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Gold panning is once again gaining popularity among the masses and for good reason too. Gold until recently while considered a precious metal was more or less looked at as a relic of things past but with the doubling of its price on the international market it has become a hot item again for the avid gold digger and gold panning has therefore become vogue once again. So what is gold panning and what does it entail? Well gold panning or gold prospecting (also called placer mining) is the operation of going equipped with a gold pan or other gold panning equipment to find the gold sitting hidden in the rocks and or in streambeds in order to get enough gold dust or nuggets together to make a nice little profit. Since the second part of the 20th and 21st centuries the term gold prospector or gold panning is more generally used to describe spare time gold hunting preformed by individuals, especially in streams and usually on the basis of no given authority, although in some cases it is required to have prior permission before searching and hunting for gold. Many of the famous and profitable gold panning sites and alluvial deposits were pretty much cleaned out by 1860, however the good news for those interested in gold panning is that since 1860, many ecological changes have taken place. Floods, earthquakes, drought, freezing temperatures, and mudslides have exposed many new veins. Gold panning is also often referred to as placer mining. Placer mining refers to the mining of alluvial deposits for gold as in the case of gold panning. The name placer comes from the Spanish word meaning sand bank and refers generally to precious metal deposits, most often gold, found in alluvial deposits, which are deposits of sand and gravel found in all modern or ancient stream beds. Profitable gold panning deposits are being added to every day and it's only been most recently that geologists have confirmed that the majority of the gold available in the world is still out there waiting for the intrepid gold panning enthusiast. So grab your gold pan and a good map of the local waterways in your area and get to work gold panning and you just make strike rich on a nice vein that has recently been exposed with all these extreme weather conditions that we have been having as any change in rain fall effects the flow of the river ways and any change there can be a direct boon for the gold panning enthusiast. |
