Gold & Silver Forum - How I Should Have Spent My Vacation at the Beach

How I Should Have Spent My Vacation at the Beach

By Jack Lifton
22 Aug 2006 at 04:46 PM EDT
DETROIT (ResourceInvestor.com) -- Every small investor dreams of finding a gold mine in his back yard. I�m going to tell you how you can locate, precisely, any one of several beaches, in America where you can visit a gold or platinum metals or chromium or tungsten mine from which you are free to take all of the metal and minerals you can pick up and carry. If you are lucky you may be able to pay for your vacation at the beach with what you find. If you�re very lucky you may just be able to make a profit on your trip. You also should know that the odds of your �winning� several thousand dollars from the beach are much better than the odds for any game in Las Vegas and far superior to your odds of winning a state lottery.
I�m going to answer your first question, �Why don�t the major mining companies exploit these resources if they are so easy to find?� after I tell you all about �Beach Mining.�

It turns out that there has been significant mining activity on the Pacific Ocean beaches of California and Oregon since the 1800s. Activity ran from the mouth of the Columbia River, which is the Oregon/Washington border, all the way south to Ventura County, California. The findings of platinum group metals, or PGMs, appear to run the full length of California northward and well up into, if not through Oregon. The first two counties in Oregon, north of the border with California, have active beach panning for platinum and PGMs, even today (although I don�t hear a lot about it) but there is a simple explanation for that: The private �beach miners� don�t really want everyone to know how well or how poorly they are doing.
To find historically active sites you can look in a listing of California mines, such as Theweekendminer.com, and, starting from the south, take a look at the Pacific Beaches reference in the Ventura County listing of mines. Not only were these beaches mined for gold, but also for platinum and other PGMs. Moving north we find that in Santa Barbara County beaches at Point Sal and Surf Point Sal are noted, again for the platinum and PGMs present.

In San Francisco County the Pacific Beaches citing contains the following: �Gold occurs as fine grains in the black sands on the beach at San Francisco. From 1938 to 1950 gold was produced at the beach by people who used small washing plants. From 1938 to 1941 the recorded production was valued at about $13,000 (370+ troy ounces, today about $140,000). The most productive part of the beach was south of the Fleishhacker Zoo, and the gold was most plentiful immediately after heavy winter storms. Several narrow gold-bearing quartz veins have been found in metamorphic rocks in the general area.�

In Del Norte County, California, I found the following: �Gold and minor platinum have been recovered from the black sand deposits on the beaches south of Crescent City, Del Norte County, starting in the1850s. Most of it was recovered by small-scale methods. Several large-scale operations were attempted in the 1890s and in 1913-1914 but were unsuccessful. As in other beach deposits along the ocean, the gold-bearing black sands were deposited by shore currents and wave action. Most of the gold here was probably derived from the Smith River, which empties into the ocean a few miles to the north, and the Klamath River a few miles to the south.�

Again, from The Weekend Miner database I find �In Curry County, Oregon, the principal localities, named from south to north, were the mouth of Chetco Creek, Ophir Creek, and the mouth of the Pistol River, Gold Beach at the mouth of the Rouge River, Eucher Creek, Port Orford, and Cape Blanco near the mouth of the Sixes River.�

As for Coos County, the next north: �In Coos County the main placer deposits were Brandon at the mouth of the Coquille River, Old Randolph on South Slough, and Coos Bay at the mouth of the Coos River.�
What�s more, this isn�t a �new find�; miners have been working these beaches since 1852. Probably the richest deposits were found south of Coos Bay, but the beaches at Whiskey Run, Cape Blanco, Port Orford and Gold Beach also paid. The platinum metals and the gold are extremely fine, rounded, flat grains from 0.8 to 0.05 millimetres in diameter and from 0.05 to 0.005 millimetre in thickness, but range downward to grains of microscopic size. The ratio of gold to platinum ranged from 100:1 to 160:1. The heavy and semi-heavy minerals on the Port Orford and adjacent beaches were found to be mainly magnetite (an ore of iron), chromite, ilmenite (an ore of titanium), garnet and olivine. Some zircon and monazite (principal ore of the rare earth metals) were also found at Coos Bay.

An interesting comment, as to the origin of PGMs is found in the Oregon, Jackson County listing for Applegate Valley. Here is that citation: �The platinum metals found on the beaches of Oregon and California appear to have originated in bodies of peridotite and serpentinite. The great dike of serpentinite that crops out in the valley of the Applegate River, a north-flowing tributary of the Rouge River, and continues northward may be such a source rock. Platinum was located in the Highland Mine, about 12 miles south of Gold Hill, in the Gold Hill quadrangle, Oregon. This metal was finally traced to bluish quartz that was taken from the 100-foot level of the Gold Hill Mine. The tenor in platinum was 0.32 ounce per tonne of ore. Serpentinite, however, is probably the major source.

�The Applegate River is a northwest-flowing tributary of the Rouge River. Mining was carried on in the Applegate District for years after mining ceased in the Takilma-Waldo Mining District. A non-floating dredge, probably mounted on skids and moved by a caterpillar, was operated on the Applegate River in 1944, and two others were operated in the Applegate drainage. In addition, some mining was in progress on Forest and Poorman Creeks, tributaries of the Applegate River. The following analysis of platinum, made by the Wildberg Smelting and Refining Company of San Francisco, was from an operator on the Applegate River: platinum 29.70%, iridium 31.96%, osmium 25.56%, ruthenium 12.78%, rhodium was not determined and palladium was not found. This is clearly a mixture of osmiridum with ordinary platinum, wherein osmiridum is the major component.�

It is necessary for me to caution those of you already packing their bags that:Many of the beaches are �off-limits� to prospecting. For example, the best area in San Francisco, where gold was most plentiful immediately after heavy winter storms, lies in front of the Fleishhacker Zoo. This is now part of the Golden Gate Recreational Area and mining, panning or metal detecting is not allowed on this beach. It is a section of Ocean Beach.

Before you venture onto a beach to hunt, make sure it is okay. The stretch of black sand of which the rich areas near San Francisco are a part extends for hundreds of miles up the coast, you should be able to find a spot to hunt, and not break any laws.
Now a brief review of how to identify what it is you are looking for. First of all the material you seek is very heavy, which means it has a very high density. But you must be aware that even gold, platinum and osmiridum (a natural alloy of platinum and osmium-the most dense metal known) particles, if small enough, can float because they will be surrounded by air bubbles that give the total mass a density of less than one. I would shake rigorously after you have panned, but before you wash to dislodge air bubbles. Second of all don�t be fooled by colour. As is discussed above the grain size of the precious metals on the beaches tend to be small.

Colour is a large factor in answering the question �why is this precious metal overlooked?� Pure gold, gold copper, gold silver and gold platinum natural alloys range in colour from bright yellow �gold� to a dark pewter colour. Gold and platinum natural alloys with selenium and tellurium and iron range in colour from dark metallic to black! All that glitters is not gold, but all that doesn�t glitter is not always not gold (or platinum)! Look at a site such as mindat.org with a large database of precious metal minerals including colour photographs and print and take copies of species such as tetraferroplatinum and the various precious metal telluride minerals with you to the beach.

Now if I accumulate material that I think contains gold, silver, platinum or any combination thereof, what do I do next? First, I would try to identify it myself visually, gravimetrically, or with one of the chemical test kits for gold and/or silver that are generally available. If you have a large amount of material try and find someone who will let you use a machine like the portable Niton analyzer made by Thermoelectron Corporation, which will identify through a safe technique called X-ray fluorescence all of the Metals discussed in this article without any chemical sample preparation whatsoever. These machines are becoming more and more common with well heeled or dedicated prospectors as well as scrap dealers and steel companies. My advice is to never allow anyone who is interested in buying your material do the only analysis of it for you. Gold does strange things to civilized men and women�s business ethics!

Okay. Now, if you have a quantity of precious metal bearing material to sell what then? This is mainly a question of lot size, I don�t know what the minimum lot size is that they will accept but the most skilled precious metal refiners in California are at Heraeus in southern California. This is a family owned company headquartered in Germany that has been smelting and refining precious metals for more than a century. I will be glad to give further advice on this or any other topic in this article if you contact me by email or at this site.

Finally now we come to the question of why these sources are ignored by the major mining companies. The beaches of California and Oregon are considered to be for public recreational use. As such no state regulatory agency is going to face the heat from recreational and environmental enthusiasts who today would fight tooth and nail to keep large operations from vacuuming beaches and, even if they would consider it, the possibility of an accident and a spill would send shivers down the spines of elected officials. Beach mining is and will remain a recreational activity on America�s west coast. It will therefore remain as a serious opportunity for the little guy to make a buck. By the way, a man I know who is with a major industrial end user told me that the amounts in total of the precious metals recovered by beach miners from America�s west coast top 10,000 troy ounces per year.

If you think that the 10,000 troy ounces per year figure is suspect, remember metals such as the platinum group metals are priced on the margin. That means that if a quantity is not sold through the London Platinum Palladium Market (LPPM), then the market does not care about or recognize the transaction. Material that comes from personally discovered ore, dental scrap and some jewellery scrap is simply not counted by those who make the market in PGMs. Who knows how much material is produced each year?

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