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How Did The Old Timers Learn What Rocks Had Gold?


tvanwho

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I always wondered how did the old time miners in the USA from 1799-1900 approx, learn what rocks had gold values after the placers were worked out?

There were few books, no color photos/no internet on the subject or mining schools, so where did they get the info, school of hard knocks?

After all, it is not just quartz that can have gold....there is  greenstone, limonite, red clays, pyrites, sulfides, and many others that I only know about

because of internet tips /books/videos from Chris Ralph,Jeff Williams, Steve H, and others. Maybe word of mouth was a BIG factor in the old days?

-Tom

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Part of their strategy was to do a lot of test samplings using smaller size excavations. That's why there are so many prospects without any mines that followed. But they also had pretty smart geologists back then.

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Thanks Clay.

Contrary to present popular belief, history has many gems of wisdom and should be studied rather than destroyed.

Mitchel

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Phrunt, I heartily agree. We are not anywhere near as physically capable as the early miners. I am constantly amazed as I travel the Mother Lode among other gold bearing areas, at the sheer amount of physical work those people did with nowhere near the benefits of the kinds of equipment we have today.  

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5 hours ago, phrunt said:

And let's not forget one of the most important factors, a lot of hard work.  I go to these old timers worked areas and I'm constantly shocked by how much hard work they did, mostly all by hand.  I would never survive it.   They were breed tough back then. 

Don't forget about the slaves.  The Spaniards used Mexicans and Indians in the new world.  Some Americans used slaves during the California gold rush.   Still back breaking work.  

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Certainly have to give the old timers a hell of a lot of credit. Just looking at the old shafts and even the wells on this station it amazes me the depths dug and through solid bedrock with nothing more than a pick and shovel.

While there were obviously a lot of knowledgeable folks on the gold fields I'd say a large majority had no idea and it was trial and error, just trying their luck in areas where a discovery was made. They learned as they went.

If the American gold rushes were anything like the Australian rushes most of the miners weren't miners...they were bakers, shoemakers, farmers, beggars and pretty much any profession who fled their jobs chasing a dream.

Some made it, but most didn't. Not much has changed at all really. 

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There is a billionaire oil prospector here in Wyoming. There are only two streets at his company headquarters building. They are named "Guts" and "Luck".

In the US, the written history of many major mining districts seems to always start with a cowboy, homesteader, soldier, hunting party, etc making a random find. Or a party travelling from one place to another (or getting lost) and stumbling upon something obvious along the way like visible gold or visible copper staining. After which the actual prospectors would descend on an area and expand it. Hard work certainly played a big part, but often great finds in the US initially seemed to be just sheer luck as well.

Geology as a pure science in the 1700's was kinda just one dude in Scotland. Plate tectonics, a major foundation of modern geology, wasn't even really accepted until the 1960's. Rather than hardcore research and cold science - from what I've read of districts I studied - most prospectors chased chance/luck discoveries being made by other people, hence all the boom/bust mining towns that went from 10,000 to 10 people overnight. 

Assaying, mortar/pestle, and gold pans have existed for a long time though. They talk about it in De Re Metallica as Clay Diggings brought up. But the cold finds made by prospectors setting out methodically to employ these methods in completely unknown/undiscovered districts in the US seem to be far more rare than the camp chef stumbling onto a ledge of gold by accident.

Who knows how much is fable or fact I guess.

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