As with so many stories from the Old West, the tale of Joaquin Murrieta is a blend of truth and legend that is impossible to completely sort out. If you prefer the older histories by Hubert Howe Bancroft, which were based on the newspaper stories by John Rollin Ridge, Murrieta was a good man treated […]
On January 24, 1848, gold was discovered in California at the site of Sutter’s Mill. It didn’t take long for the word to spread about this, and just a year later in 1849, the California Gold Rush had truly begun. Many Americans quickly found out about the news, and soon enough, this saw relocation to […]
The Yankee Fork Gold Dredge is located in a remote river valley in central Idaho. The nearest town of any size is Stanley, and it’s relatively easy to get to by taking a relatively well-maintained gravel road off of Highway 75. Two historic towns located nearby are Custer and Bonanza, both of which have been […]
A rocker box is an tool that was commonly used during the early gold rush days. They were popular with miners who needed a piece of equipment that they could operate alone and with very little water. Used properly, they work by separating placer gold from the lighter sand and the gravel. There were also […]
Earning a fortune in life has never been easy, however with much focus and determination to succeed, a lot of people have managed to attain good success by being extra vigilant to opportunities when they present themselves. Such was the case in the late 1840s when the rush for gold began. The Yuba River was […]
The first miners to come to the goldfields didn’t have much besides a pick and a pan. During the early days of the gold rush, it was hard, backbreaking manual labor that was needed if a miner wanted to find gold. As the years progressed, new inventions were made that made the extraction of gold […]
The small town of Atlin, British Columbia is the location of one of the most important gold mining centers in Canadian history. While the first discover of gold in the British Columbia region occurred in 1857, it was not until the great Atlin Gold Rush of 1898 did the town grow in popularity thanks to […]
Have you been searching the nearby creeks and rivers around your home in search of placer gold? If you are not located in a known gold mining area, there is a very good chance that you have had no luck in your search. Even after spending countless hours exploring many different areas, you repeatedly come […]
Hydraulic mining was used extensively during the early years of the California Gold Rush and is still done to a lesser extent even today. Within the first few years of the initial discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill, most of gold placers that were easy to workable were already claimed. There were still many areas […]