johnedoe
Bronze Member
- Jan 15, 2012
- 1,489
- 2,242
- Detector(s) used
- White's V3i, White's MXT, and White's Eagle Spectrum
Cleangold sluice & prospectors pan, EZ-Gold Pan, and custom cleanup sluice.
- Primary Interest:
- Other
I forgot to mention an almost forgotten mineral mining history from Long Beach.
There once was a company named Washington Mineral that mined, by dredge, off shore just N. of the Columbia river. They discovered a large black sand deposit full of valuable minerals that is still being debated as either boiling up from deep under the surface or as a side effect of being carried down the Columbia by erosion but limited to a relatively small area.
My late ex father in law was a welder/handyman for them and showed me pictures of some of the test and lab equipment.
Once they closed, he was the care taker for several years before it was abandoned. My ex wife told me stories of going to the lab and playing with the centrifuges. There were still samples of dry sand stored there and they would dump them into the hoppers and watch the machines work. Whirring and vibrating as they separated the different minerals by weight. One machine would put everything into separate test tubes, but her favorite was the one that put it into one tube, layered by weight.
She loved how the layers had different colors no matter how much you mixed the sample, it, always separated the same(How I wish I had one of those now!!!).
They were mostly iron oxides by weight but they were after the titanium, at the time the U.S.S.R. was our main supplier......and we were using it to build the SR71 to spy on themand cost far more than the value of gold to extract and process.
As a by product of this seperation, they also got gold, silver and platinum in much lesser and unprofitable amounts.....I think gold was only worth around $30, platinum $60 and silver $1-2 per oz. at the time. They closed in the early 70's due to environmental issues and protests from the fishermen about the damage to the crab industry.
I explored the old buildings on the south end of Stringtown road in the mid '80s and found some nasty stuff still laying around in the moldering, rotted buildings. Stuff such as bottles of potassium cyanide, several vials of different acids, bottles of mercury, and weird Frankenstein looking equipment rusting away.
The government came in a hauled it all away long ago, but if I only knew then what I know now I'd have a really cool gold separator setup.
Also on an unrelated note, here's a great source of info from the past.
Search Results « Chronicling America « Library of Congress
Very interesting Mike. Thank's for posting this........
Would like to see some pics of the old dredge they were using.
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