7B
THE DAILY ASTORIAN • FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2016
Eureka! New generation of gold miners heads for hills
By MICHAEL CASEY
Associated Press
PLYMOUTH, Vermont —
Al Davis Jr. cracks a smile as
he spots a speck of gold glit-
tering in a plastic pan full of
muck pulled from a Vermont
brook, revealing a gold tooth
made from some earlier inds.
Davis, decked in waders
and wearing a hat festooned
with a tiny bottle illed with
gold lakes, is part of a com-
munity of prospectors who
number around 3,000 in New
England.
Often equipped with little
more than a shovel and a pan,
they can be found knee-deep
in streams and rivers on most
summer weekends in places
like Plymouth; Byron, Maine;
and Bath, New Hampshire.
“There is something magi-
cal about it. You always keep
coming out because you want
to see if you can beat the one
you got,” said Davis, who has
been mining for nearly half a
century. “Can I get one a little
bigger?”
But these days, the rivers
Davis and other aging pros-
pectors once had to themselves
are getting more crowded, they
say, as a younger generation of
miners in the Northeast and
Paciic Northwest gives pros-
pecting a try. Old-timers are
seeing new clubs on Facebook
and people taking gold min-
TIPS OF THE TRADE: HOW TO FIND GOLD
A growing number of people are heading to the
streams and rivers in search of gold. There is
plenty to be had, experts say, but probably not
enough for you to quit your day job.
To find the specks of gold or even a nugget or
two, you will need to the right equipment and
keen sense of where to find it. A few tips from
the experts:
Where to go
There are thousands of places across the
country to go in search of gold. Along with
Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire in the
Northeast, North Carolina and Georgia are
popular with miners in the Southeast, while
California, Utah, Oregon, Nevada and Idaho
are well known out West.
AP Photo/Jim Cole
Chris Hall gets ready to search for gold in the Wild Am-
monoosuc River in Bath, N.H.
ing classes. Some newbies are
turning to mechanized mining
means, raising environmental-
ists’ hackles.
Miners attribute the growth
to people seeking more solace
in the outdoors, to shows like
“Gold Rush” and “Yukon
Gold” that make mining seem
adventurous and proitable,
and to history buffs who want
to trace the Appalachian gold
belt, which stretches from
South Carolina to Nova Sco-
tia and sparked a gold rush in
the 1800s.
Then there was Tropical
Storm Irene, which hit Ver-
mont in 2011. It sparked a gold
frenzy after reports surfaced
that the storm had disgorged
precious metal into streams.
“It was a true gold rush,”
said Nelson Illinski, panning
recently within shouting dis-
tance of Davis on the Buf-
falo Brook in Camp Plymouth
State Park with his wife, Ash-
ley, and their 2-year-old son,
Shane.
Illinski, in many ways, rep-
resents the younger generation
of miners. A mix of rugged out-
doorsman and Brooklyn-style
hipster, the 39-year-old from
Arlington, Vermont, runs a
Facebook page about gold
mining in the state and teaches
a class that has attracted 300
people the past two summers.
“It’s no longer like a hobby
for most of us. It’s become an
To find a good stream, it’s probably worth
joining the Gold Prospectors Association of
America or searching for a mining club on
Facebook in your area. Every few years, the
Gold Prospectors put out a book of all the land
claims that members can prospect for gold.
What to bring
For the beginner, it is advisable to dress for
obsession,” Illinski said. “It
gives you a rush to know that
people have been digging gold
for 200 years and you found a
piece they missed.”
While miners have tra-
ditionally panned for gold,
though, more are turning to
machinery. Tools include
motorized suction dredges that
vacuum up materials on the
river bed and ilter-like sluice
boxes that capture gold and
discard the rest.
wet conditions with many miners wearing hip
boots during the summer and waders in the
fall. You should also bring a pan the size of
a dinner plate, a strainer called a classifier
and sucker bottles to capture the gold. More
serious miners might consider investing in a
suction dredge and sluice box — where legal
— that allows them to process much more
material.
How to strike gold
The first step is finding the right spot in the
river where the gold might collect, such as
a crook in the bedrock, idle pools, log jams,
inside corners of rivers or spaces between
boulders. Then start digging, filling your pan
with gravel.
From there, continuously weed out the bigger
rocks and pebbles. Then, place the pan
underwater and saturate what remains, a
process that allows the lighter material to float
away.
With the pan still underwater, slosh the muddy
mix back and forth. After a few minutes, you
should be left with black sand — hopefully
speckled with flakes of gold.
Concerned about environ-
mental effects, California last
year banned suction dredging.
Oregon in January enacted
a ive-year moratorium on
dredging, and environmental-
ists are pushing for something
similar in Washington. Maine
and Vermont have also put
limits on dredging.
Miners in the Northeast
have mostly made peace with
the current limits. But even
those like Illinski, who traded
his metal detector for a pan
about a decade ago, fear all
miners will eventually get
caught in the kinds of battles
playing out West.
“We worry that the federal
government is going to come
and say you can no longer use
the land for these lands for that
kind of thing,” he said. “That
scares me more than anything
— that all of sudden the land
we pay taxes on, that belongs
to us, will be taken away.”
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