The gold panning was part of our tour of the El Dorado gold mine which we reached via a ride on a historic narrow gauge railroad. Along the train’s route, we passed through a tunnel in the permafrost. Miners have to dig through permafrost (which remains from the last iceage) to reach the gold-bearing gravel which lies just above the bedrock. Here that involves going down about 100 feet! Early miners built fires to melt the permafrost. Later they ran steam engines and steamed it. We had demonstrations of the old equipment along the train route.
Once we got to the active mine area, we were seated on benches and shown how a modern-day sluice works. First they started the water running from a reservoir up a hill, then using a back-hoe, they dumped gravel into the sluice. It washed the gravel along the trough, through finer and finer screens, tumbling it along the way. The gold sinks to the bottom and is caught on artificial turf pieces which are later washed out.
Then, we were handed a bag of gravel and sat down to do our own panning. It was kind of sissified, but it was real pay dirt and we did pan it and get to keep what we found. Rather than bend over a cold stream, we sat on benches with ledges to rest our arms on and the water was warm. (my kind of gold panning)
Of course, all this fun was followed up with lots of time to browse in their gift shop and enjoy cookies and coffee. We got our gold assayed in there and we put our combined gold into my bracelet. At least that way it can be seen and hopefully won't get lost.
They have found some sizeable nuggets at the El Dorado mine but the big one they had on display was from a few hundred miles away. I can’t remember how many ounces it was, but it’s worth about $70,000! Was it ever heavy!
On a completely different topic, this sign caught my eye. Apparently, the owner of this property is trying to discourage RVs from parking here.
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