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

[arizau]

"I know it wasn't huge, but when I can find gold in my driveway... I'm not complaining."
Nor would I.

"The Aggies suck, in every sport..."
Yep it seems that way.... But back in the day, a little different.

"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. The history out here is really neat, and unlike the east coast, its still here, and hasn't been paved over.."
New Mexico: Truly "The Land of Enchantment" including tons of accessible natural history and prehistoric sites. Even found some petrified wood in the hills along the Rio Grande, near where the diversion dam is behind Stahmann farms, which may be an extension of the site you mentioned as it is only a few miles down river. On the subject of the closure due to some of the area now being a national monument, all who have existing claims in that area may now be stymied and that would be too bad especially if the prospects could be truly viable at some point. Just my personal bias since I am retired from the mining industry and know it's importance.


I hope your future exploits are at least as productive as your past ones! It's always exciting to me to find even less color and to find it on my own property would be even better.

 

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[Prospector70]

"I know it wasn't huge, but when I can find gold in my driveway... I'm not complaining."
Nor would I.

"The Aggies suck, in every sport..."
Yep it seems that way.... But back in the day, a little different.

"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. The history out here is really neat, and unlike the east coast, its still here, and hasn't been paved over.."
New Mexico: Truly "The Land of Enchantment" including tons of accessible natural history and prehistoric sites. Even found some petrified wood in the hills along the Rio Grande, near where the diversion dam is behind Stahmann farms, which may be an extension of the site you mentioned as it is only a few miles down river. On the subject of the closure due to some of the area now being a national monument, all who have existing claims in that area may now be stymied and that would be too bad especially if the prospects could be truly viable at some point. Just my personal bias since I am retired from the mining industry and know it's importance.


I hope your future exploits are at least as productive as your past ones! It's always exciting to me to find even less color and to find it on my own property would be even better.

I lived up in the mountains from Ruidoso in a little town called Cloudcroft, just a mile or two from the solar observatory there. The mountains there are neat and almost identical to how they look in Colorado sans the water. Now that I'm remembering there was a large dead river bed up there with large round stones...

 

[bobw53]

Update.... My gold prospecting skills are pretty crappy. The other day I MADE some free time (didn't do any work) and ran a bunch of material through the gold cube, stuff
I had grabbed from the arroyo at the house... SKUNKED, nothing.

This trip through the gold cube, I classified properly (what a PIA), proper water flow, and NOTHING.

Just for shits and giggles, I grabbed a handful of pebbles that I screened out and washed them and panned the drippings. A few little flakes....HMMMM.
Washed all the rocks again, really really well. I got more than I got out of the cube, but nothing to write home about..

Lesson learned, when the classifiers are in a bucket of water, the water is only a half inch deep on the rocks and doesn't wash them well... And from my limited
experience, gold sticks to rocks. Caliche cements gold to rocks.

The dirt that I got essentially nothing out of was from the middle of the arroyo, the loose stuff, about a foot down. More of a sampling than anything else.
I need to find some hard pack caliche and I already know where the arroyo runs up against a mound of clay... I either need to get one of the tractors running,
or start shoveling... Right now, I'm thinking shovel. My fat ass could use the exercise. And I've enjoyed the shoveling, mind numbingly relaxing...

I also decided crushing rocks would be fun. I found some weird stuff. weird maroon crystaline stuff, muted purple crystals, tons of light fluffy gold colored stuff that floats.
I found more in the rocks than anything else. I'm thinking I need to build a rock crusher, even if I don't "need" to, its something fun to do. I've got 90% of what I need,
shaft material, big pipe, large square tubing, motors, pulleys... The only thing I am short of is TIME... Hopefully work will come back to a reasonable amount in a month
or so, then I can play a bit more.

2 fun things.... I told my Dad to crush some of the rocks in the driveway dirt I sent him... His "tailings" were in his panning tote on the porch, so he put a few rocks on
the work bench to dry and he was going to crush them after they dried... He puts a piece of paper on a piece of steel, puts down the rock, puts a cement trowel
on the rocks, folds the paper up around and smacks it with a hammer....

So I'm on the phone with him, and he picks up one of the rocks he had set out to dry earlier... And there is a nice little picker sitting on the bench.... That caliche stuff,
hard as rock, until you get it wet.... Must have been stuck to the rock.. I though he was having a heart attack, or being robbed or something... He was just hooting and
hollering and I didn't know what was going on at the other end of the phone. The only other time I've heard or seen him that excited was when Dale Earnhardt (the older one
with the #3 and the mustache) was 4 feet away from us... I got a nice picture, of Earnhardt, not my Dad jumping around like a 4 year old.

The other fun thing... Math/Science night at my little ladies school. K-4... she has to come up with 2 booths, and even though she doesn't believe there is "REAL" gold in the yard,
she asked(asking is the nice way of telling me) if I would do one of her booths with the gold panning thing...

I should be terrified and horrified, but I did a thing a while back with the kids...We built a rocket. And I was TERRIFIED and HORRIFIED and pretty darn scared... And I shouldn't have been, I had an absolute blast,
the kids were great, even the ones I was warned about. I had an hour to kill, and had no idea how to do it... I ended being there for almost 2 hours, and the kids missed recess, and nobody
complained.... And we could have kept going... It was fun. And a few days later I got to be on TV. PBS, but its still TV.

I'm not completely sure how this forum works, but I don't see a ton of traffic in this sub forum, so I think I will post in the Gold Prospecting forum, and ask for some good ideas.

Anyways, my TV video clip... And yes I needed a haircut.
Rockets for New Mexico?s Centennial ? Video | KRWG News22

Rocket on the bench, after finishing up the paint job.

Quick and dirty rock crusher. Just drops kicking around out back.
No machining involved.

Results of rock crusher... I really thought crushing rocks would be more difficult.

 

[Prospector70]

Oh, man! I wanna come hang out in YOUR shop

Nice CNC machine! I can almost smell the coolant and cut metal...

 

[bobw53]

Oh, man! I wanna come hang out in YOUR shop

Nice CNC machine! I can almost smell the coolant and cut metal...

The little lady loves the smell of coolant... When I come home she jumps on..... No.. wait... That's just a fantasy. She tells me I stink and to go take a shower.

As my part of my messing around, and sampling random things... I have 2 400 foot long trails of rocks about 6 feet away from each other... Its where they dug the leach
field, and I think they then layed the electrical in the same ditch... Anyways, I grabbed a few rocks... One of them had obviously been sitting in an arroyo for a LONG time,
there was some erosion and rounded corners and on the bottom was about an inch of ROCK hard caliche... I knocked off some of the caliche and crushed it and found a
few little specs....

The other big rock I grabbed... Full of crystals. The pictures are pretty bad, but every nook and cranny is full of crystals, they are between milky clear and amber....

Should I SMASH it?

These 2 pics are of approximately the same area, just different lighting. Second pic rotated 90 degrees clockwise.

 

[KiddoTheMiner]

it still bothers me that you have been digging up dirt from your driveway and not doing any direct workings on streambeds and maybe even quartz veins/ quarts speciments

 

[bobw53]

it still bothers me that you have been digging up dirt from your driveway and not doing any direct workings on streambeds and maybe even quartz veins/ quarts speciments

I'm getting there.... I just haven't had time to do anything but work...

The other fun thing... Math/Science night at my little ladies school. K-4...

This was last night.. I intended to take pictures, but I was a little bit busy...

What I did.... Gold is HEAVY/DENSE... I had a cup of regular sand, a cup of black sand and a cup of carbide inserts to demonstrate the different densities of the material...
Carbide being primarily tungsten is just a tiny little bit less dense than gold... And luckily most carbide inserts have a gold coating on them so it almost looked correct.

The kids weren't impressed with the cup of sand... They acknowledged that the black sands were a bit heavier... But the cup of of carbide really got their attention....

I spent a while coming up with a very easy mix to pan.. Finding the proper amount of black sand was tough.. Enough to make the point, but not enough to make it difficult, I ended up
using the socket head from a 3/8" socket head bolt as my measuring cup for the black sand. A teaspoon of fine screened sand, and some pea size and bigger rocks they had to pick
out.. I figure that way they at least got their fingers dirty. As for the gold. I bought some 20 and 30 bits and pieces.... Each "sample" got .03-.04 grams, 8-12 pieces of color...

Working with 3-5 kids at a time, we'd pan their samples out in tubs.. Then suck it up with a snuffer bottle.. Then they would go down to the other end of the table where my little lady helped
them dump their snuffer bottle onto the Black Magic gold sluice, where they could see the last of the sands flow down, then they sucked it up and put it in a vial and off they went with their
gold.

The first time I stuck my head up and looked around, it was a half hour after the fair had ended and everybody else had already cleaned up and left... And I still had parents and kids
around me...

I bought 10 small gold pans and a dozen snuffer bottles, that I will never need... So we had a hat and everybody that came through put their name in the hat and Monday morning 10
kids will get a gold pan, a snuffer bottle, a vial and big cup of pay dirt.

It was fun, I think we processed through 70 or 80 kids, just about every kid that showed up.... I know we had some that we missed, but we only had so much time....

I also made sure to save all the dirt in the pans... I think my afternoon break will be processing that down to see what the kids lost..

As for the kids... Some where more into that others... Some just didn't get it... Then there was a couple of kids, some even kindergarteners that
just zipped that pan right around and nothing left but gold in about 30 seconds.

 

[goldenIrishman]

Howdy Bob! Sorry for the late welcome but I've been in major research mode for that last few weeks here so please forgive my lack of acknowledgement on your arrival.

Hatch, NM huh? You're really not that far from my current digs. (Douglas, Arizona... It's not the end of the world... but you sure can see it from here!) I've been through there a few times and have eyeballed some of those hills and washes. Unfortunately I've never had a chance to stop for more than gas, jerky and a cup of coffee before I had to keep on trucking. Good looking area for sure.

There are several really good on-line resources that you can use to narrow down places to hunt for gold in your area. You're driveway is gonna run out sooner or later! The guys here on the forum are always glad to help out with knowledge, tips and tricks.

Hope you enjoy it here and good luck on your hunt!

 

[Cassews]

One never knows where one will find gold , especially when just looking around. I love the black sand the hubs gets for my roses, they thrive on it. He said he has seen it on Ebay for sale. LOL Nope not selling the roses's black sand. Its alot of work to find that elusive yellow piece but the excitement when you do find it sure is worth it !!!

 

[bobw53]

I haven't updated this in quite some time... Mainly because I was dealing with this...

http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/prospectors-journals/447759-beware-new-mexico-gold-claim-ebay-allsgolden-goldseekr77.html

Lesson learned.... And a lot more lessons... I learned how the whole claim thing works, the reason I bought one on E-bay is because the process was a bit intimidating and confusing..
I took my lumps, which wasn't much money, and took the time to learn how to do all the research involved with filing a claim... The staking and filing is the EASY part... All the research
leading up to putting some stakes in the ground is the tough part... Actually the research itself was easy, figuring out what to research and how to do the research was the hard part...
I'm 99% sure I did everything properly and legally..

A pretty new stake in the ground.

This claim is up in the Hillsboro area... I can get there from the house in about 80 minutes, and its only 34 minutes from the shop.. Not a bad ride..

Lets back up a second here to January or so... My Dad and I decided we needed a dry washer, and since he was snow bound in New England I figured it
would be a good project for him to build.. So he made a small riffle tray out of wood, and tested it out... He was vibrating by hand and using a hair dryer,
in the basement.. Needless to say he covered everything in the basement with a fine dust and made quite the mess... He then gave me a credit card
and said "go buy one"...

In the beginning of March the GPAA show was coming to Phoenix, I had my better half conned into going with me. Then the phone rang, it was my
Dad, "I'm sick of the F'n SNOW, I'll be there in 4 days"... OK... So I got to go with my Dad to the show in Phoenix, and we got some good toys...

I also built a small rock crusher...

So my folks were out here for 2 months, and my Dad and I found gold almost every single day. Either from right in the yard, or from up in Hillsboro..

Been prospecting pretty much all over the place, learning all kinds of fun stuff, wishing I was a geologist... I'll expand on that stuff later...

For now.. Here's a pic of some legit claim gold... Its not much, but its promising, went up yesterday to chase where the biggest piece came from.

Anybody that is heading out to the Hillsboro area, there are all kinds of fascinating reports out there...
Here is one...
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0CB4QFjAA&url=https%3A%2F%2Fnmgs.nmt.edu%2Fpublications%2Fguidebooks%2Fdownloads%2F63%2F63_p0559_p0568.pdf&ei=oKhlVZe0BcnFsAWsqIKADw&usg=AFQjCNG438YuYXAf-O3IjKcsXO7EM8awZg&sig2=k8f-UynHHS9w1rBMkS2dEg&bvm=bv.93990622,d.b2w
Its a PDF, it should download when you click on it.

And from that PDF.... All the major veins in the area... And one of those veins runs along the eastern edge of our claim... Which is making things very interesting, and a lot more complicated
than "dig in the arroyo"... I'll expand on that later.

 

[bobw53]

Just a quick update.... Cuz I'm doing the Happy dance....

Went up to Hillsboro on Tuesday, and finally got around to at least messing with a little bit of the dirt I brought back with me.. I'm at work,
so my Goldcube, and pans and classifiers are at home.. All I have is some buckets, an 1/8" classifier, and a blue(who the heck buys blue) 10 inch
pan... I don't even like this pan...

So I grabbed myself 2 buckets from a place I hadn't sampled before.. Just below an area that had been worked REALLY hard.. An area I haven't
messed with at all... An area they were pulling rocks out of a spider vein...

One little crappy pan... A 10 inch pan, half full, classified to an eighth... No pickers, nothing fancy... But 8 plus visible pieces, small but
actually visibly... and when put under the 60X scope... 50 or more pieces of gold.. Its little, actually the smallest stuff I've seen up there,
but its there... In a pan of RAW dirt, not concentrated dirt...

I am happy happy happy... I'd do a little dance, but my pants would probably fall down...

Why am I bringing home the dirt and not processing on site? Water for one... The other is that unless you are in the middle of the arroyo, on the top..
Its HARD digging.. HARD digging... The best my old man and I managed for the better part of a day was 18 buckets, dug, not processed.. Lot of
sticky stuff, lot of vegetable matter, and for some reason it really really retains the moisture, and the rocks... I'd love to just drywash it all... But when it can
take half hour to get a bucket of dirt out of the ground... That's not happening.. It goes home and goes through the cube...

That made my day.... The rest of it sucked... Work thing and all..

 

[bobw53]

Something fun happened this week... Down at a customers place, dropping some parts off... just yacking...

Turns out his Dad was a professional miner out here... His own mines for gold, not working for somebody. So that
is what this guy did when he was a kid. Right up the street.

I was down there today picking up some material and he offered to take me up and show me some stuff. I'm kind of excited.
A guy with experience that was built on his father's experience.

Everybody is so tight lipped about it...

 

[Duckwalk]

take some mental notes. Who knows, you might learn a thing or two

 

[bobw53]

I bought the little lady a present on E-bay last night....

I figure she can wear them if we do the panning booth at the science fair again, other than that... They are going to sit there.

 

[bobw53]

This post is just for fun, because I had a lot of fun the other day... I've been busy, working, not digging, I haven't even finished processing the dirt I talked about back up there in May.
Though of the 2 samples I have finished checking, 184 pieces in 3 buckets, and the other 150+ in 3 buckets. Small stuff... I haven't panned out the stuff I mentioned above
with 50+ pieces in a single pan of raw dirt, I'm saving that one, though its gone through the cube, and its sitting on the back porch waiting for me.

My better half's aunt is out here for a visit. She wanted to see the claim, she's a bit of a Tom boy, her Dad was a geologist, and I guess her gramps was a miner, so she's interested in it.
Edit: I forgot to mention the aunt is a really good person, and a lot of fun, I like having her around, she's pretty darn cool.

So we went up to Hillsboro the other day, we had a good time. Did more exploring than anything else. Went over to Wicks gulch, showed her the old shack in the gulch, with the
Horizontal shafts right next to it (Adits? that's going in horizontal?). Walked up the gulch a bit further than I had before and there is a truck cab wedged between the side of the gulch and
a boulder, my Dad guesses it came down in the flood of '70? I didn't get a pic, I should have.

Then we went up to the Wicks mine... I've explored the immediate area quite a bit, but we went all the way to the top of the hill this time. I knew there was something up there, google
earth told me that. And you could see some stuff up there. There is an area where I'm guessing they had their stamp mill, a capped off well, and what looks like a holding pond, that is as
far as I had been up the hill previously.

Here you can see the capped well, and if you know what you are looking at, you can see the holding pond berms, the greenery makes it harder to see. The hazy mountains in the far
back ground are the Caballos.

Then we kept going uphill, and came across this.

That thing was deep, of course we had to throw rocks down it, while maintaining a safe(ish) distance.

Toss, bounce, bounce, bounce, 5 seconds.. Then Bing Bing Bing (awesome echo, Star Wars style) and then at 12 seconds a sound that sounded like
the rock hit a piece of tin.

Then up the hill a little more.. More holes, 4 or 5 of them, nothing as big or impressive, and I only got one good pic, nice breeze up on top though.

Then we went and got some dirt, not much, just some scrapings, heading out we were going to go see the old jail, and take the back road past Lake Valley,
then I got a wild hair up my ass, "lets go find the old Rattle Snake mine". That went OK to start, saw a working wind mill actually pumping water, through
a few gates, and then took a right up a gulch... Big mistake... 100 foot down to the right, 100 foot up to the left and no place to turn around...
Backed out of that one..It took some guidance, and a bit of time, but I didn't roll it down into the gulch.
And then we kept going and came to a pretty cool mine... 3 shafts, 2 small, 1 BIG one, all well fenced. Looking at a map, there
was a lot more we didn't see. And something else pretty cool, their old elevator I'm assuming. Cut cables on the top... About 50 feet from a
BIG shaft.

And YES, my dog is wearing a fluorescent yellow vest. This was an experiment, when I take her out there, and I have my head stuck in a hole, I lose track of her,
and she blends in REALLY well with the back ground.

With the yellow on, I could spot her in a second, and the yellow also showed up well in my peripheral vision so I pretty much already knew where she was, even
with my head down in a hole. She never goes far, she can always see me, I just can't see her, and the stupid vest is one of those fancy things like the head bands,
get it wet and it keeps her cool.

Just over the hill from there, was this and this

And at that point we were beat, and the rattle snake mine was just around the corner... Saw a bit of it, some impressive shafts, and some big ass concrete
foundations.... And then went to get out of there..

Quick look on my phone and I figured we could just come out by the transfer station... Couldn't be that easy... It all looks nice and flat on a satellite image...
Ended up a mile down a tiny trail with a big drop off on one side, and huge cliff on the other side... Did the back it up thing again, and was able to *barely* turn
around with a 50 point turn on a wide part of the trail... Got re oriented and ended up coming out by the transfer station, many hours later....

Went into Hillsboro, showed the aunt-in-law the old jail of Oliver Lee/Fountain murder trial fame(Pat Garrett, the guy who killed Billy the Kid had his hands in that one too,
as did Albert Fall, the only one to serve time in the Teapot Dome scandal). That's a whole other really interesting story.

Took the back road back to Hatch, by Lake Valley, stopped at the Middle of NoWhere bar in Nutt, and had a few well deserved cold ones, and they were
tasty, and COLD!!! Stopped in Hatch at the shop, 106.9 in the shop, 104 at the town hall. And then back home, about 5 hours late... Beat down
and tired..

It was a lot of fun. We only got 4 small buckets, I got them through the cube yesterday, I KNOW there is gold in there, just need to pan it out..... Send
her aunt home with a bit of color... I wouldn't have dug there if it was just me, but I wanted to get her some guaranteed color, and it was a lot of fun taking
her to some really neat places that I had wanted to check out. Her aunt had a lot of fun too, its her kind of thing. Lot of fun.

And for even more fun... My Old Man keeps insisting (and I agree) we go up to the claim, and get some dirt and come home... We need to spend more TIME up there
and process more dirt, weather prospecting and chasing, or actually digging and mining, we need to process more dirt to get more gold.... So I have this
crappy travel trailer, nothing works in it, tires are flat and the door is smashed, we'll take that... My Dad insists we need to do it in "style". He's been looking
for an RV for about 6 months... Garbage for 12k, and nice stuff for 30k plus.

One fell in our lap... 2 miles from my house, quick sale... 32 footer I believe. Gas , which makes it cheaper, but only 26k on it, oil changed every 3k, documented.
All brand new 19.5 inch tires, including the spare, all new batteries. Supposedly 300 gallons of water capacity, generator, back up camera, brand new awning,
2 very well functioning AC's. Hydraulic/electric leveling jacks, big bathroom, near full size fridge, all around really really really good condition.. I put a down payment on it
yesterday, pick it up tomorrow when I can get money out of the bank... Essentially dirt cheap, about 65% of the book value for "average" condition and mileage. Lets
just say it was less than 5 figures, so it isn't much of a gamble since we could turn around and flip it and make a nice little profit.

A $100 of improvement work on our claim and it will go in and out of there easily. A couple of 4 wheelers and a water tank on a trailer, and we are in business...
A money losing business, but a lot more fun that actually working.. A lot harder than actually working, but more fun...

The only decent shot I got of the camper.

This next year is looking pretty good, some insane BS at the shop/business partner(scumbag thief) to deal with, and once that shakes out, and the stuff my parents have been
dealing with shakes out, and they are both coming to an end... We should have a lot of fun, and not a lot of worries.

 

[bobw53]

Got the new toy home, drives pretty well, I can't get the generator to start, probably has a fuel shut off I haven't found yet, or the carb is all gunked up with
crappy gas. The hydraulic leveling jacks are pretty neat... Of course the way my brain works, I didn't think they worked.. I was pushing the down buttons, as
in put the jacks down... No. You push the up buttons to lift the whole camper UP...

A few little things that could use some fixing, but the big thing was low miles on a well maintained motor and new tires,
I figured for the price it wouldn't even have a generator, never mind all the other goodies, and the aunt found a big sub woofer and amplifier under
the couch...

Ginger Approves, and yes she had to explore the dash board, and NO a dog should not be on the dashboard, but it was too funny to pass up a pic.

An interesting piece of mine trash from the other day.

And an interesting one that I had posted before.. From my better half's late father, hanging in his study. I still haven't got the whole story, but he was on the government side.

 

[Clay Diggins]

Nice find on the RV. You work out of Hatch? Send my regards to Gilly.

You've got some big huevos wandering the area around Hillsboro. Are you a native? Hillsboro is one of the most over claimed areas in the U.S. - Section 25 alone has 1500 acres of claims on a 640 acre section. Things get hot up there sometimes and I don't mean the weather. Had a partner shot at just for looking around the old State Park land back in 2008. I'm a little more careful than he was.

Bustamante used to give us locations on the grant lands to work until he passed. Miss the old Hefe. Still see Virginia when we travel through that area. It's been a couple of years so it's nice to read about your adventures there. Thank you for sharing.

Heavy Pans

 

[bobw53]

Nice find on the RV. You work out of Hatch? Send my regards to Gilly.

You've got some big huevos wandering the area around Hillsboro. Are you a native? Hillsboro is one of the most over claimed areas in the U.S. - Section 25 alone has 1500 acres of claims on a 640 acre section. Things get hot up there sometimes and I don't mean the weather. Had a partner shot at just for looking around the old State Park land back in 2008. I'm a little more careful than he was.

Bustamante used to give us locations on the grant lands to work until he passed. Miss the old Hefe. Still see Virginia when we travel through that area. It's been a couple of years so it's nice to read about your adventures there. Thank you for sharing.

Completely non-native. I'm a born and bred M*******. I don't even live up that way, I live out by Organ, so I've got gold in my driveway.

I've barely even run across people out there, a few guys one time all camo'ed out in one of those 4 seat ATV things. It snowed that morning,
I'm guessing they were out looking for deer tracks, or Elk tracks. And one lady metal detecting just a bit off the road.

The overclaiming is crazy up there. Seems most of the lode claims and patented claims (and homesteads I found out) are owned by mining companies.
And I don't think they care much about some guy dropping a placer over them and scraping up a few grams. I wouldn't do it, and I'm sure most who do,
do it because they aren't doing their "due diligence".

The placers seem to follow the big gulches.. My claim isn't in a big gulch, its a small little feeder gulch, which I found out has a nice big fat vein running down
the edge of it, and I'm starting to find out that there are some spider veins running through there also. I did my "due diligence". I didn't overclaim..
I also lucked out, all the lode claims around me are owned by the same company, and they were all filed around 1970 or so, which means digging in the old
books down at the Clerks office... Anyways, my Dad found a report online from that company, they had a nice map of where all their claims where, so I got
to cheat quite a bit on that one.

I never realized Hillsboro was a rough and tumble place, the only place I've ever seen anybody digging for gold is on the GPAA claims. Granted I've never been
up north of copper flats where it seems a lot of people like to go.

Here is the -120 from the 4 small buckets of scrapings the other day. There were a few pieces in the 80is range, but nothing to write home about.
The pic didn't do it justice, it was a nice golden smiley. I've recently started going down to a 120 screen, I was only going to a 60 before. I was
losing a TON of tiny gold. I've been keeping all the -120 cons together, and I think I'll get some more screens and take it down a step or 2 more. It's actually
quicker to screen it further and pan the tighter classified pans than it was to pan the -60 and keep the small stuff from getting knocked around.

 

[KevinInColorado]

" It's actually quicker to screen it further and pan the tighter classified pans than it was to pan the -60 and keep the small stuff from getting knocked around. "
YES YES YES! Well said. This is what so many people fail to realize! Often more classifying saves more time than it takes!

 

[bobw53]

" It's actually quicker to screen it further and pan the tighter classified pans than it was to pan the -60 and keep the small stuff from getting knocked around. "
YES YES YES! Well said. This is what so many people fail to realize! Often more classifying saves more time than it takes!

Just going down to a 60 we were getting 25-60 pieces per 4 bucket sample. Approximately same areas, taking those 2 extra steps 80, and 120, piece count has more than
tripled. I'm 90% sure that taking it down 1 or possibly 2 more steps will increase piece count considerably, and it really has actually been easier.

i know they said Hillsboro gold was small, I didn't realize how small, but there is a ton of it, if you take the few minutes to classify and classify and classify.

I planned on doing some driveway dirt today, but I slept ALL day and never even made it to the shop... I can't wait to see what pops out when I classify
the cons from the yard here down even further, and I know there is a lot of tiny stuff here.


Looks like I'm going to lose this battle. Co-Pilot and Navigator ready for action.