This Old 1880s Sluice was full of gold still

[Reed Lukens]

This Old 1880's Sluice was full of gold still

This Old 1880's Sluice was full of gold still and has always been one of my best finds ever Here is the link to the video where we clean part of it out


Then if you have the time and want to learn about Hydraulic Mining, I have a whole series about it along with my find here in this series playlist link.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL34DA41102B4C46D3

All in all over the years I've recovered pounds of gold from this old sluice but it's been hit pretty hard now since other people started finding it and working it later that year. It has now been torn out and the area worked really hard by others. Then with the winter floods that come through the area every year you can not see that it was ever there. It laid buried for over 100 years and first started coming to the surface again in 2004. Then in 2010 the entire sluice was uncovered after the winter floods and this is when we were finally able to see it completely for the first time. It was over 800 feet long originally.
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This first picture was from 2006 just after the head of the box came to the surface. The second pic was from the beginning of 2003 when Tom & I started opening up that same section. In this picture we are working over 5 feet higher then in the first picture 3 years later after that much rock and gravels had been blown out down stream by the winter floods of 2005. This is by far my biggest and best find ever

 

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[Eagleye]

Wow thats interesting! Would be great to have access to a place like that

 

[3xflyfisher]

What an awesome experience! I think something like this would make any prospectors day!

 

[McClod]

Very interesting video, and excellent find! Never done any gold prospecting but would be very cool to find gold in its natural environment! Lots to learn though, how mercury works with it and the science and art of it all. Thanks for posting it.

 

[Reed Lukens]

My dad started taking me down there when I was around 10 or so to swim in the river below. Then he told me the history and how my great grand parents had been here in the 1880's and had given birth to my great uncle down here. Then in the late 1990's I met an old prospector who told me about the buried sluice and how he had found it with an 8" dredge back in the 60's but it was buried over 40 feet deep then. Heck when we started dredging it in the early 90's it was still buried about 25 feet beneath us where we started at and it took all of those years for that 25 feet of tailings to wash down stream. The entire series I have listed on Hydraulic mining really has a ton of information buried throughout it. Basically it contains all of the knowledge that I have on it and how to spot the blue clay
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