Old dredge and hydraulic workings

[IDAu]

I'm curious is anyone has some tips or some info that I haven't thought of. I recently got an 100 acre placer claim in on of the richest sections of the state. The valley is lined with old bucket dredge tailings.

Several local guys were excited about it, with one joking that he would give me $10k if I didn't want it. After a month of working hard sampling I'm wondering if it's been worked dry. An out of state friend said if it's been hydraulically mined, good luck. I'm starting to think he's right. I keep hearing that the old timers only got 30-40% of the gold, but it's sure looking like they got more like 90%+. If they dredged the hell out of it then hydraulically mined the sides of both sides to bedrock I'm wondering if I'm wasting my time. Old pictures make it look like they turned it into a moonscape at the beginning of the 20th century.

I keep hearing how great tailings piles are for detecting but I have not even found the tinniest picker. The piles, the long stretches of old ground sluice...nothing. From my understanding of the dredge, it seems unlikely that gold made it into any of the bigger rock piles, unless it was a massive nugget. If the conveyer took large oversized rocks that were washed and spit them out I can't imagine any smaller gold made it in those. I've dug down in them (bigger rock piles in winrows) after moving a ton of rock and didn't find any color sample panning.

I've ran my high banker on several of the smaller (1-3") rock piles. A few small pickers, but still only 0.1-0.15g an hour. And I have a huge high banker that can handle shoveling as fast as I can into it.

I've tried finding the edges of the dredge workings and dug down into the hillsides. Little to no color. Again, if they used hydraulic mining, am I wasting my time?

I've dredged to bedrock on a bend. Best day was 0.33g.


The gold is not increasing with depth. In fact, I seem to find tiny pickers in the first 1-3' and smaller gold towards the bottom.

So far nothing is even worth the gas and certainly not worth the hard labor. Should I move on, or is there something I'm missing about mining old workings?

 

[Jim in Idaho]

Jim in Idaho has the best solution to me according to what you've said or researched . I'd try to keep the cost down and buy / rent this deep seeking detector to see if you could find anything and go from those findings wither to do all that $$$$$$$ Even though several dredge's have processed that material there still could be something on the top of those tailings ?? BIG risk in any event but "IF" you do go after it , do it the cheapest you can with the "expensive" detector ! and good luck to you ! I hope it rewards you handsomely !

Ya know, that could be done with a "two box" like the Discovery TF900, or the Whites TM-808, too. The advantage of the Nexus is it has discrimination, and there's lots of large iron trash in those tailing piles. Last winter I built a two-coil setup for my Whites 6000 XL Pro, so I'd have discrimination. Haven't yet tried it on dredge tailings, though. Chris and I were up at Custer, Idaho last week....miles and miles of dredge tailings up there. We were talking about what a monumental project it would be to detect them all. Would take a couple of summers, working all day, minimum.
Jim

 

[russau]

Go for it Jim !!

 

[IDAu]

Jim in Idaho has the best solution to me according to what you've said or researched . I'd try to keep the cost down and buy / rent this deep seeking detector to see if you could find anything and go from those findings wither to do all that $$$$$$$ Even though several dredge's have processed that material there still could be something on the top of those tailings ?? BIG risk in any event but "IF" you do go after it , do it the cheapest you can with the "expensive" detector ! and good luck to you ! I hope it rewards you handsomely !

I can't spend any more money on this for maybes. I'd hoped to test ground and justify a mini x or something BEFORE spending the money. If my tests proved to me I could get 2g or so a day with the right set up it would be different. Nugget hunting wont be sustainable income. I'd rather have semi reliable daily gold in lower quantities than hoping I occasionally "strike it big."

Truth be told, I HATE detecting. I've done it for 8 years and haven't found a single piece of gold with it. Neither have any of my prospecting buddies. I'm starting to realize a lot of that is probably the horrible ground in Idaho and lack of bedrock. The more time I spend doing this the more I realize despite it's rich gold history, this state sucks for mining. I could do better with a sluice or even tweezers and a mask in California.

The few people I know that can do it for a living are doing it completely different. Basically give up on BLM/USFS land, and pay a private property owner a mineral lease fee. Buy an excavator and large wash plant. Move enormous amounts of material so the 8-$12/yd actually pays enough to live.

 

[Mine Shaft]

A hundred acre's is a $hit load of ground. Do you think they dredged all 100 acres ? it seems that is a massive amount of ground to cover.

 

[IDAu]

A hundred acre's is a $hit load of ground. Do you think they dredged all 100 acres ? it seems that is a massive amount of ground to cover.

Multiple times From what I’ve read in old reports. at least a second and maybe a third dredge came back to the same spot because it was economical later on to go after what was missed. And I wish I had saved them, but I found old pictures of the hydraulic mining along the sides of the valley. It looked like a moonscape they washed it so clean.

Not sure if you’ve ever been here, but it’s something… Nearly every waterway has mountains of tailings and was absolutely destroyed when the bucket dredge came through

I’ve pulled out more mercury than I have gold

 

[Mine Shaft]

Nope never been their. I just noticed the pic of the tailing piles was from another poster.

 

[Mine Shaft]

Have you tried any place that has not been disturbed by the old timers ? Is there any River/Creeks nearby ?

 

[IDAu]

Nope never been their lol but from the photo you posted that is crazy meticulous the way they did it.

Yeah. And then, supposedly after they did all that, the Chinese came in and worked even more meticulously by hand.

 

[desertgolddigger]

I think you'll find gold, but the larger stuff probably got picked up by the dredges. There's probably lots of very fine gold. It's just a matter if you want to go to the effort of moving a ton of material to get a fraction of a gram. That's what I have to do on my club's claim now.

Look around, and see if there was any ground not dug up with the dredges, That might take time sampling.

Anyway, the old timers, and even the modern miners didn't get everything. It's just a matter of prospecting areas that might not have been touched.

Good luck.