By
Steve Herschbach
The earth has been warming and glaciers retreating for over 15,000 years. Almost everything in the part of Alaska I lived in was recently exposed by glaciers and been prospected the last couple hundred years. Glaciers are nature's bulldozers and they destroy and mix. The gold distribution in glacial material is generally random and sparse. Where water has had time to work glacial deposits new placers can form, but the short geologic time spans we are talking about usually mean small erratic deposits. The good news is that also means you can maybe find a gold nugget just about anywhere in glacial material.
If you watch the video a second time and pay attention to the area that becomes Alaska you will see that Anchorage, on the southern coast, was buried under 3000 feet of ice not too long ago. The interesting part is northern Alaska is largely ice free. This is extremely important. The placers are much older and more extensive in Interior Alaska than in the southern coastal areas.
The northern US was heavily glaciated and much of the material was pushed down from out of the north in Canada. I find glacial terrain interesting because glaciers have melt water running under them and along the edges, which form small oddball placers in the strangest places, and other placers are possible in the large outwash areas.
I am discovering there was a lot more glacial activity in the Sierras than I would have imagined and so this is still very relevant for me prospecting in California.
These links may not be for your exact area but all contain good information about glacial geology and prospecting.
Great freebie article Gold in Kansas
And a small related article at the ICMJ Undiscovered Placer Deposits in Alaska
Really good stuff starting page 117 on Gold Placers of Colorado
Placer Deposits of the Yukon
Geology of Tertiary and Quaternary Gold-Bearing Placers in the Cariboo Region, BC
Here is some really technical stuff for those so inclined Glacial Geology & Prospecting
Glaciers of California
A much more prospector friendly version can be had in an excellent but pricey book by Chuck Lassiter, Midwest Gold Prospecting at http://www.midwestprospector.com/book.html
I have a copy in my library of the best of the best. It is a high quality book with color maps and illustrations and a no-brainer at about half the cost. For $29.95 you have to just love books as much as me as that is as much as the Chris Ralph encyclopedia and this book would be a chapter in Chris book. That said, I have never seen the particular subject of glacial region prospecting covered better and more understandably anywhere else. It would be the go to primer for anyone interested in the subject.
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