Newbie gold claim questions

[steve9501]

I am new here and new to gold prospecting. 2 years ago a friend of mine was given his fathers gold claim. He and a couple of other friends went out for a week of dredging and panning in the river, I was not able to go. They brought back a few buckets of material that I spend the fall learning how to pan with. Last summer I went with them for a week of fun. We haven't found much, just a little very fine flower gold.
We are making plans on going back for a week this summer. We don't plan on getting rich or even finding enough to pay for our trip, but it is a fun weekend getaway with friends and my son.
I have been looking at maps and the claim online at a site called the diggings.com. I see that there are claims joining ours and claims within a couple of miles of ours that are showing up as closed claims. Any information I can find is that I can go to the county assessors office or clerks office to see if anyone has filed a new claim on the closed claim. If not I can explore it and file on it first with the county then with the BLM. Does anyone have any experience to share or information that would be helpful in doing this? I am thinking of researching this year and possibly finding a closed claim to work for next year. And am I correct that a closed claim is one that the owner either stopped making payments on or decided to cancel their claim and not pay for.
Also, is thediggings.com a reputable website for researching claim information? Am I correct with my understanding of the definition of a closed claim? And my final question, on that website when I use the USGS map overlay I see icons that say "gold Occurrence". What does that mean? Is that someplace that has had a mineral survey of some kind? Is it a location where a claim has been located and gold found?
By the way the claim is in Colorado.
Thanks for any helpful information!

 

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[Guardrailnickel]

Thanks for posting this Diggins site. While I cant help you, you may have helped me. Turns out not far away is a site where gold was found. After looking at it on Google earth, I may be related to the farmer who owns the land.

 

[winners58]

good guide here, check out the links toward the bottom also... (check the requirements for your state)
https://findinggoldincolorado.com/how-to-file-a-mining-claim/

you can run a report in the lr2000 that will show all the claim reporting, open and closed for the last few decades.
close to the bottom of this page https://reports.blm.gov/reports.cfm?application=LR2000
(sometimes has errors on weekends)

and if you really want to dig into the historical land records
https://glorecords.blm.gov/

 

[N-Lionberger]

mylandmatters.org is a good resource for claim information.

 

[Clay Diggins]

The fact that a claim has been closed does not mean that you can make a new claim.
The fact that a claim has been closed does not mean the area is open to location.
The fact that a claim has been closed does not mean there are any valuable minerals to claim.

A closed claim means nothing to someone unfamiliar with the land status for the area, the type and nature of the mineralization and the surrounding access and ownership issues.

Big HINT* The vast majority of claims whether active or closed were not located for mineable gold.

Essentially a closed claim is not a good indicator of anything. You've got the cart before the horse.

The brief version of how to look for claimable ground.

• Study the geology, mineralization and mining history.
• Determine the land status.
• Look for current active claims.
• Put boots on the ground and prospect.

Repeat the above until you find open ground that will support a mining claim.

None of those steps involve knowing about or finding closed claims.

Go to Land Matters Mining Claim Maps page and read the 4 tabs. Then look at the claims map with the land status layers turned on. Any claims map without land management information is next to worthless. Many claims are made every year on land that can't be legally claimed.

Study and download the Geology Maps for your area of interest. Search in the Library for books and reports about the mineralization and mining in your area of interest.

Ignore the closed claims and do the research, as prospectors have for centuries, and you will have a much better chance of finding a good gold deposit worth claiming.

Heavy Pans

 

[Terry Soloman]

Welcome to the forum!

 

[steve9501]

Thanks a lot everyone for the information and resources. Those are exactly what I was looking for I think!
Clay Diggings, good advice. What I am looking at is a few claims near ours. We have found some gold in the river. A claim owner just downstream from us joining us found a little more than we have using the same dredging methods. The closed claims are just up the hill and up small feeder streams from where we are at. I was thinking of researching them to see if they would be open and available. If they are then this summer see if we can get on the land to do some looking and prospecting. I have been looking for some history of the area too. I know there is gold where we are at, and downstream but need to do more studying to see where it came from. I did see on the diggings map there was a "gold occurance" right between two of the closed claims but need to learn what that means. Also, there is an active mine listed a mile or so from these claims that is listed as lead. So yeah a lot of questions we need to find answers to before we get too excited about anything. I am thinking of spending this summer learning if it is possible, then get out there and explore. If it is open and worth the time we wont get onto the property for a year or two. However it works out for us, thanks for the information and links. Gives me a lot more to look at to make a well educated decision on our plans.
(edit)I re-read the above posts and see what your saying. The only thing that attracted me to the closed claims is the proximity to my friends claim. We are not serious miners at this time. They caught my interest because they are close to where we are already going. What we do is the 3 of us take a week off work. We spend the first day traveling to the claim. We don't get in any hurry to get there, we enjoy the trip. Usually we get there late the first day so we stay in the pickup for the night. That will change this year! The next day we set up camp and look around the area to see what has changed. There are other owners on the claim so we see if they have been there working or not. We check to see what the spring floods have done to change the river banks. We spend a could of days dredging and sightseeing, then pack up and head home. It was special for me because my son decided to go along, even knowing there is no phone or internet signal where we are at. He found an interest in minerals other than the gold. He and I spent quite a bit of our time hiking and exploring the claim. I am going to study the maps and information you linked for me to see what else is out there and maybe spend some time exploring different areas.