The streets in California are paved with gold!At least one is!

[konnon6]

ok here it is.
Seems this one cement plant in northen California had gotten their base material
from a stream bed. And a loader would dump it into a shaker valt which had different
size screens that would sepperate out the differant size rocks the last being sand.
Of course they wore out from time to time and had to be replaced. This went on for some 23 years. Now it was a hard and durty dusty job to replace the screens and
the sand screen had never been replaced since it was the last screen it wore less.
Now Pico a low paid worker had to climb down in the valt and change the screen.
The screen was 10 feet wide and 20 feet long an wieghed alot. It was built of heavy 3 inch angel iron to support the weight of the screen and sand.Pico had to unbolt the old one and bolt the new one in place. both had to be loaded into place with a crain.
the old screen was tough to get the bolts loose and some had the be cut loose.
it had rained that night hard and deep in the pit was cold and wet and dark.
Pico had a pit helmet with a light on it and a torch. he noticed along the edge of the old shaker a shiny yellow rocks about the size of marbles.thinking it to be fools gold
or brass he put them in his coveralls and soon was off work. He showed them to his brother who knew what gold looked like and yes that was real gold! Some twenty five pounds of gold!The next morning pico asked his boss if he could have the old screen.
sure the boss said but you have to load it on your own time after work!He did and
left work.The next day pico was asking the loader operator where in the river he got the gravel he said over there and pointed to a low spot in the river bank.on his lunch
break he filled some ten buckets with sand and gravel and put them in his truck.
The next day Pico never showed up at work nor ever came back. He was fired.
But word got out about it when pico's brother got in a fight with him over his gold.
The cement plant for years had been making cement with gold nuggets in the sand and gravel!!!So when you walk the streets and side walks keep your eyes down. There's gold in the cement!The river behind the old cement plant gets paned daily now
and every once in a while someone finds a gold nugget.Oh pico he returned to mexico a rich man. And his brother died in a bar fieght. The old stack and convayer belt are still
there behind the little valley lumber co. in Shasta County

 

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[Thorgrim]

cool story

 

[Jeffro]

The streets of Cottage Grove, where I was born, are made from old mine tailings. No telling how much gold is in that asphalt!

I'm kinda doubting the story above, at least in the details. 25 pounds? I think not. Who puts 25 pounds of worthless iron pyrite (he thought) in their coveralls? Plus, I make the equipment described above. Only place gold could catch is on the side rails where it bolts to the sideplates. I've heard of the guys in service finding gold while they repair old screens and crushers though.

A couple ounces would be more believeable.

The guys who service broken down trommels in the Alaskan goldfields do quite well! 20-30 ounces is not uncommon.

 

[bakergeol]

They are paved with gold here in Colorado too. One time my partner and I wanted to work some of the tailing ponds from a current sand and gravel operation. These sand and gravel operations have "rag" plants which are simply gold catching systems to catch the fine and coarse gold which is common in the gravels here. The "rag" plants were maintained and run by a third party who would come in every week to clean out the gold catching system. They received a percentage of the total. Considering the tonnage run in a week was incredible the weekly gold total was considerable. However, the main money maker was of course the sand and gravel operations.

We had permission from the operator to test the tailing ponds but our interest was quickly focused on their gold "rag" plants. We felt that they were incredibly inefficient. So we obtained permission to test their outgoing sand to consumers. (We had an eye on proposing a more efficient plant under our supervision). We were shocked when we first ran this stuff sent out to the public over my shaker table. It contained considerable amounts of gold. We felt that their plant ran perfectly fine for the first hour it was installed but after that it was quickly clogged up and most of the gold was lost for the week.

We reported our findings to the operator but he was not interested in a new system. Hmm. the extra income would be in a high 6 figure amount every year- but not interested? We concluded that there were factors we did not know. Kickbacks?Relatives involved in the third party gold maintenance company? which the actual owners were unaware? We had to walk away.

So today considerable amounts of gold are still being sent out with their sand and are being used in cement.

George

 

[Dave45]

Set up a sand and gravel yard, clean everthing resale s/g, start a good buiseness and mine gold too.
Sell cement all tools to do cement,stucco ect. ect.
Landscapeing
You may get enough out of the gold to keep the company going untill it was successful

 

[TreasureTales]

This is not the liar's thread, so I will tell you a story that is absolutely true, but not nearly as exciting as the ones already posted here.


About 7 years ago I was driving up to a favorite campsite and stopped to detect the gravel parking lot of a baseball field in a small No. California town (which shall remain nameless because I am going back there again in May). I had only had my Tesoro for about 3 months and was still trying to learn its nuances. I swung the coil over the gravel and almost immediately got a hit. Thinking it could be a coin, I grubbed through the gravel but couldn't see my target. After a few more passes of the coil to confirm it was still there, I started doing the technique where ya grab a handful of gravel and pass it over the coil until you find the right handful. After about 3 attempts, I got the signal I was hoping for. There in my hand lay a small piece of pea gravel - quartz - with a small line of gold in it. I tucked the little pebble into my watch pocket and did the rest of the parking lot, finding only a couple of clad coins.

After looking at the gravel and seeing that it was a consistant color and size, I knew it had come from a quarry somewhere nearby. I tried to find someone in the town that could tell me where the gravel for the ballfield parking area came from, but the folks looked at me like I had two heads. I never found out where the gravel came from, but somewhere in Lassen County is a gravel operation that had scooped up some rock, ground it to a uniform pebbles, and sold it to somebody who was interested in keeping up the ballfield parking lot. And in their gravel was GOLD!

I don't know if I can get a photo of the pebble because it is pretty small and the gold in it is hard to see unless held in the right way.

 

[Jeffro]

Got a buddy in Lassen county with a gold mine, just outside of Redding.... he shut it down a continues to make gravel out of the tailings.... LOL!

Maybe a coinkidink?

 

[TreasureTales]

Jeffro, the town I was in would be about 70 miles from Redding. It is interesting about your friend owning a gravel company. I'm thinking the gravel probably came from a place closer than that. I'd like to find the other areas where the gravel was used, maybe finding a few more of the pebbles. With enough of them, I might have a dollar's worth of gold. LOL

Once I went to a yard sale, years ago, where the guy had his garden path lined with mortars and pestles. There were over 200 of them! I asked where he got all of them and he told me he worked for a gravel company. He said they dredge the river and dump the rock onto a conveyor belt. When the rocks are on the belt, his job is to remove any trash that may have been scooped up so that it doesn't wind up in their crushing equipment back at the plant. He said he'd not only pick out the trash, but also anything unusual or interesting. He said he'd been getting some nice indian artifacts from one stretch of the river they worked for a few weeks. I would have liked to have gotten invited into his house because I bet he had some nice stuff. Just shows that there are opportunities to find treasures in many places and through many ways.

 

[Jeffro]

This is true. I've often thought of putting in secondary equipment on these river gravel operations. Its surprising how many don't have metal recovery!