Orogrande District

The district of Orogrande can be found on the south flank of the Jarilla Mountains in the south part of New Mexico and which is very close to the border of Texas. In order to get to this area, you can go south, from Alamogordo, on highway 70 to highway 54 and drive thirty four or so miles to Orogrande. There are roads that will take you north to where the deposits are located and around half a mile more to the diggings. The placers in this area have been worked on ever since the 1900’s. A great amount of the work that has been done had been on a small scale basis due to the fact that the deposits are in caliche cemented gravels and are not easy to separate. One might consider using a gold detector in this area to find the better spots so as to not waste so much time digging up a lot of empty prospect holes.

There are a number of other areas in New Mexico where prospectors have the opportunity of using a dry washer and a gold detector like the placers for example in the Ortiz Mountains. This is a place where mining has been occurring since the 1820’s. One other interesting and worthwhile area to be investigated is the Pinos Altos Mountains. There are people that continue to find gold in these mountains until this day. The Bayard area that is close to Silver City is an appealing place as well given that a lot of the gulches here contain gold in them.