New Gold Location found August, 2004 While combing a Lake Superior beach on a field trip for agates with our local gem and mineral club, I noticed a lot of black sand in layers on the beach between the bluff and the water line.. In closely looking at the black sand I saw it had many small garnets and what looked like Ilmenite. When everyone else had left, I stayed and did a bit more of looking for agates, but the sand was on my mind. Well, I almost always carry a gold pan with me so I thought I may as well give it a try. I filled up the gold pan with the black sand and panned it down. I was most pleasantly suprised. I had 3 nice colors on the bottom of my pan. Wow, I had just got back from a trip to the Yellow Dog River and spent a day without finding one speck, so, was I ever happy. I proceeded to speed pan and worked down about 10 pans of the black sand and averaged around 3 flakes per pan. I would most likely have got more, as I am sure I lost some by speed panning. As activities chairman, I then planned a trip for the club for May of 2005 and had spread the word in our local club and on my web site as to what I had discovered. It generated some interest and we did put together a trip back for a spring agate hunt with some gold panning. When we got to the beach and started to look for the black sand where I had located it the previous fall, we could not find it. The members with me proceeded to try panning the sand in the area where I had found the black sand and found no gold. I then decided to explore a bit more and found an area up the beach that had a nice thick layer of black sand. I proceeded to pan there and was suprised when my pan showed many flakes of gold. I then called the group to the spot and we panned there for the rest of the day. Between us, we figured we averaged around 25 to 30 flakes per pan. Some pans had around 50 flakes. Anyway, everyone was quite happy. We all went home with gold as well as concentrate to work at home. I took another trip alone to the beach in early fall of 2005 and was disappointed as the black sand concentration we had panned in the spring was no where to be found on the surface. I tried to dig down, and found the sand was very dry, I couldn't get very deep with out digging a huge hole. I had brought along a sluice box and set it up in the lake, hoping to use the wave action to wash out the lighter sand. The waves were quite high and I am sure I lost most of the gold. I did recover gold, but not in the amounts we found before. There are lenses of larger gravel in the bluff and I panned some of that material. I found some Copper Flakes and I would imagine there is some Silver and larger Gold flakes there also. I only did a couple pans as it was hard to get to the lenses due to the steepness of the bluff and the dryness of the sand. I then tried panning some of the sand at the base of the bluff as Gold coming off the bluff would travel farther than the sand due to it's weight. I found some gold this way and proved that theory worked. I took another trip in the spring and the fall of 2006. We found Gold in the spring, but had to dig about 2 feet down. In the fall, we failed to find any gold as it had been a very dry summer with no seasonal storms on Lake Superior. The Gold is there, but, the conditions must be favorable for it to be concentrated. Da Yooper Links Da Yooper's Index Page for Michigan Rocks, Minerals and Fossils Michigan Gold Information on Gold in Michigan Treasure
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Look at that Grin. Check out the black sand in his pan. That is from one pan of material! The link below is to a very large image. Please allow it time to load. It is of one pan of material that has not been concentrated except by nature. It is not on this page as it would cause the page to load too slow. http://www.dayooper.com/gold/gold4.jpg
Lake Superior Gold
Field Trip $150.00 for first person. I will be checking on conditions of the black sands before confirming the dates. Price is the same whether you go one day or all 4 days. Da Yooper's eGroup will have updates on conditions and accomodations. Come
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