This article will be part 1 of the discussion about my reasoning behind the 4-part Big River Gold Exploration Series. In it I will fill in the gaps and provide my reasons for prospecting this section of river. If you haven’t already watched the videos that make up this series, you can find them all at the bottom of this article. So, let’s begin!!
I’ll start where it always begins for me and where it should begin for everyone, and that is with research! I’d been hearing rumblings of good gold findings at a new site outside the normal historic gold belt in my area. This type of information should pique any prospectors’ ears, because it can put you on the path to awesome gold. With this new information I set off with trying to determine where this new site was. From various bits and pieces of news, maps and other information I was able locate the site.
With the site located I began to dig into the news for information on the strike itself. The main things I was looking for was information on the vein. I.e., its strike, dip, length, width, is it free gold, and is it part of any larger trends. Some of this data was available, like the strike, dip, and overall trends. But some was not and would require me to use other sources to build my hypotheses. With the information gathered, I began to look at what trends the gold mineralization zones may follow. So there ended up being three possible trends that could possibly cross a nearby river. (Rivers here are public ground and open to dredging.)
Gold Trend Zone 1
The first trend is of the vein itself, which runs in a more or less north-south orientation. So, the hope is that this vein, or other veins related to it continue along the north-south trend line and cross the river. This is the area that we investigated in the Big River Gold Exploration Series. The reason we investigated this area first was honestly ease of access to this portion of the river. The boat ramp in this section is within a few hundred yards of where the vein trend potentially crosses the river. And from looking at google earth images it almost looked like there was a north-south anomaly cutting across the river.
The first video in the series is basically a scouting trip. We went out in late winter with the 2.5-inch dredge, to get eyes on the river and see if there is any gold to be found. After all the best indicator for gold is gold! During this time of year, the river was high so we couldn’t dredge the main river channel. However, we were able to dredge in a small feeder creek and pan a cobble bar. Both the 2.5-inch dredge sample in the small creek and the pan sampling of the cobble bar produced a little bit of gold. So, with that we had evidence of at least some gold in the area.
The 2.5-inch dredge produced a little gold in the small feeder creek. But we had an issue with possible contamination of other gold being stuck in the miner’s moss. Since the river was high, we couldn’t tell if the N-S feature that we saw on google earth was a vein or something else. We were also able to match the geology seen in the field to what was on the maps.
Conclusions
With gold having been found, we made plans to come back during warmer weather to dredge the main river channel. In the meantime, I pulled up the geologic maps for this particular area and began making my own map using Lidar in conjunction with the geologic maps. For geologic maps of some of Virginia’s gold bearing areas you can go here: Virginia Gold Documents : The Prospecting Geologist And if your interested Lidar please contact me here: Contact Us! : The Prospecting Geologist Below is a map that I made using Lidar and geologic maps on the free Qgis program. (Welcome to the QGIS project!) Stay tuned for Big River Gold Exploration Discussion: Part 2, next week!
