Yes, Virginia, there is still gold in Colorado streams. I had crossed the rickety bridge over Clear Creek and had set up my sluice box to begin my days gold panning adventure. I had worked this place in the scalding heat when the water frlt wonderful and in the winter when ice sculptures marked the edges of the stream. One particular outcropping that would be an island when the stream was running full had given me some pretty good color so I began working on it. It wasn’t long before I heard a voice behind me.

“What are you doing?” the man asked. He and his college aged daughter had crossed the bridge and were walking toward me.

“Just a little gold panning,” I replied.

“You don’t really mean there is still gold in these streams,” he said.

“See for yourself,” I replied. “Do you have a few minutes? I have a couple of empty pans and would love to show both of you how to pan.”

He looked at his daughter who grinned and indicated that would be fun. I already had a bucket of dirt ready to feed into the sluice so I instead poured the contents into two of my gold pans. Turns out that he was bringing his daughter to Colorado to attend the University of Colorado in Boulder. They had made the drive, with all he goods in tow, from Virginia. I showed them how to carefully work the dirt out of the pan leaving only the “concentrates”, which consists of gold and the heavy black sand that usually accompanies it. Next I took each of their pans and slowly fanned out the black sand to reveal two to three small gold flakes in each pan. I had an extra small bottle to place the gold into and transferred the gold into the bottle, handing it to the daughter who handed it to her dad.

“You’ve got to show this to mom,” she stated. The man thanked me profusely acting as if he had discovered the mother lode.

“Can I pay you?” he asked

“Not at all. You did all the work,” I replied.

“How much is this worth? he asked.

“Bout a quarter,” I replied.

“Not exactly going to get rich, are you?” he laughed.

“Just being out here is plenty of reward, “I replied.

They made their way back to and across the bridge laughing and looking at the small bottle with the gold flakes in it. That was my best day ever. To see someone that excited about their adventure meant more to me that the little smidgen of gold that I would pull out.

On another occasion, a close friend approached me saying that her sister’s family was coming to visit and wondering if we could all go on a gold panning adventure. We determined a day and headed for the Swan River near Breckinridge, Colorado. The Swan was heavily dredged from 1896 to 1943 and the piles of gravel are evident. When the huge shovels of the dredges came through, they scooped up everything down to the bedrock and ran it through trammels that sorted the large rocks out and dumped them over the sides. Next the smaller gravel was run over a sluice where the heavy gold was trapped in riffles made to catch all heavier materials. So why is there anything left? The Swan, as well as the hills around it, contains a lot of clay. Clay binds to the gold, thereby decreasing the weight of the entire “clod”. Thus the ball of clay containing the gold rolled through the sluice box and back into the river. It was these pockets of dried and degraded clay that we would look for.

We started panning close to the base of the gravel bank where the small stream of water ran through. Again, I set up the sluice box and this time we ran several buckets of gravel through. The gold here is very hit or miss since it occurs in those pockets of degraded clay. The color of the dirt attached to the rocks looked promising as it was the same green color as the clay.

I set my friend and her sister and brother in law up with pans, cleaned up the sluice, and divided the concentrates among the three pans. I then worked with them on panning the concentrates down. In this location, the black sand is not as prominent and we were able to pan down pretty quickly. It wasn’t long before I heard a yelp.

“Is this gold?” asked the sister. I went over and checked her pan. Sure enough we had evidently hit one of those hot spots because in her pan was a trail of gold flakes and dust along with a nice quarter inch flake shaped exactly like a railroad spike. That would be a good day and, again, an out of state (Missouri) family would take a little gold home.

There are many more gold panning adventures to tell and I will over the coming months. Suffice to say; you too, can be a gold prospector.

Enjoy your Treasured Pasts

Stuart