Flood Gold Placers

Gold in some cases becomes as fine as flour or more, there are some miners that refer to it as fine gold and it was called flood gold by the old time placer miners. This type of gold is extremely fine, and so much so that it requires 200 to 1000 colors to create a milligram.

Even though it is fine, flood gold is not difficult to recover as long as modern methods are used. However, its deposition does not really go along with the regular ways of the placer mining and this brings about some misunderstanding and in many cases a great deal of work that could have been avoided.

Throughout the flood times of the stream, flood gold is moved down a stream almost similar to silt. Because of its teensyness flood gold can be suspended by the least amount of action going on in the stream and even when the stream has gone back to its standard state a good amount of this flood gold can be suspended or close to the top of the water.

As opposed to the normal deposition of placer gold, flood gold can be deposited at or close to the surface of beaches and sand bars. Even though it is fine, a good amount can be spread across the top of sand concentrated enough to where it can be seen with the bare eye. These are more commonly known of as skim bar deposits by placer miners. All that you have to do is skim the top of the bar.

In the earlier times of western mining, a great number of the deposits were discovered and were worked on by hand and some people decided to set up expensive dredge or sluicing operations but a good number ended in failure since there was just not enough gold left further down.

One way you can notice a skim deposit is that it is at the top or that it is not buried over one or two inches. Another method is to keep in mind that a skim deposit is always between normal levels of water to a high level of water. Due to the fact that these only take place in beach areas or bars, there is not any way of confusing them with crevices that are usually rich traps of gold on top of the water line.

As a stream moves towards its base level it advances at different velocities at different places in both width and depth. As it travels around a curve, divergent forces make it speed up close to the outside of the bend. On the top of the water, it is slowed by friction of air.

Even though a regular observation of the top of a stream might show that the water is traveling at an equal velocity, it is actually not. The kind of physical feature causes a good amount of turmoil on the inside of the curve and the water in fact has a tendency of flowing back close the inside of the base line. Due to the fact that it is so light it can be quickly taken away by the action of the stream, the only deposits that are left are those that were last there.

There are certain areas in which flood gold deposits return in the same place. The South American early miners worked these on, however no other gold was discovered inside the deeper gravel. Flood deposits can take place in a lot of places within the United States but most of all along a 400-mile stretch of the Snake River in Wyoming.