Is there still Gold Left?

The answer to this question is definitely yes! Studies have been made that indicate that there is most likely more gold that remains in the earth than the gold that has already been taken out. California is a very popular place when it comes to gold. One of the main reasons for this is due to all the placer deposits and this is something that is definitely encouraging for likely prospectors.

For those that do not know it is often quite surprising to find out that a lot of stream placers are continually replacing themselves. We will explain how this happens further on but a little explanation on the matter will help you see without a doubt that there is still a good amount of gold to be recovered.

One of the best examples is the Mother Lode in California. In the past this place used to have a great many streams and rivers that were concentrating gold before man came along and took it. When the Sierra mountain chain came about due to the upward thrust of the mountain, the rivers were all over the place. Different rivers ands streams have formed and these cut directly across the stream beds of the previous rivers.

The stream beds of these ancient rivers used to have a lot of gold that had gotten accumulated over centuries and the new rivers began to carry the gold down to lower elevations and the gold then became concentrated on bars and close to bedrock. Obviously over some amount of time (centuries in this case) a great amount of gold could be collected and this was exactly what the 49ers during the gold rush found in California.

After only a few years the placers that had been found had been worked out and the miner that wanted to continue living off of this type of work was required to find a new spot and then the lodes and Tertiary river channels were found and discovered. Because of the economic and legal problems that caused hydraulic mines to close down in the 1880’s, the huge Tertiary river channel and the reserve of low grade gold deposits are no longer worked on by people except by nature itself. Every time rain falls or every time snow melts it causes the gold to be washed down to a lower level than the one it was in and become concentrated in streams and rivers.