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Mostly the old guys began by hearing a story of a place that had gold and they headed for that place with only a pan and a pair of tweezers and a mason jar or a small bottle. if they were lucky ( and that's' a big IF ) they would pan for gold and find a little bit and would stake a small claim and hang out there for awhile and find enough to make a little bit of money. they would usually hide the gold they had found in a place far enough from them that "if they got jumped" by someone, they could come back and get their findings. (if they were alive)......so they had the pan and the tweezers and the bottle and maybe a shovel.......So those were the main tools.....a prospector might have 20 or 30 places they would go to during a season to search for gold, this was due to seasonal flooding,.....The seasonal floods were important you see because a river or stream would possibly go dry and a porspector would have to go downstream to find flowing water,.....this meant he had to go to a lower point in a valley or on a river system which meant he was more vulnerable to either Indians or other people....which was not exactly the thing a prospector wanted to do.....so a good season meant that a good snow happened and melt waters would provide him a good water flow for decent erosion of riverbeds or streams and that he could prospect upstream and away from other folks and be out of sight and stay safe and have a decent reward for his labors....."IF" he was smart and lucky to boot. And a good prospector "never brought all his labor to town", there was some proper eitiquette for prospecting, the first rule being, "Never ever let anyone know what you've found"...not even the assay officer because that officer never kept his mouth shut, he worked for the government right?....yeah right!.....he worked for the highest bidder is who he worked for, you bring your gold to town?....you ride out and someone rides out right behind you and you can never go back to your claims again without company....you have to be smart and you have to be careful....so you wait til retirement day to cash in.....so Prospecting is it's own demon and you have to "very carefully",tangle with it.

Nathan

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