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A Week In Lake Havasu


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Lake Havasu has a good club, Havasu Gold Seekers, rumor is they have some good claims. Also I was driving around Havasu yesterday waiting on my truck appointment and drove up to the state park entrance and asked if mental detecting was allowed, it is but believe it or not you can only keep the trash, not any of the good finds they have to be put back. Yes you read that right, anything of value I was told by state park employee has to be left, the Stupid must be leaching over from California !!!! Haha !!!!

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“Good stuff” meaning historic? He could probably keep more modern finds- usually means less than 50 years old.  

Dang, Im a relic now!

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1 hour ago, Swegin said:

Bucksnboulders you can also try along the lake shore line.  You are a little early for the spring breaker's (drunk collage kids)

 

That’s a great idea- lake is low enough now that a lot of shorelines are opened up!  I once found a 18k heavy bracket on a drained lake bottom when I was a kid with a toy detector- I have not found that much gold since!🙄

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Count me in on any Franconia info. I’ve looked for meteorites there twice and found none. Lots of bullets, magnetite and hot rocks, quartz areas. A guy found nice gold along the road to the goldseekers camp. I was a member of it for awhile. My suburban’s fuel pump decided to die on one of those trips… wasn’t cheap to recover from.  I have read that detecting anywhere along the river in AZ is frowned upon, but I’d just do it in heavily visited areas like the island near the bridge. Huge prospecting shop in Kingman if you go by there.

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34 minutes ago, GotAU? said:

That’s a great idea- lake is low enough now that a lot of shorelines are opened up!  I once found a 18k heavy bracket on a drained lake bottom when I was a kid with a toy detector- I have not found that much gold since!🙄

I was wondering what the water level was.  I haven't been there in years.  

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33 minutes ago, Swegin said:

I was wondering what the water level was.  I haven't been there in years.  

I haven’t been there for a long time either I’m just guessing based on how low the rest of the river is. Also didn’t know about the regulations on detecting there, people will have to check for themselves to be sure.

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15 minutes ago, Clay Diggins said:

All of the Colorado river in Arizona below the high water mark is Arizona sovereign land (not State Trust land). Detecting or prospecting on those lands is illegal without a contract with the State.

Clay, I did not know that. What constitutes “sovereign land?” and was it set that way to protect the water resource from commercial dredging?

Edit: I found a good reference- it’s helpful in explaining Az land use regulations:

https://land.az.gov/faq

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I did some research last night and locating a place to detect for gold without claim jumping is almost a thing of the past, I come from a time when you went to the county to do your research and you could almost always find something to go look at and do some highbanking or drywashing. Today with the population explosion the {club claims} are definitely the way to go. Unfortunately joining one for a few hours or even a day or two is a little expensive. I would sure love to see some club's start up a program allowing people the opportunity to access a claim or two for a daily fee of $30-$40 dollars. The club would make extra money and others would have the opportunity to enjoy the hobby. In Utah our club dues are only $40 a year but the fact of the matter is, I know few people that have found enough gold to pay for the due's, Prospecting for the most part is not much more than having fun and making new friends. Here in Arizona where you have real gold, it would appear to be a little more competitive and rightfully so. With the advent of youtube and other social media outlets, their has been an explosion in the prospecting industry. I think there is more money to be made developing a youtube channel than there ever was in shoveling dirt. Levi Strauss mad far more money than most prospectors during the gold rush and today the money is in selling prospecting tools and making videos promoting it. {Not that that's bad} its just the new world we live in.  Prospecting In Utah and Nevada I have friends and family with claims making it easy to find somewhere to go look for gold, { heavy on the looking }. You guy's are real lucky to live down here, I love it here and envy those that live here. Maybe in the future I can come down with my trailer, join a club and make meet a bunch of new friends. For now I have two ten year old boys with me that would love to go rock hounding,  Today I am going up to Oatman, I think they will enjoy that, then head out in search of pretty rocks. Thank's to everyone for your reply's, and good luck with your prospecting and detecting.

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Just now, GotAU? said:

Clay, I did not know that. What constitutes “sovereign land?” and was it set that way to protect the water resource from commercial dredging?

When the western states were created they were granted the beds of navigable rivers. The water is controlled by the feds but the actual soil/rock of the river bed, to the ordinary high water mark, was given to the state in trust for the people of the state. It has nothing to do with commercial dredging.

The state can't sell the river bottom land and it's not part of the income land grants that are managed by the State Land Department for the 13 state land trust beneficiaries. It is known as Arizona State sovereign land to distinguish it from the 9 million acres of trust land grants than can be sold/leased. The beneficiary of the State Sovereign lands are all the people of the State, whether they are citizens or not.

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