What to Look for to Find GOLD at Abandoned Mine Sites

hey guys it's your favorite Gold Miner prospector and geologist Jeff Williams and today I got you out in the heart of Arizona and I'm going to take you around some of the older mining districts and show you what you should be looking for if you want to get out there and try to find gold on your own that the old-timers left behind I want to tell you about these things they're called teddy bear or Trolla cactuses now a lot of you guys know about these things but there's a lot of people out there that don't know about these things these are extremely dangerous don't even come close to them and if you see patches of them in the hillsides don't go near them they drop off these little round balls that are just filled with these barbs and the barbs have got hooks on the end of them and if you get them in your clothing your shoes you're going to have a heck of a time getting them out and if you get them in your skin you're going to need pliers to pull them out and if you fall in one of these things they're going to have to mediflight you out these things might look cuddly like a teddy bear but I can tell you they're far from it all right now the first thing you should do is you should look for the old gold mining districts USGS reports on Google before you head out that's the first thing anybody should do and look around and see which one's closest to your area find out the type of gold they were Mining and what it was traveling in this will give you a leg up then you get boots on the ground and you say hey I know exactly what they were mining in and this is a good example look I got a cut right here see this cut I know it don't look like much but it's a cut and I've got quartz in the Rock see the quartz on the ground and I've got an active gold mine on the hill this is a perfect area and according to my my research they were pulling out freemill gold so this is the area that I want to check and look at this look look look see that that's a starter shaft see that they were going to start dropping this shaft down see that and what are they hunting they're hunting this quartz ban right here you see it it's not much but if they were chasing it that means there must be value in it now like I said earlier make sure that the district that you're looking up says that it's freemale gold with very little to no sulfides you don't want sulfides because those can be a pain in the butt cuz you got to roast them and you don't want to do that and you want to know what the gang material is usually it's quartz but it could be anything like Limonite or calite and when you get out to the district you're going to look for the old workings like these this is perfect that's called an aostra you see it this is what they use to Mill The Ore It's A Primitive Mill kind of like a chilian mill a lot of times they would drag rocks around on top of these rocks they would fill this thing up with water and mercury and then they would put the ore in there and let the Rocks grind it all up and the way that they would get this thing to run is you could have a horse or Manpower or sometimes you'll see where they use an old differential up here and then they'll power it by some crude one-cylinder two-cylinder engine or even steam powered but when you find these things you know you're on a winter cuz they only used these things where they had free meal gold and that the gold was easy enough to get out of Rock by simple crude methods of grinding like this now when you find this kind of thing what you want to do is first of all don't destroy it but look in the cracks look down in here yeah because if there's any gold or amalgam left it's going to be stuck down in these cracks you can see where somebody's already cleaned out this crack right here but the people who built this they cemented it all together you see that because they didn't want any of that amalgam to get down in there where they couldn't get it back out so this is where you need to be backpacking and sweeping and trying to get whatever material you can out of there now we're going to go ahead and sweep some of this material out and then I'll pan it out later and see if there's any gold in it but like I said don't destroy them but you can clean them out these are always a good sign and also look for an area where they were dumping out their tailings because a lot of times they didn't get all the gold out of it and there might be gold left behind and not only that but the color of the tailings will indicate the type of ore that you should be looking for and look at this bowl that I got right here see that I'm going to say that's a Mercury trap Bowl going to clean him out too now for you folks out there that don't know what amalgam is in the old days the oldtimers would use mercury because gold when it's really clean fresh out of the rock will stick beautifully to Mercury they have an affinity for each other so when they do stick together they make this cottage cheese silvery paste we call that amalgam and when you want to get your gold out of that you put it in a retort and you heat the Mercury and the Mercury will evaporate off of that gold and leave a sponge behind of course it's very dangerous and I don't recommend it unless you know what you're doing take a look at this this looks like where they were living yeah miners quarters ooo this is a big cabin too holy cow oh and I got some more quartz vean up there on on the back of their wall Rock and they might even have a stack of low grade up here see where they're driving this little tiny drift in right here to get up in the this material see all this altered material here we're standing on top of andesite and this andesite has been altered see that and that is what got them excited and they found little stringers of quartz see this and it looks like they had buildings up here tooo see the foundations oh yeah they were looking into here too see that falling a hanging wall I got a shaft there yeah you can see the red alteration zone right there now these are perfect sample them a lot of times if it wasn't high grade enough they walked away from it but it might be high grade for you because if it's over 1 o per ton that mine will pay for itself For You especially when gold prices are at $2,300 an ounce and they there's that big old mine on the hill they're going to take that entire Mountain you can see their Heap Leach pad right there it looks like they're building a pyramid but they're not and all that is very low grade ore and they're sprinkling it with sodium cyanide and water and it percolates through dissolves the gold like water and sugar runs to the bottom of an impervious pad you can see it on the bottom there that black pad then they suck it all up and then they run it into the mill now in the old days they'd use a marrow Crow process to get the gold out of that cyanide but today they use activated carbon to get that darn thing out and then after that they do Electro wieding that way they can get 99.9% pure on that gold am I missing anything nothing that I can see okay hey let's load up because I got to go see some more mines and I know you got to see some more mines but I'm not going to do anything until you smash that like button SM it hard ooh and look what I found here foundations oh that means that what they have a mine here that is so cool look at that nice it's kind of weird though there's no wood in the middle and I've got a mine dump right over there and look at that I've brought my friends with me too are you hungry it's beep jerky he doesn't like that's so pretty that's so pretty and here I've got this concrete slab probably a assay lab was here of some kind probably a forge to sharpen the bits but we're going to head up to that add it and I'm going to take some samples from there too and if it's open we'll take a look around now all this rock you see here and a site and where did it come from that huge volcanic neck right there plug and for some reason they wanted to drive right directly into it and I can see prospects all over the hill they probably had some kind of a compressor sitting here to support the mind for the drills look at that gobbing on the wall isn't that beautiful beautiful gobbing work see that oh that's nice oh somebody's pants dropped them pants boy oh Drake's from Louisiana he knows all about dropping pants oh man it stinks in there all right I'm sending Drake in he he's oh yeah he says he wants to get wet wait and yeah you're going to get wet all right well burs have been using it for a watering hole so it's uh got a lot of activity in here and it smells terrible keep an eye out what is that her little friends look at all the water this is right where they're coming to water but it goes back there ways we could make it without getting wet but it just keeps going more [Music] water ew wow look at this size of that volcanic neck huge and somebody climbed all the way up here to prospect it looks like whoever was up here saw the andesite you can see all the ficis in there alkal spel bars all that but look you can see a little bit of red mineralization in it so they must have climbed all the way up here because of that right there those guys were tough as Nails I can't even imagine it think about it you got a box I blasting caps some hand steel and a 5 lb sledge and you're coming up here cuz you saw some red in the Rock that's just plain old nasty andesite nothing special about that but I do see some red little bit of red I don't see a lot of inclusions in it but we're going to find out now this makes sense I've got andesite here and then look what is this that's rly right there that's rly so I've got exposures and dkes cutting through this andesite of riy that's why they're here cuz riy has gold in it or it's very known to carry gold I should say now that makes sense what a yeah they cut this in riy and we're in about maybe 30 ft you can see had a blast there blast there there there there and there you can obviously tell that they're blasting this line right here and they're trying to get into this mineralization you see see all the Reds in there hydrothermal fluids once again have permeated the rock look at that maybe that but that's not enough to get excited all right you guys see what I see yes I know it's kichi but look where it's hitting that's right see the contact Zone Isn't that cool right here that's your contact Zone and that is a good place to sample for gold because all this stuff look Bam Bam got smashed right into this whoosh and then if there's any gold it's going to be collected down here at the very lowest point so right in here be a nice place to sample for gold right in through there on top of all this andesite Bedrock see that so keep that in mind when you're out driving around and you see anything like this especially if the cobbles are really big what the heck does that say crto capaso asseria what does that mean retired extremely dangerous senior citizens what the what are they going to do gum you to death all right so let's take a look who's in there who's more more tender give me something to drink what do you got for me I already drank it all ah dang it what's that no tagging oh I don't know what that means hey this is pretty cool rules rules are down here no graffiti No Junk please don't hang or attach anything even Claim Jumpers I'm going to hang me one oo look what I see back here woohoo wo of course I got Drake over here you should be the bartender Drake so if you happen to find yourself out here in the middle of Arizona and you come upon this little resting place stop wet your whistle but leave it cleaner than you found it because a group of people went to a lot of work to put this here and I don't want to see anything happen to it okay enjoy but don't destroy leave no trash and while we're on the subject res wants to thank Frank Bob one Bob two Joe Michael Chris S Jimmy John and Modello and anyone else we forgot Fort Ray all right so I got myself a watering hole believe it or not there is water out here in the middle of the desert you just have to know where to look and in this particular District wherever the Bedrock comes up high enough you'll have all these natural aquifers feeding on top of the Bedrock and you can see the Bedrock right over here it's that green andesite and it's a natural collection point for all the wildlife too I mean there's burls everywhere here imagine what's in this water huh yeah I bet you want to drink some of it huh M warm nasty salty water trust me and you're in the desert and dying you'll drink this water I'm not saying it won't make you sick but you'll drink it all right so this is from the aostra let's see what we got looks like I got lead do the Williams wiggle what the heck is that it is super heavy let me get my glasses on look at that some of these pieces look like lead but I'm not sure what these are I'm going to have to smelt them find out what they are because like this one this don't look like lead that one's hanging Behind These are no-brainer these look like lead see that that one I'm not sure that one's lead for sure these I'm not sure about I'll put those in the furnace and find out what they are okay now we got another bag of material from that kichy bed that is impacted the side of that huge andesite intrusion that we saw [Applause] earlier yeah I know I should have classified huh water's not deep enough all right that's about as far as I want to go let's take a look oh that water feels nasty that water feels nasty lot of black sand you see the black sand in there let's see if we got anything else right there got a little piece of gold you see it little tiny fragments there there ah I got some more of my buddies up there on the hill and over there oh look at the size of this hoist platform see that there's my foot for comparison oh look at the size of that quartz vein that is a good size quartz vein that's got to be about 8 ft at least average and I think it assay is at 2 O per ton down in the mineral Zone official depth test all right here we go didn't say oh sorry little bird didn't mean to scare you don't forget at the end of every month we give away gold Monster 1000 we give away bags of pay dirt and we host three-day gold mining tours and if you want to get involved with that all you going to do is look for the little icon at the end of the video that looks something like that you're going to click on it make a $10 pledge and you're In Like Flint you know what I'm going to say huh so come on let's go n [Music]

Channel: Ask Jeff Williams

Views: 16,582

Keywords: what to look for to Find GOLD at Abandoned mine sites, ask jeff williams, high grade gold ore, high grade gold, ask jeff williams gold panning, find placer gold, jeff williams, ask jeff williams gold, ask jeff williams metal detector

Id: KPjamila_sg

Length: 16min 14sec (974 seconds)

Published: Sun May 05 2024