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Why Does California Have So Much Gold?


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when steve herschbach moved down to nevada from alaska, the tractor trailer rig hauling his nugget collection overturned in the sierra mountains. wind and rain has spread them all over the place.

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 The  Pacific continental plate is colliding and and scraping against the North American continental plate which has a tendency to crack and break things as evidenced by faults and the creation of the Sierra Nevada mountains. Thus the hot juices from way down deep below us have places to ooze up and bring mineralized  solutions with them. These minerals  seem to like to precipitate out of these solutions when thy are in contact with Quartz- which we have lots of. The Quartz gets beat all to heck by the weather but the gold , being malleable, holds together and makes nuggets. Dang it all!! Where's Chris Ralph when I need Him? 

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and then gravity takes over and it falls downunder to OZ, Crikey KL we`re flogging ya gold. Not to worry PKs 17 mission will bring it back.

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Klunker's description wins, hands down. :biggrin:

However, Nevada has more gold than California and in the last couple hundred years has produced far more. Its just the majority of Nevada gold is hard rock gold in form you cant metal detect or pan. The cause of gold in Nevada is also related to plate collisions.

CA gold was formed more than a mile deep in the earth, but uplift and weathering since then has brought it to the surface. At one time about 80 to 100 years ago, some of the the California gold mines were the deepest mines in the world, so its not all surface gold.

 

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Follow the San Andreas Fault.  There is gold near it in many places.

There are also more faults than this and as Chris said the weather moves it.

Mitchel

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