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Placer mining (/ ˈ p l æ s ər /) [1] is the mining of stream bed deposits for minerals. [2] This may be done by open-pit mining or by various surface excavating equipment or tunneling equipment.
Placer mining is an important source of gold, and was the main technique used in the early years of many gold rushes, including the California Gold Rush. Types of placer deposits include alluvium, eluvium, beach placers, aeolian placers and paleo-placers. [2] Placer materials must be both dense and resistant to weathering processes. To ...
"Panning out" ~ Stereoscopic view of print taken by the U.S. Geological and Geographic Survey of the Territories ~ circa 1874–1879 Gold panning is a simple process. Once a suitable placer deposit is located, some alluvial deposits are scooped into a pan, where they are then wetted and loosed from attached soils by soaking, fingering, and aggressive agitation in water.
The mining town of Montgomery in Hoosier Pass had another small placer gold operation in 1911. [10] Two notable placer mines in the Alma mining district are Snowstorm, home of the famous Snowstorm Dredge, and Cincinnati. [10] In 1882, the Alma Placer Mining Company owned roughly 640 acres of placer mines. [11]
Mining Claim Corner, Blue Ribbon Mine, Alaska. A placer claim is a mining claim on gravel or ground from which minerals are extracted using water. [1] In the United States, the valuable mineral in a placer claim is almost always gold, although other nations mine placer deposits of platinum, tin, and diamonds.
Gold panning, or simply panning, is a form of placer mining and traditional mining that extracts gold from a placer deposit using a pan. The process is one of the simplest ways to extract gold, and is popular with geology enthusiasts especially because of its low cost and relative simplicity.
In the most complex placer mining, groups of prospectors would divert the water from an entire river into a sluice alongside the river, and then dig for gold in the newly exposed river bottom. [15] Modern estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey are that some 12 million ounces [ 16 ] (370 t ) of gold were removed in the first five years of the ...
Recreational gold mining and prospecting has become a popular outdoor recreation in a number of countries, including New Zealand (especially in Otago), Australia, South Africa, Wales (at Dolaucothi and in Gwynedd), in Canada and in the United States especially. Recreational mining is often small-scale placer mining but has been challenged for ...