Gold Prospecting in Pennsylvania - Panning for Gold.

  That title is a phrase you don't hear too often, but it's exactly how I spent a good amount of my summer last year.  This will be the first part in a 2 or 3 part series.

^^^Me panning in a central Pennsylvania creek in the early spring.  Note the ice/snow in the background.

    To give a little back story, a few times in my blogs I've mentioned that I'm a hobby collector.  I have so many hobbies that it has sort of become a chore just to try and allot time for each of them.  Oil painting, sculpting, gold prospecting, kayaking, blogging, movie making.... these are all ones that I have taken up just within the last 2 or 3 years.  I guess I'm a "why not?" kind of person.  If I see something in my travels or on tv that looks like fun, I tend to say to myself "Why not try it myself?".  Aside from being an enjoyable way to spend my time, I find that I always seem to learn a lot from (and about) whatever activity I'm attempting.  It also makes from some good stories most of the time.

     The gold prospecting worked it's way into my brain after a trip to Death Valley in 2015.  Peppered throughout the surrounding mountains were abandoned mine shafts and entrances from the mid to late 1800's.  The were everywhere.  No special signage or barricades, or anything else.  Just forgotten old remnants of history.:

^^^Old gold mine in Death Valley. 

   After returning home from the trip, I starting thinking about the gold-rush history of California and other areas around the country and started wondering "Is there gold in Pennsylvania?"  I started to research the question and found that, although not a lot, there IS gold to be found in my home state.  Geographically, we don't have much native gold.  Meaning, there's not a lot of gold in the ground, occurring naturally.  What we do have is something called "placer gold".  This refers to our gold being brought down here from the north by glaciers during the last ice age.  Then that ice melted away, it deposited all kind of boulders, minerals, and GOLD.  

    The first thing I did was read a lot of articles and watched a lot of videos about panning for gold.  There's a lot that goes into.  Technique, equipment, etc.  I ordered myself a genuine gold pan and set myself up a water basin in the basement.  Then, and I know this sounds crazy, but I bought dirt.  See, you can buy "pay dirt" from prospectors in gold-rich areas of the country.  Basically, they spend a lot of time sluicing and and narrowing down the soil from creeks and streams until they have just sand and any other heavy material left, and they sell it by the pound.  Most of the time, the seller also "salts" the soil with a little bit of gold flakes and such... just to guarantee you have something to find.  I'll be the first to admit that it's silly, but it's a great learning tool.  Here, I had dirt that I KNEW there was gold in.  If I didn't find any, then I knew I was doing something wrong with my panning technique and I can keep re-panning the soil until I found some.  Fortunately, I got the technique down pretty fast!

   In a nutshell, this is how gold-panning works. It all boils down to the extreme weight of gold. Gold is pretty much the heaviest thing you'd ever find in natural soil.  That being said, if you put a pile of gold-bearing dirt into a bucket of water and shook the living shit out of it... the gold would be the first thing to settle to the bottom as it's around 20 times heavier than the water.  Next thing to settle would be something called "black sand" which is found almost everywhere that gold is found.  It is around 7 times heavier than water.  It's made up of oxides of iron, like magnetite and hematite.

^^^Black sand at the bottom of the pan.

  Last would be all the regular brownish soil that would settle on top of the heavier two elements, or remain floating in the water for a long time.  On a small scale, that's what panning is doing.  With a scoop of soil in the pan, you add water, shake and swirl it around, the heavy stuff settles right a way, and you pour out the water and lighter soil on top.  After doing that a few times, you're left with just the heavy stuff and the GOLD. 

^^^A piece of gold from a bag of pay dirt from North Carolina.  You can also see a few small, red garnet gem stones.

   With the panning technique down, began to amass some more equipment.  A main piece of gear that I acquired next was a gold sluice.  The next part of this series will be about sluicing for gold.  Stay tuned!

     Thanks for reading! I post a nature/travel-themed blog every day. Please upvote if you enjoyed it and be sure to follow me @customnature so you'll never miss one!  See you next time.  - Adam

***These daily blogs showcase the natural world.  It is all original content using photos, stories, and experiences from my own travels.***