Geological Situations

There are two common geological situations that many times are the cause of great concentrations of deposits of gold; both are easily visible in topographic maps. The first is where the brooks, creeks, and rivers carrying gold fall steadily in a fairly high slope and suddenly levels at a certain distance. As aforementioned, the reason for these places to be so profitable is because the degree of steepness of the water stream diminishes, the force of the waters lessens during floods caused by storms, which causes considerable amounts of gold to concentrate in the area. This could actually be true to any major change of a slope in any of the water streams that carries gold.

In any part of the map in which the slope has diminished its inclination near a creek or river, the strength of the waters is also diminished in all the area during the great floods caused by storms, and there could be a gold deposit there.

In a topographic map, the degree of inclination of a river or creek can be identified by the contour lines and by noting the division between it. There, where the contour lines of the beds are nearer to each other will indicate that the down stream slope degree of inclination in this part is even steeper, and the stream will be stronger there. In the parts in which the contour lines separate even more will indicate the inclination of the creek is less inclined in this area and during the storm seasons the streams of water will turn much slower allowing the depositing of washed gold.

Some of the best places to locate gold are those in which the degree of inclination falls and stays like that for some distance. The second most common geological situation that continuously and constantly provides and can be easily found in a topographic map is where the canal of a riverbed remains more or less narrow or of a certain width for some distance and suddenly widens turning into a much bigger and widened one. During exaggerated high tide seasons, these larger and wider areas will cause streams to disperse and lessen their strength. N this situation, the best deposits of gold are located where the riverbed opens and stay like that for some distance. Sometimes, the deposits are found at some distance downstream from where the widening starts; this due that sometimes the stream takes longer to slow down its strength so as to let gold to deposit. This also happens in the abrupt changes of inclinations. Sometimes more than one deposit can be found in situations like that, depending in the size of the inclination’s change.  

In a known case, the river will remain narrow for some miles and suddenly open and stay like that for some other miles. Numerous rich deposits were recently found there, with hundreds of ounces of gold that were recovered in a couple of years using suction dredges. The entire area is rich and due to its historical records it was known that it was highly exploited during the late 1800s, being in those times even richer.