Snoop
April 6th, 2008, 04:22 PM
Funny how history repeats itself. Does anyone out there plan on getting in on the action?
April 5, 2008
Soaring Gold Prices Lure New Breed of Diggers
By JESSE McKINLEY (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 3 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)
COLFAX, Calif. — On a recent Saturday afternoon, in the freezing shallows of the American River, Gene Zuspan looked into a pile of wet sand and swore he saw something glint.
“You see that right there?” he said, pointing at something shiny — and tiny — in the black sediment. “That’s gold.”
Whether it was true gold or just fool’s was not clear. But what is certain is that 160 years after a flake of gold found not far from here incited a frenzied stampede to the Sierra Nevada foothills, a new gold rush is on.
Driven by record high prices and a suburban thirst for new outdoor activities, tens of thousands of ’08ers are taking to historically rich streams and hills all across the West in search of nuggets, flecks and — more often than not — specks of gold.
“Anywhere gold has been found in the past,” said Corey Rudolph, the field operations director for the Gold Prospectors Association of America. “That’s where they’re going again.”
Mr. Rudolph said his membership had grown to more than 45,000 — up nearly 40 percent from a few years ago — including diggers from previously gold-crazed states like Arizona, Colorado and California (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 3 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). In Alaska, tales of bigger nuggets — one to three ounces, sometimes larger — are drawing newcomers to the Yukon River and its tributaries in search of overnight riches.
Mining shops say they cannot keep equipment on the shelves. “We had a lady in here on crutches, not a young lady either, saying, ‘I want to buy this $3,200 metal detector and a $1,000 power sluice,’ ” said Steve Herschbach, an owner of Alaska Mining and Diving, a supply shop in Anchorage. “We tried to talk her down a bit, but she was dead set.”
Not all the action is in the water. Some prospectors have taken to scouring ore dumps— discarded piles of rock left by old-time miners — with high-tech metal detectors hoping to divine what previous generations missed. In Arizona, clubs head for dry creeks, sifting through the dirt where gold might have washed down in past floods.
Perhaps nowhere is the rush more spirited than in California, home of the Sierra’s famed Mother Lode, where the discovery of gold in 1848 caused a national migration. Like their forebears, many of today’s prospectors have little more than a pan, a shovel and a dream.
Unlike the original forty-niners, though, some of today’s caravans involve minivans, wetsuits and cellphones. And while many current prospectors say they hold out hopes of big scores, their clubs also act as social networks, where members exchange stories of the joys of sluicing and the unexplainable, often unattainable, thrill of shouting “Eureka!” at the sight of a nugget.
“There’s nothing like finding gold,” said Pat Putnam, 57, who found a nickel-size chunk of ore a few years back. “It’s just an unbelievable feeling. Because you know you’re the first person to ever lay eyes on that.”
Long the province of crusty hobbyists and bored retirees, prospecting has also recently drawn some younger converts, partly from their exposure to two prospecting shows on the Outdoor Channel.
Not everyone, of course, is just in it for the fresh air. Rob Goreham, a miner and equipment salesman from Columbia, Calif., in the heart of the Mother Lode, says hundreds of full-time prospectors in California make a living at the often bone-chilling profession. How much of a living?
“No one’s going to tell you that,” said Mr. Goreham, like the veteran gold man he is. “We do O.K., how about that?”
The work is often backbreaking — and mind-numbing — but many call it a type of therapy.
Mr. Zuspan, the American River prospector who is otherwise a truck driver, said he had joined the Delta Gold Diggers, in Stockton, Calif., in part to get over a divorce and his six-day workweek.
Frank Hansen said he used the club’s outings to get over memories of working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 3 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) in New Mexico. “I could go out to a mountain and do this, and as soon as I saw a little bit of that color in the pan, I could ignore the job, and that stress would dissolve,” Mr. Hansen said.
Others fear a different type of stress. Past gold rushes caused hills to be denuded and rivers polluted, and the new rush has led to fears of a repeat. In 2007, the California Department of Fish and Game issued nearly 3,000 permits for dredging, even as it began to look into whether dredging was causing “adverse environmental effects” or harm to fish. A coalition of sport and tribal fishermen asked Monday for a two-year moratorium on dredging till the environmental impact could be determined.
The one gold-digging law that hasn’t changed over the years is this: If you want to make money during a gold rush, don’t mine the hills. Mine the miners.
The New 49ers Prospecting Club, in Happy Camp, Calif., charges members $2,500 each for lifetime access to claims on several rivers and tributaries in northernmost California. Dave McCracken, the club’s owner, says he expects gold-prospecting to bring about $5 million this summer into Siskiyou County, an economically depressed region.
Jerry Keene, 73, the chief executive of Keene Engineering, a leading manufacturer of mining equipment, said, “Anything connected with gold, we’re just about out of.”
Last month the company posted an apology on its Web site, saying a backload of orders had simply overwhelmed the staff.
Mr. Keene likened the current rush to the last time gold prices spiked this high, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the spot price for an ounce hit $850. The current price is $913, after topping $1,000 last month.
All of which can make some new prospectors a little wild-eyed. “Gold fever is a real thing, you know,” said Gary Hawley of the Gold Prospectors of the Rockies, a 140-member club in Denver. “They’ll go out with a pan and get some speck, and some people will get crazed by it. They’ll go from pan to sluice box to dredge. Before you know it, you can end up with $7,000, $8,000 worth of equipment and still no gold.”
Wes Reese, 35, a stay-at-home dad who was panning recently with the Delta Diggers on the American, had no illusions of riches, but a big smile on his face.
“You get to go out and play in the dirt and play in the water,” he said. “What else could you want?”
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April 5, 2008
Soaring Gold Prices Lure New Breed of Diggers
By JESSE McKINLEY (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 3 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.)
COLFAX, Calif. — On a recent Saturday afternoon, in the freezing shallows of the American River, Gene Zuspan looked into a pile of wet sand and swore he saw something glint.
“You see that right there?” he said, pointing at something shiny — and tiny — in the black sediment. “That’s gold.”
Whether it was true gold or just fool’s was not clear. But what is certain is that 160 years after a flake of gold found not far from here incited a frenzied stampede to the Sierra Nevada foothills, a new gold rush is on.
Driven by record high prices and a suburban thirst for new outdoor activities, tens of thousands of ’08ers are taking to historically rich streams and hills all across the West in search of nuggets, flecks and — more often than not — specks of gold.
“Anywhere gold has been found in the past,” said Corey Rudolph, the field operations director for the Gold Prospectors Association of America. “That’s where they’re going again.”
Mr. Rudolph said his membership had grown to more than 45,000 — up nearly 40 percent from a few years ago — including diggers from previously gold-crazed states like Arizona, Colorado and California (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 3 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.). In Alaska, tales of bigger nuggets — one to three ounces, sometimes larger — are drawing newcomers to the Yukon River and its tributaries in search of overnight riches.
Mining shops say they cannot keep equipment on the shelves. “We had a lady in here on crutches, not a young lady either, saying, ‘I want to buy this $3,200 metal detector and a $1,000 power sluice,’ ” said Steve Herschbach, an owner of Alaska Mining and Diving, a supply shop in Anchorage. “We tried to talk her down a bit, but she was dead set.”
Not all the action is in the water. Some prospectors have taken to scouring ore dumps— discarded piles of rock left by old-time miners — with high-tech metal detectors hoping to divine what previous generations missed. In Arizona, clubs head for dry creeks, sifting through the dirt where gold might have washed down in past floods.
Perhaps nowhere is the rush more spirited than in California, home of the Sierra’s famed Mother Lode, where the discovery of gold in 1848 caused a national migration. Like their forebears, many of today’s prospectors have little more than a pan, a shovel and a dream.
Unlike the original forty-niners, though, some of today’s caravans involve minivans, wetsuits and cellphones. And while many current prospectors say they hold out hopes of big scores, their clubs also act as social networks, where members exchange stories of the joys of sluicing and the unexplainable, often unattainable, thrill of shouting “Eureka!” at the sight of a nugget.
“There’s nothing like finding gold,” said Pat Putnam, 57, who found a nickel-size chunk of ore a few years back. “It’s just an unbelievable feeling. Because you know you’re the first person to ever lay eyes on that.”
Long the province of crusty hobbyists and bored retirees, prospecting has also recently drawn some younger converts, partly from their exposure to two prospecting shows on the Outdoor Channel.
Not everyone, of course, is just in it for the fresh air. Rob Goreham, a miner and equipment salesman from Columbia, Calif., in the heart of the Mother Lode, says hundreds of full-time prospectors in California make a living at the often bone-chilling profession. How much of a living?
“No one’s going to tell you that,” said Mr. Goreham, like the veteran gold man he is. “We do O.K., how about that?”
The work is often backbreaking — and mind-numbing — but many call it a type of therapy.
Mr. Zuspan, the American River prospector who is otherwise a truck driver, said he had joined the Delta Gold Diggers, in Stockton, Calif., in part to get over a divorce and his six-day workweek.
Frank Hansen said he used the club’s outings to get over memories of working at the Los Alamos National Laboratory (To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 3 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.) in New Mexico. “I could go out to a mountain and do this, and as soon as I saw a little bit of that color in the pan, I could ignore the job, and that stress would dissolve,” Mr. Hansen said.
Others fear a different type of stress. Past gold rushes caused hills to be denuded and rivers polluted, and the new rush has led to fears of a repeat. In 2007, the California Department of Fish and Game issued nearly 3,000 permits for dredging, even as it began to look into whether dredging was causing “adverse environmental effects” or harm to fish. A coalition of sport and tribal fishermen asked Monday for a two-year moratorium on dredging till the environmental impact could be determined.
The one gold-digging law that hasn’t changed over the years is this: If you want to make money during a gold rush, don’t mine the hills. Mine the miners.
The New 49ers Prospecting Club, in Happy Camp, Calif., charges members $2,500 each for lifetime access to claims on several rivers and tributaries in northernmost California. Dave McCracken, the club’s owner, says he expects gold-prospecting to bring about $5 million this summer into Siskiyou County, an economically depressed region.
Jerry Keene, 73, the chief executive of Keene Engineering, a leading manufacturer of mining equipment, said, “Anything connected with gold, we’re just about out of.”
Last month the company posted an apology on its Web site, saying a backload of orders had simply overwhelmed the staff.
Mr. Keene likened the current rush to the last time gold prices spiked this high, in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when the spot price for an ounce hit $850. The current price is $913, after topping $1,000 last month.
All of which can make some new prospectors a little wild-eyed. “Gold fever is a real thing, you know,” said Gary Hawley of the Gold Prospectors of the Rockies, a 140-member club in Denver. “They’ll go out with a pan and get some speck, and some people will get crazed by it. They’ll go from pan to sluice box to dredge. Before you know it, you can end up with $7,000, $8,000 worth of equipment and still no gold.”
Wes Reese, 35, a stay-at-home dad who was panning recently with the Delta Diggers on the American, had no illusions of riches, but a big smile on his face.
“You get to go out and play in the dirt and play in the water,” he said. “What else could you want?”
To view links or images in this forum your post count must be 3 or greater. You currently have 0 posts.
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