Top 10 Places you Should Look for Gold (A Beginner’s Guide)
Small deposits of gold can crop up anywhere. However, if you want to find concentrated deposits that can make your search worthwhile, knowing some rudimentary facts about how gold moves around will certainly help.
So before we get to our top 10 locations you should search for gold, let’s go over some of the basic geological factors you should consider.
Gravity is your friend
Gold is heavy. In fact, it is 3 times heavier than iron and a whopping 19 times heavier than water.
This means that with the assistance of gravity, small gold particles will always sink to the lowest level as its path will allow.
As Mother Nature does her thing, with the wind, rain, floods, and thaws impacting the earth, trapped gold will be freed and will work its way to its lowest point.
So as a general guide, looking for where water flows downhill in a way where deposits can become trapped is a very good starting point.
Hillsides and Rain Storms
Another good tip is to hunt out hillsides that are prone to water runoff during storms.
As the rain falls, water runs down the hill eroding the earth and rock along its path. If gold is present, this will also be freed.
The gold will get caught up in the flowing water and will fall into cracks, undercuts and any other pitted obstruction as it proceeds.
If left untouched, these small particles of gold can grow into meaningful deposits if you have the time and patience to look and discover them.
Streams and Floods
A stream bed during a flood will experience a similar geological effect.
If you observe where the water slows along the stream during a flood, there may be a chance that’s where an obstruction exists that could potentially trap particles of gold.
Even a large rock or boulder in a stream is enough to disrupt the flow of water enough for sold to sink to the bottom and collect ready for you to find.
So, simply bearing these conditions in mind when you search for locations to begin prospecting, will help you save a significant amount of time.
What follows are some key areas you should look for when hunting for gold.
Top 10 Places you Should Look for Gold
- Gravel bars on the inside of river bends are a good place to look. The particles will be fine, but in the right location, you can be treated to a bounty.
- The level, flat part of a stream after it has had a period of a steep incline, (i.e. downstream from a section of rapids or a waterfall).
- As mentioned above, earthy hillsides and small cliff points during or after stormwater have run across them.
- High benches are caused by a stream cutting deeper into a canyon. Rounded rocks in the canyon wall would have once been at water level; look in the grooves behind these to see if any gold has been trapped.
- A simple one this: moss and grassroots on the outer bend river’s edge. Gold can slowly accumulate here.
- The down-stream sides of boulders look like they have not moved for years. Protected from the flow of water, the ridges at the base of the rock could house precious gold.
- Look for any potholes in the bedrock.
- Small streaks of gravel laying on the bedrock, (however, you will need special tools to remove these if they are underwater).
- It is tempting to look for gold in popular prospecting areas. However, to find deposits that might have been missed you should look for lines of moss running along the bedrock. This hints at being an area that has been undisturbed, and there is very likely to be small cracks beneath that can house particles of gold.
- Newly formed gravel bars are also a potential ground for recently trapped particles.
And there you have it, our top 10 places beginner prospectors should look for when hunting for gold.
Hunting in areas such as these will certainly help your efforts and will reduce wasted time looking in the wrong places.
Image Credits: Pixabay