Re: OFFICIAL LA BAYOU HUNT - SITE PICS ADDED 2/26/08!!!
Jena, LA
by Robin Miller
There’s gold in Hemphill Creek. Okay, tiny pieces the size of sand grains, but gold all the same.
Kenneth Edwards calls them winkers, because they’re seen best in sunlight glittering through the black sand.
“They wink at you,” he insists.
Edwards is president of the central Louisiana chapter of the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA), a group he helped form last summer. And the GPAA’s discovery of the sparkly stuff in this little waterway outside Jena, La., (pop. 2,971) has created a gold rush of sorts that has smitten folks living in and around town.
It isn’t the same kind of fever that raged among California gold rushers of 1849, mind you. The ’49ers had it in mind to get rich quick. Gold panners near Jena use the occasion as a family outing.
“I spent time gold panning in Alaska,” Edwards says. “And I always hear people say, ‘I wish I could go to Alaska and pan for gold.’ Well, I’m here to tell them that they don’t have to go all the way to Alaska. They can find it near their homes in Louisiana.”
It makes sense to pinpoint Jena for outings, because gold panning was a popular activity in nearby creeks in the 1930s.
In fact, Hemphill Creek is named for one of the first families that settled the area in 1802. The settlement was known as Hemp’s Creek, but in 1871, the name changed to Jena. Gold panning became popular some 60 years later.
“You can talk to some of the old-timers here, and they’ll tell you about how they used to pan for gold,” Edwards says. “That was during the Great Depression. They could find enough gold to make a living.”
No one in modern times makes a living panning in central Louisiana’s creeks—there simply isn’t enough gold. But panning for a livelihood isn’t the GPAA’s goal.
“People come out and bring their kids,” Edwards says. “I bring a dredge machine, because it can dig deeper than the pans … and the best part about it is the creek will refill the hole after we leave.”
The GPAA usually meets on Sunday afternoons at a small park beside the creek. Edwards lends gold pans to those who have none.
Pans are round and made of thick plastic with ridges on one side to capture black sand. The idea is to dig the pan deep into the bottom of the creek, then hold the ridged side into the water, all the while moving it in a circular motion to allow the finer top sand to escape.
“You want the black sand to stay,” explains Marian Dickey, panning upstream. “The black sand is heavier, and the gold is heavier than the sand. It’s where you’ll find the gold.”
She’s right. The top sand easily escapes, but the black sand stays trapped in the ridges. And in the blackness are the winkers.
“See them?” she asks.
Her daughter, Cindy, looks into the pan.
“There they are,” Cindy says.
When Cindy was growing up, she and her siblings often went gold panning with their mom while living in Arizona. Daughter and mother now live in Alexandria, La.
“There was much more to it for us than panning for gold,” Marian Dickey says. “It was a lesson in physics and geology and biology and nature. You could pick up a rock and ask the kids, ‘Okay, what’s this?’ Sometimes it was quartz, sometimes it was amethyst. But they learned to identify it.”
The Dickeys, as are many people panning along the creek on this afternoon, are not members of the local GPAA, but everyone is welcome.
“If they come out here, I’ll show them how to pan, and if they don’t find gold, we’ll help them find some gold before they leave,” says Edwards, who not only serves as GPAA’s chapter president but also supplies hot dogs and soft drinks for all who show for an afternoon of panning.
It doesn’t take long for beginners to lose their shoes and hit the water. Others simply enjoy the creek’s cool relief from the hot Louisiana sun. Still more bring their dogs for an afternoon of exercise.
“It’s inexpensive fun,” Edwards says. “The only cost is about $7 for a gold pan and gas in your car to get here. It’s an afternoon of fun for everyone.”
Robin Miller is a writer based in Pineville, La.
first appeared: 1/6/2002
Maybe even file a claim!! 
Lol!! After all, I saw some panning equipment donated by Cynangyl 
and what a fine place to use it. I'm sure Noodle wouldn't mind messing up her bayou with some ole gold ore !!! Let's see what she says ....... 
See this? That's the test...are you 
?? 
