Complete newb, but Im having quite the adventure, and I havent found much yet.

[bobw53]

Complete newb, but I'm having quite the adventure, and I haven't found much yet.

I've been living on this property for about 5 years, living in New Mexico for about 13... I'm from New England, spent the first 27 years of my life there, I barely miss it.

So my Dad, for years and years and years and years has been whining that he wants to find gold... I've bought him some old steel gold pans and what not over the years
at flea markets or antique shops, just to shut him up. He's been bugging me for years about this property...

So a few months ago I was up in Canon City, actually Florence at one of the antique shops and I bought a few gold pans to send him and they had a book, and I read it...
That was a mistake...

Then I went back to New England to see my folks last month... And my Dad convinced me... I at least have to go out and try... I had a gold pan...

The property I'm on, 20 acres, about 4 miles down the hill from where there was a ton of mines... They never got a lot of gold out of them though, and none of them
have run since the early 50's at the latest. Mostly 1890's, early 1900's. I've got an arroyo running right through the middle of the property, its filled in over the years,
apparently when my little lady was a kid they used to get the mountain climbing gear out and rappell down the sides. Houses went up, water flow changed, and the arroyo
filled in a LOT.. Its 5 foot deep at the most now, pretty gentle sides, I can drive through if I need to and recently put a road straight across.

I had never watched a single thing about how to pan for gold. I'm not an idiot and I understand density and I've watched the gold shows on TV, and I understood
the concept of how a gold pan works... So I went out back into the arroyo and took a scoop, and panned it (if you can call it that) and didn't find anything but
black sand and some little TINY flecks of shiny stuff, dumped it all out, did it again, same thing... Realized I have no clue what the hell I'm doing...

So I watched some videos, ordered up some gravity trap pans.. got some material from a different location on the property and.......

SCORE!!!!!!!!! not much, but enough to get my juices flowing.

At the time I bought the gravity trap pans "prospecting kit" or whatever, I got 2 and sent one back to New England for my Dad.... And since he is in New England, without
an arroyo and not right down the hill from a bunch of mines, I got him a few boxes of dirt off of E-bay to play with. He's been doing a teaspoon or so at a time, and he's
found some good stuff, and he is all excited.... He's been talking about panning for gold for YEARS and YEARS and YEARS...

I went back to work for a few days, then went back home for a few... I was sick as a dog, but I still went out and dug up some dirt and ran a few pans. I think it was the
adrenalyn, but it made me feel better, for a bit at least... I hadn't been down to the end of the driveway in a while since I put in the new road across the arroyo.. I knew it
flowed good, better than the arroyo with all the development, and I had seen small swirls of black sand in it before.

What a surprise this one was, even more so now that I'm actually looking for it... The pretty looking part is about 30 inches wide, and I have about 500 feet long of it.
I have never seen the end of the driveway look like that...

All the good buckets are at the shop, so I filled a kitty litter bucket, the BIG dog bowl and a soup pot with some material.... The black sand was coming out in chunks, it was
layered in there about an inch thick.... I was still feeling crappy, though happy, and having fun.... I ran 2 pans of it, and there was SO much black sand I didn't know how
to pan it, so I just dumped it into a concentrate bucket, that I will deal with later. That was 2 days ago...

I tossed a bucket in my truck when I came back to the shop yesterday so I could send a box of that driveway dirt to my dad... I grabbed my pans also, because I figured
there would be a bit left over in the bottom of the bucket... The exterminator showed up, and we got talking again.. He's an arrow head junky, but was introduced to panning
when he was a kid. He grabs a some dirt here and there and pans it in his back yard... I gave him a bunch of dirt... Filled a medium flat rate box and sent it to my Dad, and only
had a bit left for myself. I just dabbled with it, I was busy, and the amount of black sand, to me at least, because I don't know what I'm doing makes it tough to pan...

Got up this morning, about 3am, to get back at it (the shop is FAR away from home, so I just stay for a few days). The pan, LOADED with black sand is sitting on the bench so
I grab it, get under some good light and give it a couple of swirls and wash it down a bit... A big ass (for me, but actually TINY) piece of gold shows up... I'm all excited...
The first piece of gold I've found that I can actually grab with tweezers, it actually had depth to it.. I pick it out and put it in a smaller pan, and I'm looking at it, washing water over it, feeling like I'm
the king of the world... Then I go to grab it with the tweezers again, and it went BOING!!!!! Never to be seen again...

I was so depressed.. It was an actual piece of gold, not a flake, not a little powdery dot, an actual PIECE, maybe even a "nugget", and I lost it. I spent a half hour with
my butt in the air looking for it.. Then I swept the floor and panned that... Not so easy, we are a machine shop. Metal chips of all sizes and shapes and materials and
oil dry do not make a pleasant panning experience. I haven't found it... Yet..

I've only been playing with this for a few weeks, but I think I got the fever... My little lady thinks I'm nuts, she says "That's not gold" and "they got all the gold 100 years
ago". I've got so much tiny little powdery stuff in every single pan I've done... so I went and ordered a gold cube. I don't know if that was the "right" thing to do, but
from the research I did, it seemed right... It'll be here tomorrow, so we'll see. I need something to get the black sand out, and it doesn't seem to matter where I dig, there is
SO MUCH black sand that the panning, at least to me is really difficult. I need something to concentrate it down a lot more.

A few random pics(related), because everybody likes pics.

Tractor I picked up for not much more than a gold cube costs. I haven't got it running yet. Only had it for a few weeks, but I think it will come in handy, should be faster
than a shovel.

The tractor I have, my business partner and I built a few of them, this one never was painted, weighs 1400lbs and will fit through a 36 inch gate and will lift over 600 pounds.
It just doesn't have the nut to get through the hard pack we have out here. I use it mainly to scrape up the dog crap and smooth out the road. It was a "just for the fun of
it" thing to build...

This whole gold thing is horrible, I should be working and making money, but all I want to do is go crawl into a drainage ditch and dig some dirt.

One more pic, slightly related. Customer had some parts that were silver plated that needed to be brought back to size... They got a little nuts on the plating..
14 ounces of silver scrap. First and probably last time that I will ever see the scrap material be worth anything close to the cost of the job.

Anyways, I have TONS of questions, most of which I don't even know what they are yet... Which is why I put this in the "journal" section..

I'll update as I go along if anybody is interested. I'm having fun with this, even more fun because I have my Dad on board, and I know he is more excited than I am.
I'm going to have to send him a box of dirt every week.

 

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[goldog]

Welcome to the forum Bob! Great First post

 

[Jeff95531]

Welcome to the forum Bob. I enjoyed all of your story and it reminded me of my first flake of gold. A rather decent sized one, as I found out much later. I found it in my pan at creek side and ran up to show the wife. We took it out of the pan and passed it back and forth on our finger tips marveling at it's brilliant yellow flash. I said don't move, I'll get the vile. 10 seconds and one turn around later, my wife's face is pure white. She say's "I'm so sorry...the wind gusted and it just disappeared". It would be 3 more months before I found another.

 

[AlaskaGold]

Welcome, sounds like you got the fever. Great intro, if you have questions ask here, I can't tell you how much I've learned just reading what others post. There is some really knowledgeable folks on here. Keep us up to date on your findings, tell us how that gold cube works I'm really interested in getting one myself to speed up cleaning my dredging concentrates.

 

[Prospector70]

Sweet post!
Check out Freddy Dodge's instruction on gold panning, he shows you how to get it from the snuffer bottle and into a vial without losing a spec.
Get a sluice! Or build one... Heck you are in a machine shop...
<3

 

[KiddoTheMiner]

well I can indicate some things you don't understand and I didn't understand when I started
how gold deposits in a stream
heres a good page on it
Where to Dredge for Gold Part 1
also ill bet ya under all that black sand in that creek there's a layer of gravels(river gravels tend to bear the most gold)

 

[KevinInColorado]

Welcome aboard the crazy train. The gold has clearly already addled your brain! Looking forward to your next past...and confident you will love the gold cube, they rock!

 

[bobw53]

also ill bet ya under all that black sand in that creek there's a layer of gravels(river gravels tend to bear the most gold)

That's not a creek, that's my drive way. Like I said I've never seen it like that, or I may have never noticed.... Its usually hard pack, caliche. It fills
in during the rainy season, summer/early fall. Then we dry out (we're always mostly dry) and during the winter and during the spring winds, it comes
back to hard pack.. I'm thinking, that the winds blow off the light stuff, and the goodies are left in the cracks... I'm going to be out there in the
spring with a little scraper and a cordless vacuum. The spring winds can be bad, 30 or 40+mph for days... I've heard it described as Texas sucks and Arizona
blows.

So... I got my Gold Cube.. They used way too much tape on the thing... I'm up at the shop... So I set it up since I saw that you were supposed to rough the mats up, I figured
there is nothing here so it would be a good place to run a bunch of sand through. I was wrong, there is something here, a few tiny little tiny bits... I didn't expect that.

So I went home for most of the weekend and also took Monday off. I left the toys at the shop since the little lady told me I had chores to do (BOOOO!!!). I did bring 16 buckets of
material back to the shop with me, for when I have time... I grabbed 8 out of the driveway and 8 out of the arroyo.

I've been running the driveway material. I pulled a couple of big rocks out of it, washed them and panned them. A few little small tiny tiny "flour gold" I'm guessing what you would
call it, and a small flake, just off the stuff stuck to a few rocks... IN MY DRIVEWAY!!!!!!

3 more buckets of drive way material to run. I've got some long run time stuff running on the machines, so as long as I don't hear a crunch or a crash, I'm OK, and making money while I'm playing.
I'm going to change out some parts and run 3 more buckets, then sleep, and I'll let you know what I found in the morning... Hopefully it picture worthy.

 

[AlaskaGold]

Where is there tape on a gold cube?

 

[KevinInColorado]

Sweet post! Check out Freddy Dodge's instruction on gold panning, he shows you how to get it from the snuffer bottle and into a vial without losing a spec. Get a sluice! Or build one... Heck you are in a machine shop... <3 YouTube Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZCL6FKQZyoM

Cool video. Love seeing his daughter out there in the field with him, she is his biggest promoter and was the one who pushed him to be on camera on Gold Rush Alaska.

Funny thing is Freddy gave me his Garret SuperSluice (which you see him use in this video and he got free from Garret of course) saying it wasn't his favorite.

 

[arizau]

Welcome to the usually unprofitable but highly rewarding hobby of prospecting. I am a NM native but have never prospected there. A friend has recently moved to Silver City and wants me to come over and check out a wash that runs through his property which is also downhill from some old gold mines. He has told me of a person uphill from him who says he does pretty good. Your posts reminded me that I need to go and at least check it out. What is your vicinity?

 

[bobw53]

Where is there tape on a gold cube?

The packaging, I guess more is better than not enough. It was like your cruel uncle that wrapped your Christmas present with packing tape... Except I knew what was inside, it wasn't a
brick and a pair of socks.

What is your vicinity?

Just outside Organ, CITY OF DUST: Pat Garrett Really Should've Stayed the Night: Organ, New Mexico

Pretty interesting history, Pat Garret, Billy the Kid, the Fountain murders, and all that fun stuff.
Then we have the Vicotorio peak treasure... My little ladies late father worked out at White Sands and they actually went looking for it. He's got a really neat framed poster they had made
on his wall, and a bunch of gold painted lead bars that they made just for fun.

The Treasure of Victorio Peak

The Shop is in Hatch, the self proclaimed Chile Capital of the World. Not far from Lake Valley, which isn't far from Kingston and Hillsboro.. Big mining towns way back when...
Lake Valley - New Mexico Ghost Town
A shot I took at Lake Valley a few years ago.

And since this is TREASURE net.com.
I used to live in Radium Springs, right behind Fort Seldon in an old double wide.
Fort Selden Historic Site » New Mexico Historic Sites

I had ruins literally 100feet outside my front door. I'm guessing where I was, was the garbage dump.. Loaded with glass, and some pottery shards..
My landlords had an entire wall of all the neat stuff they found in the yard, all kinds of bottles, pieces of guns, a key ring with 14 keys, uniform buttons,
cannon balls. One of the rangers used to come into the local watering hole. He said that as the walls of the fort are eroding, there are literally indian artifacts
falling out of them.. When they were making the adobe bricks, they were just shoveling dirt. It was also the site of a Spanish fort in the 1500's.

The best pottery shard I found while I was raking up dog crap one day.

On the gold front, been a crazy busy week, I haven't had much time to play... Though I'm guessing from the little play time I did get, I'm not
retiring any time soon.

 

[DizzyDigger]

Howdy Bob, and welcome to TNet...

That Gold Cube is a great tool for catching that fine gold,
and there's no doubt it's going to catch you some color!
Scrap[e up as much of that black sand as you can get, and
be sure to classify to 1/8"- before feeding it through. It may
not catch 100% of the gold, but it gets damn close.

Having a good spot to prospect/mine right in your front yard
is awesome, and I hope you continue to develop it over time.
Be patient and don't give up your day job, as the golds not
going anywhere soon..

There's such a rich mining history in that country, and no doubt
in time you'll learn more and more about how that gold arrived
in your yard.

Great writing BTW, so keep it up!

 

[AlaskaGold]

Your area sounds amazing! So much fun looking for gold and treasure. I bet you start sampling around your property you will find some more areas with color! Keep us posted.

 

[bobw53]

Two little fun things today... I talked to my Dad back in New England. He did the tweezer spring and fly on 2 tiny little pieces of gold in the E-bay dirt I sent him...

He was panning in a tub sitting on his trucks tailgate in the lower driveway (I grew up on a big ass hill, with a crappy un-improved, road. walk out basement).

So my old man swept up the driveway, swept out the cracks... Its an OLD OLD paved driveway, OLD!!! We moved in there '77, and it was OLD then... Its a lumpy
bumpy mess.

Then he panned, and panned, and panned.... And he found every tiny washer and screw and nut he had ever dropped in the past 37 years. He also found a
decent little bit of black sand... And SIX little pieces of gold.. A few more than the 2 he tweezer sprung, and he didn't dump any of the sand on the ground.

His mission tomorrow is to go grab some sand up and down the the street/hill and do a little sample. The road is CRAP, bits of pavement here and there, ruts,
holes, rocks... Occasionally if it rains enough springs will pop up in the middle of it...

The other fun thing... My cleaning guy was at the shop this morning. He works 4 hours a week, his real job is with the highway department.. We were yacking and
he was saying how he's seen guys panning up by Hillsboro all week. Something about black sand blah blah, and he points out the container of Black Sand Blasting sand
my business partner had bought. I hadn't even noticed it. So I grabbed a tiny little bit and panned it. And I got a few tiny little bits.. Then I looked and it was a
Aluminum oxide... Ran a magnet through it, not magnetic, but there was a tiny bit of magnetic black sand in it... There shouldn't be gold in Aluminum Oxide.

I ran 4 pans through the day while I was actually trying to make money. There was actually gold in the damn thing..
Nothing big, but there is a tiny bit. Probably have to buy 50 containers of it to pay for one container,
but it was/is there. Some of it even big enough to suck up with a snuffer bottle. The kicker.. Harbor Freight. About $50 for a 50lb container, I didn't realize anything
at Harbor Freight was a dollar a pound.

After watching that guy on youtube scraping sidewalk cracks in NYC, I think there is a lot more gold out there than people realize.... I also don't think they realize
how much or many of those little bits of gold it takes to actually be worth anything..... I'm getting all excited over these tiny tiny little pieces that most likely make lice look
big.

Except for the work part... I had a fun day.

 

[AlaskaGold]

Sounds like your dad has got the fever! Haha. Amazing where you can find gold, I guess it's where you find it. I have run a bag of play sand from the lumber store through my blue bowl and found tiny gold in it. Yeh I know, I must be bored... Winter gets long here!

 

[bobw53]

Been busy busy, so I'm letting myself play with two spoonfuls of gold cube concentrate every time I get something significant accomplished. And look what I just found, from
out of my driveway!!!! Found one about the same size last night also. I'm doing the happy dance. It was SOOO BIG I could almost pick it up with my fingers.

 

[arizau]

I'm pretty sure you know by now your immediate area is not noted for placer deposits BUT you have proved that there is placer gold to be found even in unexpected places. You will probably find more when you broaden the search of your area and maybe even a honey hole. There are several areas within easy day trip distance from where you are where you may have better luck and you already mentioned one. Here is a google search that may help you if you have not done it already. https://www.google.com/webhp?source...n=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=new mexico gold placers Here is a publication specific to your area. https://nmgs.nmt.edu/publications/guidebooks/downloads/26/26_p0163_p0165.pdf
Your area is especially interesting to me since I spent 1960 to 65 in Cruces at NMSU. I was aware of the mines around Organ but sadly never explored them. I did explore behind A Mountain a time or two looking in caves for a legendary Spanish treasure but I found nothing but an arrowhead and some pottery shards. I imagine all of that area and probably the mines are now off limits for prospecting, etc. since they are probably included in the new national monument. Bummer in my opinion.
Good finds, good luck and keep us updated.
Go Aggies!

 

[bobw53]

I'm pretty sure you know by now your immediate area is not noted for placer deposits BUT you have proved that there is placer gold to be found even in unexpected places. You will probably find more when you broaden the search of your area and maybe even a honey hole.

I found some stuff that said they pulled 1200 oz out of the "Organ mining district".. And that seems pretty crappy compared to other places, but the area where they were mining is actually
incredibly tiny. Its not 100's of square miles, its just a couple of square miles. The very very northern tip of the Organs and the southern tip of the San Andres (or San Augustines), which are split by the San Augustine pass, Route 70.

I know it wasn't huge, but when I can find gold in my driveway... I'm not complaining.

I imagine all of that area and probably the mines are now off limits for prospecting, etc. since they are probably included in the new national monument. Bummer in my opinion.
Good finds, good luck and keep us updated.
Go Aggies!

The Aggies suck, in every sport... That's not an opinion, that's a fact.. And its pretty sad. The BIG game is usually.. Can the 0-8 Aggies beat the 1-7 Miners. Sadly, the high
school foot ball games, especially the big Mayfield/Las Cruces game that they play in Aggie stadium draws more people. My little lady is an Aggie... She likes to watch the games
when they are on TV. She was a band geek and likes to see what the band is doing, and doesn't give a darn about the actual game.

I do know that all new claims in the county are on hold due to the new national monument. I'm for it, when something really neat is found, the BLM just shuts it down completely.
The park service at least has the man power and the know how to let people go see it. There is the whole desert track deal in the Robledos (tons of dinosaur tracks) and also
a giant petrified forest up there, apparently bigger than the "petrified forest" in AZ, and a lot older. Then the archeological sites, tons and tons and tons of them. Go mountain
biking, and you are bound to see petroglyphs. Near Rincon there is apparently (along with even more petroglyphs) one of only two known native american equinox sites. Everybody
was partying on the solstice, but not the equinox. The history out here is really neat, and unlike the east coast, its still here, and hasn't been paved over..

For today's adventure... I bought one of those Black Magic fine gold recovery sluice/systems... It got here today FINALLY. It was missing the spray bar... They are sending it
out in the morning... So I'm a machinist. mickey moused one up and started running some stuff. From my first pile of concentrates I didn't get anything.... Then I went to
my snuffer bottle, and it all went flying down the chute... Too fast, too steep. BUT... There were these stupid little black rocks that just sat there, wouldn't move. Flipped one over with
tweezers..... AND....

I'm using my phone for a camera.. I haven't used my real camera for a while, but I think I may have to pull it out again..... That is a dime. The shiny stuff is what was in my bottle.
At least the stuff that didn't run down the chute at a million miles an hour.
On top of the dime, you can sort of see the shiny side of that little black rock, and the ring of black on the outer edges of it.

I saved all those heavy black rocks..... Now... What to do with them? I'm thinking vinegar for a few days?

I also crushed a few small rocks for fun... Magnetic rocks, and some nice little bits of shiny stuff fell out of them.

Enough for today, I need to eat some dinner, get some sleep and then get back to work.

 

[KevinInColorado]

Now it's on! Congrats on finding the gold, especially the stuff that tried to go stealth on you!

Sure, try vinegar, you may have to step up to muratic acid. Either way, be careful, do it outside, wear eye protection, etc. and have fun!