Quote:
Originally Posted by Salavee
Red Bullets, on this forum would be a great source of info regarding Gold Panning. Hope he chimes in.
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Thanks for the comment Salavee.
So....
I believe there still is good gold to be found but you have to think outside the box. Like mentioned where the old river beds intersect the NSR is choice. There is such an old river channel that intersects the NSR right in edmonton. Just on the west side of groat road below the old provincial museum. That old river channel runs north towards Villeneuve where the gravel operations yeild several pounds of gold annually(moving thousands of yards). Another old channel is south of Stony plain. Another old river channel intersect is south of Vegreville. The sandbars along the NSR below these old channels that are exposed at low water can have a good amount of color. If you can find the old channel gravels it could be good drifting into the gravels. One fellow mentioned back in the 1940's he was mining a great sandbar below one of the intersecting old channels making a 1/4 ounce a day with a rocker and manual sluice until freeze up. He went back in the spring and the sandbar was gone never to return. High spring waters moved the whole bar.
Geologists believe the heaviest concentrations of gold in the NSR are between South of Stony plain to Ft. Saskatchewan but prospectors do mine all the way
to Lloydminister.
Great examples of thinking outside the box....
-in the early 1900's there was a fellow working a bench half way up the slope on Whitemud creek in Edmonton. He was getting 1/2 ounce a day with a manual rocker and sluice. I believe he was toting the gravel down to the creek bottom to have the water to work with.
(I mentioned this in my tidbit thread but will mention it here)
-A mention of one site that was mined for gold on a flat next to the NSR. There was not much of "drifting" happening on the North Sask river. Drifting was digging a shaft into a bank or a pit down and then drifting off sideways at different levels.
An average sample taken from a river flat underneath which miners had been drifting during winters for many years was assayed in 1896. I believe the
miners worked at the 'drifting' in winter because water levels would have been low and less of a problem. Here in Alberta we don't have permafrost and below 8 feet or so would be unfrozen and minable.
For perspective...
Gold was 20 dollars an ounce in 1896. 150 heaping round mouth shovelfulls in a cubic yard (27 cubic feet). About 1.5 to 1.7 tons in a cubic yard of gravel.
"The first level was 20 feet of surface and subsoil assaying out to 50 cents per ton. The second level was 9 inches of hardpan assaying to nil. The third level was 3 1/2 feet assaying to 2.50 per ton." This assay shows that level 3 at today's prices would be around 150 bucks a ton. A ton is about 100 shovelfuls. At today's gold prices that would be 1.50 per shovelful.
I am aware of a mineral testhole that shows 85 grams (2.8 ounces) of gold per ton close to the NSR upstream of Edmonton. They only problem is there is 85 feet of overburden on it.
I guess without spinning more yarn I would just say that gold is where you find it. Although dredges and hand miners had this river staked for some years they certainly didn't find all the concentrated areas. The dredges worked to 18 feet deep on the river bottom and did chew up lots of shoreline so don't be afraid to look for areas that are not right on the shorelines. During high water and floods gold gets distributed behind tree roots, old fallen logs or grass and moss roots on islands too. Some small pockets of gold might be held on the downstream side of big rocks too. Gold might have been dropped 30 feet above the river on a bench. The flood of 1895 the river rose 43 feet. Later floods and yearly high water redistribute the surface gold constantly. The deeper gold has been sitting, waiting to be found.
I have also found fine gold and black sand in different tributaries miles from where they enter the NSR. These tributaries were a hundred and fifty feet higher than the river bottom level. There was a homesteader my Dad knew that hand mined a tributary of a tributary of the NSR in the 1920's and made good gold.
Good luck prospectors. Hopefully one of the prospectors will post some good results for their efforts.
My best effort on the river was in the 1980's when I found a big old cottonwood log half submerged along a shoreline. That log was there for a long, long time submerged. The log was perpendicular to the shoreline with the upstream side covered in sand. I dug the gravels behind and under the downstream side of the log for one full day and got 10 grams.(1/3rd of an ounce) Moved about 2 yards, about 300 shovelfuls. Hard work.
It is estimated that more than 2000 lbs. of gold has been taken from the NSR since the 1860's. From as far upstream as Drayton Valley to the Sask border. Today, Alberta produces 60 to 75 kgs. of gold annually.
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Again, gold is where you find it.
Gold Panners
This year I built a small rocker box - hoping its a little easier on the back.
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