first timer heading to alma/fairplay and south platte - advice?

[tendency]

hello all - total newb when it comes to gold panning. my family and i will be in the fairplay/alma area of Colorado and would like to spend a couple days panning the local streams.

I've learned that fairplay has a stretch of the south platte that can be panned for, i believe, a daily fee? is this the case?

we'll need some equipment - just the basics like pans and shovels. does high alpine sports in fairplay carry this gear? if not, other locations in the area that do?

any help on local/state/federal regulations/laws would be very helpful. we'll just be doing very casual manual panning. can we pan pretty most any BLM/national forest land water? or is there (yes, im guessing there is) more to it than this?

any other locations near alma/fairplay/blue river that you recommend?

thanks for the newbie help!

 

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[Clay Diggins]

You need to visit our friend Kevin's site FindingGoldinColorado.com

Kevin is the man when prospecting in Colorado. If anyone knows the answers to your questions Kevin will. Poke around his free website and you will probably find what you need. Kevin freely shares his knowledge and experience here and on his website. He's written extensively on the many places he's prospected.

Once you dive deeper into the Colorado goldfields you will want Kevin's excellent book Finding Gold in Colorado (you will find that book on Amazon and all the better prospecting stores).

Heavy Pans

 

[russau]

Welcome to the site for your first post ! and YES Clay is spot on with GREAT advice on Kevin being the go to guy on Colorado advice ! and If you have time to get Kevins book , it would be a VERY GOOD IDEA ! Good luck on your family trip and welcome to the site !

 

[opalboy]

I went up beaver creek a couple of weeks ago, I found nothing, but it had been dredged long ago, you can pay in downtown fairplay at the “beach”. But definitely get Kevin’s book, it is awesome! It will find you a place. I’ve never been skunked at his locations.

 

[tendency]

You need to visit our friend Kevin's site FindingGoldinColorado.com

Kevin is the man when prospecting in Colorado. If anyone knows the answers to your questions Kevin will. Poke around his free website and you will probably find what you need. Kevin freely shares his knowledge and experience here and on his website. He's written extensively on the many places he's prospected.

Once you dive deeper into the Colorado goldfields you will want Kevin's excellent book Finding Gold in Colorado (you will find that book on Amazon and all the better prospecting stores).

Heavy Pans

Thanks for the help all. I've picked up Kevin's book and a few supplies via Amazon.

 

[HeavyMetalThunder]

I hit the Fairplay gold park last year, late Sept. early Nov. I bought my permit from city hall and if I recall it was only $10...40 degrees out and a twenty something wind.

Being the weather was as it was, my plan was to forego testing here and there, and hit only one spot and then when my hands got cold, get to where it was warm...Very little gravel and sand, all tight packed grape fruit to basket ball cobble...along with my shovel I had a 3' long crow bar and it came in handy.

made about a 1' D. x 1' W. x 2' long hole and scrounged enough gravel for eight pans...I didn't hit a speck until about the fourth pan...30 minutes and eight pans and I hit my hands to cold limit, 12 specks total avg. size .020 and one .035 size.
.035 was really flat and wanted to float.

the Platte, Blue, Swan were all bucket line dredged to eternity and back for most of their lengths in the early 1900's, no known located source of gold for Fairplay /Alma. area. Gold deposited over a vast area by glaciation from two ice ages....many active placer operations working fields, high benches, and hill sides.

sportsman warehouse is a popular outdoor store through out Colorado and usually have gold pans in stock...A screen is a must, a large wal mart /dollar store colander with 1/4" holes works pretty good.

 

[Gare]

hello all - total newb when it comes to gold panning. my family and i will be in the fairplay/alma area of Colorado and would like to spend a couple days panning the local streams.

I've learned that fairplay has a stretch of the south platte that can be panned for, i believe, a daily fee? is this the case?

we'll need some equipment - just the basics like pans and shovels. does high alpine sports in fairplay carry this gear? if not, other locations in the area that do?

any help on local/state/federal regulations/laws would be very helpful. we'll just be doing very casual manual panning. can we pan pretty most any BLM/national forest land water? or is there (yes, im guessing there is) more to it than this?

any other locations near alma/fairplay/blue river that you recommend?

thanks for the newbie help!

Good luck and please keep us posted!1 Also welcome to Treasurenet !!!

 

[Riverbum]

You might be interested in the Cache creek location just west of Granite , Colo. Its actually open to EVRYONE for gold hunting. No claims or other Legal issues to worry about, problem is a LOT of flour gold exist there but you can pick up a few nuggets. A lot of history in this area,....the original Mining co. back in the late 1800's were forced to shut down their dredging operations their because they used sooo much mercury that it was poisoning the water supplies in PUBELO, Co.

 

[tendency]

You might be interested in the Cache creek location just west of Granite , Colo. Its actually open to EVRYONE for gold hunting. No claims or other Legal issues to worry about, problem is a LOT of flour gold exist there but you can pick up a few nuggets. A lot of history in this area,....the original Mining co. back in the late 1800's were forced to shut down their dredging operations their because they used sooo much mercury that it was poisoning the water supplies in PUBELO, Co.

Ah that sounds promising and interesting - thanks for advice. Is the entire length of Cache creek open to the public?

 

[Riverbum]

Its open for a long way going west once you get there but their is some private operation going on several miles closer to the peaks of Clear Creek area, just south of Cache Creek, that still leaves more than anyone one person is going to cover in several weeks. There is a lot of area to search to your hearts desire there. Every once and a while you'll get to meet a ranger, but their only looking to see if your digging UNDERNEATH tree roots which is forbidden.

 

[Clay Diggins]

A lot of history in this area,....the original Mining co. back in the late 1800's were forced to shut down their dredging operations their because they used sooo much mercury that it was poisoning the water supplies in PUBELO, Co.

This is not real history. There was no dredge at Cache creek, it was a hydraulic sluicing operation. Mercury was not the problem, the 1911 lawsuit brought by Pueblo and Canon City was to prevent Twin Lakes mining company from "pollution of the Arkansas river by washing into its waters annually vast quantities of vegetable and mineral matters rendering them unwholesome to the thousands of people along the stream who use the water for domestic purposes".

Mercury was not at issue in the 1911 lawsuit. Cache creek did not cease mining. Mining continued without hydraulics on Cache creek for another 7 years until 1918. Working by hand on a 50 foot deep placer deposit of fine gold at $16 an ounce was not profitable for any but the smallest miners so the Twin Lakes placers value was almost zero after the injunction.

Several other nearby placers continued to operate. The real problem with Twin Lakes Mining and Cache creek came about because local ranchers were having their water stolen from them by Twin Lakes and sediment from the extensive placer operation make the waters of the Arkansas rusty red year round instead of seasonally. Not something people would want to drink if they had a choice.

Twin Lakes did have a debris dam at Cache creek but the water was still murky when it reached a few miles downstream in town. Twin Lakes did try to build a settling pond but all the water disappeared down a sinkhole and no water flowed to the river so they gave up. When ranchers or town people would complain or try to make an arrangement Twin Lakes English management told them to pound sand. They would literally tell them to sue - so they did.

The mercury thing really isn't what it has been made out to be. Copper/Mercury plates were used for cleanup (not sluicing) and a lot of effort was made to recover all the mercury they could. Mercury was $50 a flask at the time. So a flask of Mercury cost 2.5 ounces of gold - not cheap and not easy to transport once purchased in San Francisco (Mercury is shipped in heavy glass flasks). For comparison good developed irrigated farmland in Colorado at the time was less than $40 an acre. Mercury was always recycled - it's the only way to get the gold out and it would be foolish to waste the money when it is so easy to recycle.

By all accounts Twin Lakes mining were bad guys. There were disliked by the locals as well as other miners. The whole thing came to a head when Twin Lakes applied for patents for their placer. Not a single owner or manager at Twin Lakes was a U.S. citizen so the patents were rejected. When that bit of information became public Twin Lakes fate was sealed. Everybody wanted them gone. The 1911 court case was estimated to take years to settle but the courts were having none of it and put an injunction against hydraulic mining on the Twin Lakes properties in record time. The English owners pulled out when the money dried up.

There were a lot of knock on effects from the Pueblo v Twin Lakes case. Mining water rights became a bigger issue and many water rights disputes from that time are still circling the courts today. Twin Lakes changed mining in Colorado and put mining in a bad light in a State where many of it's citizens relied on mining for a living.

If Twin Lakes had not been shut down I suspect Granite would have become the major town in that area and Canon City and Pueblo would have remained minor outposts. Colorado would have mined another 300,000 ounces from the Cache creek placers and life would be very different in that region.

Heavy Pans

 

[russau]

Thanks Barry for this FACT of history and not what was rumored ! GREAT STORY !