Gold Veins and Lodes

Generally, gold is associated with quartz, however, quartz is not always associated with gold due to many quartz veins that do not contain gold, or at least not enough so that one would decide to exploit it waiting to benefit from it.

Veins that contain valuable minerals are called “lodes.” “Ore” has been defined as any other deposit of rocks from which one can benefit from the extraction of minerals and valuable metals. In order to exploit a valuable lode when found ore is generally blown up away from the vein and crushed until obtaining a fine dust from which gold, silver and other valuable minerals can be extracted through endless mechanical and chemical processes.   

All this process is called “lode mining” or “hard rock mining.” Millions of years have passed since lodes were formed, a time in which a great amount of deterioration caused by heat and cold, animals and vegetation, wind and rain, snow and ice, glaciers, and the resulting disaster; tremors, and tide changes so big that would reach the 800 feet height; each one due to the nearby rotation of the moon around the Earth during an early period. So, after the rich seams were formed, a great deal of disturbances and erosions took place, which washed out many of the rich mineral lodes out of the Rocky Mountains towards the river and creek systems that flowed in those times.

The strong and steady flux of water through a water-active creates continuous movements of material on the basin, causing a natural distribution of the different materials due to the different weighs, sizes and setting. Gold tends to be deposited in the various common locations in which the heaviest materials have been trapped, although it is extremely heavy in relation to other materials found at the bottom of the basin. Deposits of gold and other valuable materials that have been swept from their original lodes and re-deposited by water on the streambeds called “placer deposits”.

Finding and recovering gold placer deposits requires the understanding of where do these heavy sediments while they are transported by the force of water.

Gold coming directly from a lode is a crystal structure, and are generally called “rough gold” due to the roughness of the surface. Once it is swept of the original lode and after being taken by the force of nature, gold tends to be hit until becoming flat and with the rubbing to be plain. Many times an experienced gold seeker has a very good idea of how far a piece of gold has covered since its lode, this by the degree of roughness of its surface.