Amazing! -- GOLD in Arizona

GoldCoinLover

Well I happen to live in arizona. About 3 hours away from pheonix. While I was watching the travel channel on directTV, there was a show on called Secrets. Secrets of treasure finding! I was watching one of the shows and people with metal detectors went to some place in arizona a few hours from phoenix (The name of the place started with a V, vulture something), where there were a few historical gold mines. You couldn't take any of the gold, but a tour was only 5 bucks. Either in the same place, or not far away, there was gold rich rocks and dirt. It happened to be the most gold bound area in arizona. These people took metal detectors, and searched the dirt until they heard a solid beep from the metal detector. The veteran of the trip, (who was teaching the other people how to find gold nuggets) earlier found a 2 oz. gold nugget there. It was exciting seeing one of the apprentices find a 1 gram nugget there. It's not much, but I'd love to do something like that!

I don't have a metal detector though, and I'm not sure where this place is located. But it is located away from the public area, so detectors are free to search there.

tincup

Hmmm.... makes me think the area was 'salted' with some gold. A larger size nugget was 'found' by the leader, and one of the others was fortunate enough to find a much smaller sized one. I am skeptical that there is gold to be easily found by this method; if it was really that easy the owner of the land would have found it all already.

Thus it was 'baited' so someone would find some (probably someone who paid the leader a fee to lead them on a 'prospecting' trip). Keeps the customers coming in!

IdahoGal

TWODOGS could tell you all about gold in Arizona.

DaveG

Considering how primitive the mining technology was at the time, you could probably go to any of the old mine sites and pick up some "dirt" that is fairly rich by today's standards.

I've always wanted to go to the mines around Oatman (turn-of-the-century gold rush) and knock off a few pieces of those 50 foot-high hills of mine tailings to see how much gold is left in them.

Weiss

Was it Wickenburg? I believe that's where most of the nugget hunting goes on in AZ.

I've detected for about 8 years. Never had a chance to hunt for nuggets, even though I passed through that area a few years ago. I understand that nugget hunting is a very hot, hot, hot, dry, dusty and very unpleasant type of detecting. But you're right, I'd love to do it

Minelab has a gold detector that will go something like 20 inches deep (2 or 3 times deeper than the typical high-end yard and park detector). But they'll run you a couple $thousand

Minelab GP3000

telecoin

I watched that show last night. It was fascinating! They showed places all over the country where you could look for gold, rubys, opals, fossils and other interesting items. Most of the places are privately owned and you pay a fee for looking. I visited a similar place a couple years ago while vacationing out west. It was in Nebraska...near Crawford, called the High Prairie Homestead. It was a small family-run resort in the badlands (some cabins, restaurant and old buildings). They have about 80 acres that guests are allowed to search for fossils on. I camped there for a couple days and went fossil hunting on the first day. When I arrived back at the resort that afternoon they asked if I had any luck. I reached into my back pack and pulled out a complete skull of a running rhino (about the size of a large dog) that I had chiseled out of a hillside. It still had a lot of rock matrix on it but you could see the teeth and lower jaw clearly. They were amazed and said "nobody's ever found anything like that!". It was about 35 million years old and now sits on a shelf at my house as a great souvenir from the trip. Not too bad considering I only paid $10 to camp out there overnight.

66Tbird

Well there are the Vulture mines and vulture gulch. Been to both and its hot at the moment. Lots of claims that need permission to enter. After a few years of being in that nitch for me it was easier to just buy a nugget. With the travel and permit(claim club) and equipment you could buy a nice nugget. pm me

Anecdotal------ Went with a large group to go nugget "shooting". It was hot and nobody really had much ambition to get out of camp. It was getting on my nerves because I wanted some quiet. So I took my lucky nugget out of my pocket and gave it to my friend and told him to stroll around the hill for a half hour then come back and show everyone the nugget he found over yonder,,,,,,,,hehehe, had the rest of the day in peace and quiet

TWODOGS

In that area there's plenty of gold left. There would be no reason to salt anything. I spend my winters down in that area. I mostly drywash, I get tired of digging up lead and boot nails.