Continued................(April, 2011)

This whole area is about Gold Hunting.  I am doing some prospecting by working with my son and his friend sometimes on BLM land.  That is Bureau of Land Management.  It is located on a mining district  of the BLM named after a person with the last name of Weaver.  He works with a wet sluice.(There are dry ones also.)  The sluice has a mat on the bottom then metal dividers and a screen at the top part.  The sluice shakes the dirt down or in this case, the water washes down the sluice, pushing rocks and dirt alike, washing it along and out  The gold is very heavy and drops to the bottom of the sluice and gets caught in the fiber of the mat and stays there.  At the end of the day, the sluice is washed out, the you pan what is left in the sluice.  The gold appears in black sand and you pick out the gold with tweezers (if you are lucky to find a small nugget)or pick up smaller pieces out with an eye dropper with water in it.   The gold really stands out against the black sand background.