Gold searchers were known as prospectors or gold miners. They typically used tools such as pans, sluice boxes, and pickaxes to search for and extract gold from rivers, streams, and mines.
Placer mining (pronounced plasser, BTW) is mining for gold that is free of the rock. This is usually in the form of gold dust and fine nuggets. The simplest means, and the first used, was panning for gold in the rivers. You can also used a sluice box, where sand is shoveled into a trough with water running through it. Running water carries away lighter materials, and leaves the heavy gold in grooves on the bottom of the sluicebox.
Miners typically dig for gold in mines or rivers where the precious metal is naturally found. This process involves extracting gold ore from the ground and then processing it to extract the gold through methods like panning, sluicing, or chemical extraction.
Miners likely kept the location of gold mines a secret to protect their investment and to prevent other miners from competing with them. By keeping the location private, they could work undisturbed and maximize their own profits. Additionally, revealing the location could lead to overcrowding and depletion of the gold deposits, reducing the potential returns for the original discoverers.
The miners who came west to California during the Gold Rush were often called "Forty-Niners" because they arrived in 1849 seeking gold.
Small pieces of gold are called gold nuggets. These are nuggets can be found in rivers, streams, or underground and vary in size.
The old miners in gold rush country took their nuggets to the local Assay Office, to determine -- to assay -- the value of the metal in their nuggets.
water from the rivers or lakes. ...And the occassional Mr. Pib.
Along streams or rivers
One of the main methods to look for gold was in the rivers for gold nuggets. The miners had a sluce box and rocker to find the gold. The sluce box was a wooden box with an box on top to shovel in dirt and to poor water over the dirt. The dirt/water would run down a tracer that emptied into the river. In the tracer the gold nuggets would fall to the bottom instead of washing out. The rocker had a similar idea but it rocked back and forth to separate the dirt with water. Again shovel fulls of dirt were put into the rocker to separate dirt from gold. The miners doing this would stand in dirt and water all day long with shovels of dirt and water for the few nuggets they could get.
Miners use various equipment such as pickaxes, shovels, and gold pans to dig for gold. They may also use detectors to locate gold nuggets in the soil. Larger operations may use bulldozers, excavators, and sluice boxes to extract gold from the ground.
Along streams or rivers
When gold metal is found in lumps, it is typically referred to as "nuggets." Gold nuggets are pieces of gold that have naturally formed in a rounded shape through geological processes. They are often discovered by prospectors while panning for gold in rivers and streams.
Gold is not typically extracted from the earth using metallurgy. Instead, it is often found in its pure form as nuggets or grains in rivers and streams, making it easier to separate and collect through methods like panning or sluicing. This is why gold is often referred to as "native" gold.
Naturally occurring, weathered pieces of the elemental mineral gold. often rounded from abrasion with harder rock particles, and varying in size from several millimeters to several centimeters.
You find it where the 2 rivers meet on the way right side but you need the gold pan and gold map to find it first. GOOD LUCK!
Gold is found in various forms including nuggets, veins in rocks, and as microscopic particles in rivers and streams. It is commonly found in quartz veins, alluvial deposits, and sulfide ores. Gold deposits are typically found in areas with a history of volcanic activity, such as along fault lines or in ancient mountain ranges.