The best places to search for placer gold are areas which began the development of laying gold in mixed aggregate upon the land.
ALLUVIAL PLACERS were formed by water movement and deposited in concentrated settlements such as; FAN DEPOSITS form at the exit of canyons, gulches, ravines, streams, rivers and water-runs where such watercourses have reached a level exit point after surging its way for some distance. Usually these deposits are cone-shaped, and are concentrated with multiple stream channels, terrace and bench gravels intennroven with gravel aggregate and cobble masses.
TERRACE, BENCH and CHANNEL PLACERS are ancient remnants of pre-aged stream courses of floodplain and fan deposits where the land had risen higher than the normal water flow and deposits were massed at these points over considerable periods of time where ganged debris forced those masses into leveling off.
ANCIENT DEPOSITS were formed over long periods of time and were created by many movements of the land through volcanic, lava deposits, geological basalt formations and the uplifting of ground masses. Each in eons, eroded away those minerals and redistributed over many times into different settling riffles and basins.
FLOODPLAIN PLACERS are the result of very ancient deposits of gravel debris formed by violent action from monstrous pre-age river courses that reached a leveling-off of travel. Depositing successive layer upon layer of gravel aggregate where the water-course was influenced by change of the environment and deposited its charge over an extended period of time.
RIVER and STREAM DEPOSITS are formed in the watercourse channel, moving the gravels and sifting the lighter materials to newer riffle location leaving the heavier material to settle proportionately to its weight governed by gravity drop onto the bedrock and into cracks, crevices, fissures and bedrock dips. GULCH PLACERS are the result of erosion by natural forces in dry areas from the adjacent hillsides into settling riffles and natural bedrock recessions. GLACIAL STREAM PLACERS are the residue deposited in moraines by ice movement, glacial cutting and glacial melting producing forceful water action that sorted out the placer gold gravel by weight and gravity.
BEACH and MARINE PLACERS are formed by ancient water movement that carried placer minerals into a body of water by rivers and stream courses that had traveled through heavily mineralized country-side eroding as it flowed over a long period of time and deposited the aggregate at the mouth of those ancient waterways.
SMOKERS are ancient expulsions from undersea volcanic action, forming craterlike debris of highly mineralized mineral content erupted from huge depths of the earth. Once the land was covered by immense oceans, then they dried up, and with each time-period those oceans reappeared repeating the ancient volcanic activity by creating mineralized smokers. Ancient defunct smokers can be found on the land in the back-country where once lay humungus oceans.
Reading the lay of the land and imagining how those ancient oceans, seas and rivers coursed over the surface depositing its eroded placer gravel aggregate will help the searcher to achieve success in their gold nugget search. Looking for placer gold that was deposited in cracks, fissures. breaks in the bedrock and bedrock ridges at the bottom of the rivers, streams and water-courses. Look for placer gold at the dip in the rise and fall of the bedrock, on the downside of boulders, rocks and bedrock ridges.
Check in the potholes, gravel bars and aggregate gravel ganged sections below areas where the water-flow has scoured the streambed to bedrock level. Gravel and debris bars that have been formed on the inside bend of the watercourse, and gravel bars that were deposited and laid down where a stream or river levels out below a fast-moving area of a channel. Look for gold placer down stream and opposite to where the stream course enters the main, (most generally a sand bar with cobble aggregate will have been formed down stream at close proximately to the point of entry.) Gravity proportionate to placer gold weight distributes gold at different levels of gravel depth and at different stretches of bedrock from where the gold enters the main flow of the stream course or river-run. Gold nuggets travel until an obstruction is met and alters its travel by boulders, tree roots, dip in the bedrock, rise and fall of the river's ganged rock ridges. Seasonal rains and snow melt-off erode the land and separate the gold from its rock host, depositing the gold particles and nuggets into the nearest flow of water and settling at the most prominent obstruction.
Violent thunder storms tear at the land sending its gathered debris gushing into the nearest river separating its charge into segregated sizes and shapes by weight of the eroded gold placer nuggets. After every heavy rain, new gold placer is placed into riffle areas of the nearest river. The renewing of the land and filling of the rivers from those thunder storms are a constant seasonal re-birth of the country side, refreshing, re-building and re-developing the topography.
