Mining History of Placer Gold

The placer gold mining that has taken place in the United States has been being done for around two centuries now. The first known of mining record occurred in the east part of the United States and mainly around the south Appalachian region at the ending of the 1700’s and at the beginnings of the 1800’s, however the rich deposits became exhausted very rapidly and then gold was discovered in the west area of the country. The first production of gold was located in the Old and New placer Diggings located close to Golden in Santa Fe County, in New Mexico. These deposits started being worked on since 1828. there were some other deposits that were mined in the following years until James Marshall’s discovery of a nugget that was the size of a dime in the tailrace of Sutter’s Mill started this frenzy. A man named Sam Brannan was the one that announced that gold had been found in the American River and showed a bottle full of gold nuggets. James Marshall found a gold nugget that had the size of a dime in the tailrace of Sutter’s Mill. This is when the gold rush of the 49’ers began. Given the enticement and thrill of gold mining during this time, many miners and prospectors traveled all over the west, and in following years a number of other rich placer deposits were found. A lot of the deposits in California, which is the main gold producing state, have been mined on a large scale and continued until the 1950’s. There are many streams that gully the rich Mother Lode, such as Calaveras, Mokelumne, Consumnes, American, and the Yuba River etc, still have a good amount of gold in their gravels. Besides this, in the Tertiary gravels, placers occur in the leftovers of the previous erosion successions and in the same areas.