On Friday May the 28th at 9 am my CAD students and the Geology students went on a field drip to Dahlonega Georgia, 17 of them went on the trip in three vans (one cargo van used just for equipment). This is the area of the first gold rush in the US around 1829. We were going as a result of an invitation from the Geology class and professor. They invited us to go because we had made some equipment for them. The CAD students had designed and built a 3” suction gold dredge, three 36” sluices, a high banker, a Dry Washer(didn’t take the dry washer on this trip), 10 classifying screen sets of two sizes, and several sizes of bottom looking spy glasses for the geology department. Everything was made by them except for the hardware and the bending of some parts.
Needless to say we had a blast! The students toured a 200 foot deep mine (the Consolidated), went to the largest working stamp mill east of the Mississippi, panned Gold at two mines sites, located and explored two old mines from the 1830s, toured the Gold museum, and last but not least set up the equipment on land leased by the Weekend Gold Miners Prospecting Club Inc. P.O. Box 910. Dahlonega, GA 30533 (770) 531-9346, some really great people whose group belongs to the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA).
The students had some real professionals evaluate their equipment; the prospectors praised them for their good designs and suggested improvements to help some things work better. They were surprised to find that the students had built their dredge for less than $500 and it did the job of one costing between $4,000 and $5,000. It was so good to see these wonderful people sharing their knowledge and expertise with young people (and a couple of older ones). I cannot say enough about the great time we had that day. “River Rat” John (been prospecting for over 30 years) made an appearance and demoed the hookah and heat equipped wet suit and dredge he used, he also showed us gold in the natural state in some Smokey Quartz specimen rock. Someone had broken it and discarded it; he noticed it and saw the gold in it! He asked me to check it out with the H3 and I did, he was very excited. I got a kick out of showing these professionals my H3 and let me tell you they were impressed! His daughter Star worked with our high banker group, which was the most successful, obtaining between ¼ and ½ ounce of gold! Benny, the president of the Weekend Gold Miners Prospecting Club Inc., arranged this great experience, and kept the students informed of everything from the plants, tress, and critters, to the bugs to watch out for. He really was a character, had the miners beard down to his chest, the floppy Australian bush hat, and rolled his own cigarettes!
There is so much gold there that even the bricks in the old courthouse (now the Gold mining museum) have gold in them! A local man told us that a few years ago a guy found a nugget that sold for over $900,000! I just needed a little more time and we could probably have found some bigger stuff, but the trip was for panning and the are we panned was not known for nuggets, but a lot of free gold that had been worn down to very small grains in size.
Now for the part you have been waiting for! Yes I took my H3! I cannot say too much except that the Geology Professor had me check out a couple of places that would astound you! The H3 confirmed her expectations (around 40 years experience) and we plotted an incredible area with her directing where to scan…she was so right on it is scary! Got to keep this kind of close to the chest so to speak. I can say that we also found a lot of gold bearing rocks, haven’t crushed them yet, but the H3 locked on to them pretty tight. We also picked up some rocks that had significantly weird formations that excited the professor. When we finally let the students see what the H3 could do, there was a very long silence, then a lot of excitement! Students were watching as I indicated which rocks had gold in them, they would pick them up, hold them out, and I would scan them from 6-10 feet away and confirm that they had found the one we were indicating in the scan! We did this in a park and picked up a bucket full of gold bearing rocks! (It was permissible to pan in the stream). We did it on the panning site too. The evening before we left some of us were just exploring some places for the next trip and I had two really great hits in the same creek that the guy found the big nugget in! We didn’t have our digging equipment or clothes so those two will have to wait until next year….well, maybe not!
We had a great time and arrived back at the campus on Monday around 8 PM! The H3 proved itsself again!
