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Beach Placers
Although there are a lot of different types of placers, one of the major classifications that can be interesting for weekend prospectors are beach placers. Beach placers take place all along the Pacific coast all the way up to Alaska. The richest beach placers to have been found were located in Nome, Alaska, Oregon and northern California. Beach placering is done by using a gold pan or a sluice or any of the known of water concentration techniques.
When beach placers were discovered at first it was generally thought that the gold came from the sea. Although this is somewhat true, almost all of the gold was derived along the coast or further back into the interior. When the beach started to erode, a good amount of the heavier material was carried out to the sea and there it was placered into concentrations due to the action of the waves. Afterwards, the waves just carried the sand with gold back to the beaches.
Even though a good amount of the weekend prospecting that is done on the beach is done on the shoreline, it is possible that the gold diver may be able to strike it big in the shallow off shore areas. It is possible that in the near future, technology will have been made to place these types of deposits at the reach of diving prospectors with portable dredges.
