Years ago I panned for gold. Never found anything. I spent a few hours every time I tried, then gave up and caught brookies for supper. Don't bother panning for gold in a river without any good eating fish is what I learned from that.
I did pick up two chunks of rock with gold in them on a job I was doing, it was putting in the cement for the poles of gym equipment. I brought them to the person who was in charge of that project, it was not my gold, I am honest. Well, there might have been maybe a quarter ounce of gold in those two rocks and that was when gold was around three hundred an ounce, I had no interest in digging up the school yard to look for more....I just handed the two rocks over to the person who was in charge of that project. Being two rocks that were not alike were found in that one three foot area around two feet down, I feel someone hauled them there and buried them long ago.
I found lots of rocks with what looked like something dug out of them on our property, a few had silvery metal in there with bendability like gold...maybe white gold possibly. Not much weight wise, but maybe all those pieces that had stuff picked out of them may have had gold. There used to be an old gold mine about a mile or so from here, and there were signs that there were people living on our property...sort of like a campsite or something for native Americans. The Indians said it was probably a ceremonial site when they saw some of the rocks I had found here. Maybe five hundred years ago or so, the style of the artifacts did not match the local tribes here now style of rock grinding, they said it was probably the tribe that lived here before them. The style of stone work was closer to their tribes style.
There are supposedly quite a few old gold mines in this area that date before this area was taken over by the white man. I do not know who they traded the gold too, records here do not show much of the history before the iron mines came here. I talked to one guy who went and looked for gold in a few old mines, he said they are pretty picked out. They did have the Ropes gold mine here up until ten years ago or so, it was here for many years.
Up in the copper country there are old copper mines, got to watch out for those when hunting in the woods up there, most go in at angles not too bad, but you can twist your ankle or tumble into one if you are not looking where you are going. They usually go down at shallow angles, not like the copper mine shaft vents. I guess people chased copper veins down till the copper ran out years ago. Animals use them for dens, mostly coyotes and stuff like that, but I was warned about bears using them too when I was young...stay away from them is what I was told. I never went into those shafts, but did go down into a big mine shaft vent one day with my cousin before they put a fence around it. They go in at slight angles, then go down really quick and people used to die if they fell down into the vent shaft. Lots of copper mines up there some cave ins used to occur when I was young, and also the cave ins caused mine blasts that we heard occasionally, one right behind Soumi college, they stuck cars down into it to plug it up then dumped cement into that one back in the seventies and rebuilt the street again.
We used to walk down the newly paved roads and dig the copper out of the asphalt when I was a kid.
I did pick up two chunks of rock with gold in them on a job I was doing, it was putting in the cement for the poles of gym equipment. I brought them to the person who was in charge of that project, it was not my gold, I am honest. Well, there might have been maybe a quarter ounce of gold in those two rocks and that was when gold was around three hundred an ounce, I had no interest in digging up the school yard to look for more....I just handed the two rocks over to the person who was in charge of that project. Being two rocks that were not alike were found in that one three foot area around two feet down, I feel someone hauled them there and buried them long ago.
I found lots of rocks with what looked like something dug out of them on our property, a few had silvery metal in there with bendability like gold...maybe white gold possibly. Not much weight wise, but maybe all those pieces that had stuff picked out of them may have had gold. There used to be an old gold mine about a mile or so from here, and there were signs that there were people living on our property...sort of like a campsite or something for native Americans. The Indians said it was probably a ceremonial site when they saw some of the rocks I had found here. Maybe five hundred years ago or so, the style of the artifacts did not match the local tribes here now style of rock grinding, they said it was probably the tribe that lived here before them. The style of stone work was closer to their tribes style.
There are supposedly quite a few old gold mines in this area that date before this area was taken over by the white man. I do not know who they traded the gold too, records here do not show much of the history before the iron mines came here. I talked to one guy who went and looked for gold in a few old mines, he said they are pretty picked out. They did have the Ropes gold mine here up until ten years ago or so, it was here for many years.
Up in the copper country there are old copper mines, got to watch out for those when hunting in the woods up there, most go in at angles not too bad, but you can twist your ankle or tumble into one if you are not looking where you are going. They usually go down at shallow angles, not like the copper mine shaft vents. I guess people chased copper veins down till the copper ran out years ago. Animals use them for dens, mostly coyotes and stuff like that, but I was warned about bears using them too when I was young...stay away from them is what I was told. I never went into those shafts, but did go down into a big mine shaft vent one day with my cousin before they put a fence around it. They go in at slight angles, then go down really quick and people used to die if they fell down into the vent shaft. Lots of copper mines up there some cave ins used to occur when I was young, and also the cave ins caused mine blasts that we heard occasionally, one right behind Soumi college, they stuck cars down into it to plug it up then dumped cement into that one back in the seventies and rebuilt the street again.
We used to walk down the newly paved roads and dig the copper out of the asphalt when I was a kid.