Flood Gold

A large percentage of gold found at present in rivers and creeks have been swept towards them from bench deposits eroded due to storms and weather. Even now, gold continues to deposit in the same way, even in microscopic sizes.

While bigger the gold pieces, major the strength of water should be needed to move it down stream to a riverbed. The amount of strength that takes to move a considerable amount of gold within a river is generally enough to also move the bed. This would allow gold to drain quickly to the bedrock in which it will remain trapped in its various irregularities.

Some beds keep high quality minerals which harden in time.

Sometimes a storm will have enough strength so as to move large amounts of gold, but will only move a small part of the total bed leaving the lower strata in its place in some occasions. When this happens, gold that is being moved at the bottom of the flooded layer can stay trapped in the irregularities in the layers of the unmovable bed (false bedrock) that rests at the bottom. Rocks of the lower strata can act as natural traps of gold.

The different layers of a bed, originated by floods caused by storms, are called “flood layers.” If there are flood layers in the bed of a creek will be easily distinguished due to the fact that they are usually of different color, consistence and hardness than those layers of materials of the same. Gold found at the bottom or through a flood layer is many times referred as “flood gold” Sometimes the bottom of the flood layer will substantially have more gold than that which one would find in bedrock. Sometimes, when there is more than one flood layer in a creek bed, there will also be more than one flood gold layer in it.

While larger the piece of gold, the faster it will introduce itself in the lower layers of the existing material during the flood caused by storms that take them down stream. The smaller pieces of gold could not be able to do the same, and would stay on top with the material.  Thus, one could find a flood layer that could contain a line of heavier pieces of gold through its inner cutting edge of the curves, or a flood layer that has a great amount of fine gold disperse all over its layer. Also, one can find a flood layer that has both.

Not all flood layers have enough gold so as to be profitable for small scale gold-seekers. But all the flood layers seem to have certain amount of gold, even if microscopic.

Some of the best places to analyze the amount of profitable flood gold is where the creeks or rivers widen, level or changes the direction of its flux. Such places make the stream to calm during a storm allowing the concentrations of flood gold to join.