Faults and Outcrops

Faults are areas where the tension of the young mountain gets to be so great that part of the ground has been pulled away or has slipped over the rest and it creates a long line that looks like a scar on the mountain. One of the greatest fault lines, such as the San Andreas Fault was first identified in Northern California by a UC Berkeley geology professor named Andrew Lawson in 1895 and it was named by him after a small lake which is in a linear valley shaped by the fault right on the south of San Francisco, the Laguna de San Andreas. After the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake, Lawson was the one who also discovered that the San Andreas Fault stretched out well southward into Southern California. These types of faults are easy to discover if you are aware of what they look like. Another type of geological evidence of past geologic activity is “outcrops”. Outcrop is a geological term referring to the outer shell of bedrock or surface deposits uncovered at the exterior of the Earth. In most places the bedrock or superficial deposits are sheltered by a layer of soil and vegetation and cannot be seen or looked at closely. Nevertheless in places where the overlying cover is detached due to erosion, the rock may be exposed, or it might crop out. Such exposure will take place most regularly in areas where erosion is speedy and goes beyond the weathering rate such as on steep hillsides, riverbanks, or tectonically active areas. Bedrock and superficial deposits may possibly also be uncovered at the earth's surface because of human excavations such as quarrying and building of transport routes. In other words outcrops are basically places where the underlying rock has been spurted upwards through the softer earth and then firmed itself there. The result of this gives a meadow or field of normal soil a look of a blemish with monoliths and low ridges of solid rock. These are lines along the side ok a hillside that changes suddenly, such as if you had just closed a zipper. Therefore finding faults or outcrops is one way that the locals can help you to find what you are looking for if you ask them. Most people will not have a problem pointing these out to you as they are evidence of earthquakes and are usually more than happy to point them out.

A gold prospector will be glad to find out that the fault lines and outcrops are important because pressures allow minerals to be shot into the rip that is caused in the earth. This means that fault lines are usually good indicators of where you can find gold. The regular processes of wearing away might wipe away the seeable evidences of the vein on the earth but this wearing away might also wash the gold away from the surface of the vein down into a stream that is below. Therefore if you are looking for gold you should look for it below the fault in a place where you think it possible the rain might wash the gold. If you do find any evidence of gold, you can then work your way up to the fault and go into it. Prospecting for gold is somewhat like playing detective work. The traces of gold that you might find in your pan are not the important issue they are only signs and indications. This means that they point out where the gold is, which might be in an exposed vein or a rich pocket in the earth. And just like with anything that needs to be investigated, it takes a lot of knowledge on the subject as well as thinking and planning as this will help to make the job a lot easier.

The basic rules of gold prospecting are easy to learn though and they consist of: The gold comes to the top in the upward thrust of the mountains. It is then washed down to the seas and since it is very heavy, it settles itself to the bottom of the wash wherever the current is not strong enough to drag it along. A knowledgeable gold prospector will be lead into action when he or she finds or picks out areas along a stream where the current slows down a bit or where it changes directions. This can be found in the inside bend of a stream for example, the upstream side of a sandbar, the banks of a stream where the water is subsiding etc. The same thing can be used and applied to dry country, in places where the river is no longer there but its outline can still be seen and still remains. Remember that the dessert is not always dry all throughout the year. The desert does have rain and when it does rain the water pulls down the channels in an incredible downpour. When this type of rain has finished, a gold prospector can look along the dry banks as if the water were still there; this can be done by thinking about how the heavy gold could be carried along in it. Another place that can be look into is in the middle of the former stream where most likely the bigger and heavier bits of gold were carried out into and then settled down once the water disappeared.