How to Find gold in rivers and streams

This film is about gold. Gold diving. Use of the hookah rig to find gold. Gold flakes, nuggets, and platinum nuggets are shown.

Gold and platinum are 15-19 times heavier than other streambed materials and concentrate in low pressure areas and cracks that run across rivers and streams.

You look for a crack on the bank, and follow it out until you meet the "gold line" and there you suck it out with your dredge.

Gold will be on the outside edge of a river gravel bar, at the head of the bar (large gold but usually beneath big boulders), and at the tail end of a bar (vast concentrations due to river bars forming in the shape of an airfoil and sucking fine gold to the tail end) but be small to microscopic at the tail end.

Gold will travel down a river or stream in a line, usually off center of the high pressure water. Gold will settle behind a boulder.

A good place to fish, can also be an excellent place to find gold. "Black sand" is iron ore that can be readily identified in gravel bars and is a ready indicator that gold is probably present.

The most effective and economical way for the average person to find paying concentrations of gold in a river or stream is with a simple ($80) sluice that you shovel into and the riffles retain gold, platinum, gems and anything heavy for you.

Gold can be found up high on the old river channels and recovered with metal detectors, a gold wheel, a highbanker, or simply by identifying the material, shoveling it in your truck and working it out later in a wheel, or your simple stream sluice.

The states which have gold in vast quantities are: Maine, Vermont, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Colorado, Wyoming, New Mexico, Nevada, Arizona, California, Idaho, Washington, Montana, and Oregon.

The rest have gold as well, some in very good concentrations. All have gems of some kind that a sluice will separate and hold. Good luck finding the gold of your dreams!

What is Gold?

Gold is a metallic element with the atomic number 79 and the symbol Au. While the name gold comes from an Old English word meaning yellow, the symbol comes from the Latin aurum, which means “shining dawn.”

On the periodic table of elements, gold is found in Group 11, along with silver, copper, and roentgenium, and in Period 6 between platinum and mercury. It is referred to as a “transition metal” and is the most malleable, ductile metal. Described as yellow, gold is one of the so-called precious metals, along with silver.

Known from ancient times — along with mercury, sulfur, copper, silver, lead, and tin — gold was used as early as 6000 B.C. Early use included for jewelry, including bracelets and rings, as well as ornamentation. Its malleability means that its early use in any practical items was impossible, so it was restricted to decoration. The civilizations that employed it included the Egyptians, the Greeks, the Mesopotamians, and the Romans.

Gold is found in both lode deposits and placer deposits, and is naturally uncombined. While the largest deposit is to be found in South Africa, deposits of note are also located in Australia, the former Soviet Union, and a number of western states of the United States, including Arizona in the Southwest; California, Montana, and Washington in the Pacific Northwest; and South Dakota in the Midwest.

Although many people may know gold for its use in jewelry - which is how about 65% of it is used - it has a number of other uses. About 25% is used in industrial applications in ceramics, electrical, and electronics applications.

A specialized use is in the powder called gold tin purple, gold tin precipitate, or purple of Cassius, which is used for tinting enamels and manufacturing a special type of glass called ruby glass. Ruby glass is used on the windows of office buildings as well as on mirrors that are used in space.