I am fascinated about gold prospecting but have never done much more than pan some creeks in western Washington (and rand a letrap sluice).
I dream of doing a trip to Alaska but we are building a house in the NE corner of Washington state now and are pretty busy in the summer. Maybe in a year or two.
Anyway, in addition to the lot we have in town where we are building our house, we have about 30 acres of mountain land 8 miles out of town. It isn't remote, there is a nice county paved road the property borders and we have built a pole barn on it. At the time of building the pole barn, I had to dig some post holes with my little U35-4 Kubota excavator (8,000 pound machine). I noticed at the time the rocks in the excavated dirt were very round but didn't think a lot about it.
I now wonder if instead of glacial till, those rocks could represent some sort of past water flow. The land is sloping, but not steep, and has benches (one where we built the pole barn). The paved county road is at the bottom of this valley along the side of the property. There is no stream or anything there now though. Since we are about 10 to 15 miles as the crow flies from the Columbia river, I don't even know if it would even have been a path there in the ancient past. I did some searching in this county (Stevens) and there were gold deposits found, but mostly on the river (China Bend) and in some of the mountain areas.
What I am wondering is if there is any chance of some tiny specs actually on my property? Pretty sure it is not economical gold but I am now wondering if it would be interesting to dig down a bit deeper with my excavator in an area and pan some. Could there just be gold in any old river material in north eastern Washington or would it already have been discovered? There are zero signs or indications that our property had ever been mined, but I guess someone in the past 150 years came by to sample, even with no water in the area.
Even if I could only get a few specs it would be fun....right now though we have 12 inches of snow and I can barely get in the driveway lol.
I dream of doing a trip to Alaska but we are building a house in the NE corner of Washington state now and are pretty busy in the summer. Maybe in a year or two.
Anyway, in addition to the lot we have in town where we are building our house, we have about 30 acres of mountain land 8 miles out of town. It isn't remote, there is a nice county paved road the property borders and we have built a pole barn on it. At the time of building the pole barn, I had to dig some post holes with my little U35-4 Kubota excavator (8,000 pound machine). I noticed at the time the rocks in the excavated dirt were very round but didn't think a lot about it.
I now wonder if instead of glacial till, those rocks could represent some sort of past water flow. The land is sloping, but not steep, and has benches (one where we built the pole barn). The paved county road is at the bottom of this valley along the side of the property. There is no stream or anything there now though. Since we are about 10 to 15 miles as the crow flies from the Columbia river, I don't even know if it would even have been a path there in the ancient past. I did some searching in this county (Stevens) and there were gold deposits found, but mostly on the river (China Bend) and in some of the mountain areas.
What I am wondering is if there is any chance of some tiny specs actually on my property? Pretty sure it is not economical gold but I am now wondering if it would be interesting to dig down a bit deeper with my excavator in an area and pan some. Could there just be gold in any old river material in north eastern Washington or would it already have been discovered? There are zero signs or indications that our property had ever been mined, but I guess someone in the past 150 years came by to sample, even with no water in the area.
Even if I could only get a few specs it would be fun....right now though we have 12 inches of snow and I can barely get in the driveway lol.
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