Speaking Of Tailing Piles . . .

[BMc]

Sometime in the mid to late 1990’s, I read an article in Western & Eastern Treasures about the tailing/dredge spoil piles in Murray, Idaho left over from the dredging of Prichard creek. The focus of the article was about how the rock/gravel from the tailing piles were being used to build a road to Wallace, ID, a distance of about 19 miles, and how good sized gold nuggets had been found by detecting the unfinished roadway. Seems that an experienced metal detecting couple from Arizona was on vacation and had been driving through the area when they noticed dump trucks carrying loads of gravel from the miles long tailing piles and depositing the gravel in the roadway which was then being flattened by a compaction road roller.

Over the weekend when the road crew was not working, the couple proceeded to metal detect a stretch of the newly graveled roadway under construction and apparently did quite well.

I happened to be visiting Murray, ID sometime later and, although the roadway was finished and paved, miles of the tailing piles, (as shown in the post card photo), still remained. I spent several fruitless hours pi$$ing in the wind, trying to detect some of those piles without any success. The detecting part went fine. The recovery, not so much. As has previously been mentioned on the forum, detecting in loose spoil piles of that magnitude was literally impossible. It was almost like trying to dig in a pile of jelly beans. I tried using a GB-2 with a 14” coil and a ML 2200d. I could only excavate to a depth of several inches before the gravel sides would collapse. Starting over just led to the same result every time.

Eventually I gave up and drove over the newly constructed road into Wallace where I stopped at a local pawn/prospecting shop. I told the store owner what I had been trying to do and his face lit up with excitement! He asked if I would like to see some of the nuggets the Arizona couple had found? He then went into his safe, pulled out a few trays of nuggets and sat them on the counter. The biggest nugget was quite a bit larger than a silver dollar in diameter and flattened out to about ¼ inch thick. It appeared to be solid gold, as were the rest of the numerous nuggets in the collection. All were flattened to some extent but none were very thin. We both had a good chuckle over the daring and audacity of the AZ detectorists and wondered how many more nuggets they had found.

Finally, I thanked the exuberant storekeeper and drove the road back to Murray with renewed interest. To this day, I sometimes still wonder how many gold nuggets there must be underneath that 19 miles of asphalt.

27-29 oz

[Hobo]

I hunted those dredge piles back in the late 1980$ before they buried them under the road. I was using the original Gold Bug, dug a lot of iron but found a good amount of gold

[Valens Legacy]

So we do have roads made of gold here in the USA.

Someday I will have to go there and carry a big pick with me.

[geof_junk]

51 minutes ago, Valens Legacy said:

So we do have roads made of gold here in the USA.

 We do have them in Aust too. Back in 1980 Carol and I detected a road that was made from a deep lead tailings. Gold was found but 1980 VLF Tec knowledge and ferrous junk made it very hard to get small bits of gold out of the hard packed road and prevent vandalism of the road.  

[Gerry in Idaho]

Yes those roads did produce some amazing gold finds.

Steve B and another gentleman from ID that I know of, both found good gold there.  Funny as Idaho is my home, I've yet to wander that far North.

[dig4gold]

On 11/10/2023 at 7:49 AM, Gerry in Idaho said:

Yes those roads did produce some amazing gold finds.

Steve B and another gentleman from ID that I know of, both found good gold there.  Funny as Idaho is my home, I've yet to wander that far North.

Best you do then... I am sure you would come back with a whopper stuck in your gob. 🙂

D4G