said:
My copy of of the Colorado Goelogical Survey's information series pamphlet #33, "Gold, Panning, and Placering in Colorado", by Ben H. Parker Jr., says that when placer gold is eroded out of the lode, in about 25 miles down river it's eroded into fine gold.

Sounds good.....aa

Real de Tayopa Tropical Tramp · Apr 10, 2008

HIO: TO THE OCEAN EVENTUALLY, BUT AS FINES. the coarser the Gold, the nearer the source.

Don Jose de La Mancha

Keithkphxaz · Mar 13, 2017

i was working a creek where the bedrock was exposed in many places. We dug out a line in the creek and i found a gold nugget with what appeared to be platinum attached to it. This creek has alot of boulders in it and larger rocks . The nugget is about the size of a avg sun flower seed . It is rouned off edges"in 4 hrs found little over a gram with 2 shovels "My question is this. For a creek to have this gold in it and the nugget was not flattened out from rocks smashing it. This creek only flows when big storms come. How far away from the souce would this come from? Provided it came from a vein and was not inside of a rock that broke apart and that was in it. There is lots of fine gold and 1 -5 gallon bucket of 1/4" minus containes about .3 of a gram of visable gold based on our trips out there.

arizau · Mar 13, 2017

"How far from the source"? In the Phoenix area not very far horizontally since, in geological history, there were no great rivers or glaciers to transport it very far and at the base of the mountains there are broad expanses of flat land. Historically the peaks in your area/original gold deposits were higher and have eroded to the present height over many thousands of years and all this time gold was liberated from veins and, most often, redeposited in stream beds or alluvial fans pretty close to the original source.

Finding fine gold particles is not a true indicator that it has been transported a long way from it's source and been reduced significantly in size during the process. From the title of this thread I'm assuming that is a question that was implied but not asked. Fine particle sized gold is not necessarily the result of extreme size reduction of larger nuggets as it travels long distances. It just kind of proves the fact that the vast majority of gold deposited in veins on Earth was originally formed as small individual inclusions. After erosion from the veins, the inclusions/gold are often but not always smoothed or flattened by stream action but likely remain pretty close to their original weight. In nature nuggets are an exception not the rule but, when found, they are usually close to the source. In other words depending on the conditions within the wash (solid slick bedrock or more loose boulders and smaller cobble) it is possible if you search up stream you may find more and maybe larger nuggets along with a possible, if not probable, larger amount of fine gold. Break open and clean out any cracks in bedrock because gold loves to settle in them (you probably already know that).

Good luck and welcome to the forum.

PS: This is a very old thread (last post before yours was in 2008) so you might want to consider starting a new thread for future questions, etc.