History of gold

From the first discoveries of gold in ancient times, its beauty and the ease with which it could be worked have inspired craftsmen to use it to create ornaments, not just for adornment, but as potent symbols of wealth and power. The first pure gold coins were struck by King Croesus of Lydia (present-day Turkey) during his reign between 560 and 547 BC and gold coins have continued as legal tender since that time.

Mine production

It is known that the Egyptians mined gold before 2000 BC and the first coin containing gold was struck in the eighth century BC.

The best estimates available suggest that the total volume of gold mined over history is approximately 158,000 tonnes, of which around 65% has been mined since 1950. Production has been on a downward trend since 2001, due principally to the reduction in exploration budgets that accompanied the low gold price of the late 1990s and the consequent fall in the number of major new gold discoveries. Independent analysts believe mine output will remain relatively flat for the next few years. For a history of gold mining >>

Gold as a reserve asset

Central banks have been major holders of gold for more than 100 years and are expected to retain large stocks in future. They currently account for about 20% of above-ground stocks. The process of rebalancing reserve portfolios to adjust to changing conditions since the demise of the gold standard has led to a reduction in the amount of gold held by some central banks in the past ten years. This process may continue for some years to come. But the central banks have affirmed that gold will remain an important reserve asset for the foreseeable future and, importantly, since 1999 have accepted that sales be governed by international agreement

source:www.gold.org

Gold shower curtain

Dennis Kozlowski, disgraced former CEO of Tyco International, is said to have enjoyed gold-threaded shower curtains costing $6,000

source:www.gold.org

Gold coffee pot

The pot has a permanent gold filter that preserves the coffee's flavour. It consists of an extremely slender mesh cover with a fine layer of 23-carat gold

source:www.gold.org

Gold hand basin

This washbasin and its gold taps are on sale for an undisclosed price in a New York shop specialising in deluxe bathrooms

source:www.gold.org

Elvis's golden car

The specific model is a Stutz, about 20 of which are made a year, and the King had three! In the cars, everything normally in chrome – such as the steering wheel, pedal surrounds, ashtray and cigarette lighter – is in gold instead.

source:www.gold.org

Gold leaf cakes

The 'Palets d'Or de Moulins et des operas' were made by Lenotre, the famous French pastry cook. Gold leaf is laid on the chocolate while it is still not quite solid

source:www.gold.org

Carats and carobs

The word 'carat' (the measurement for gold purity ) comes from 'carob'; carob seeds were originally used to balance scales in Oriental bazaars. Pure gold is designated 24 carat, which compares with the 'fineness' by which bar gold is defined.

Some people go to great lengths to use gold as much as possible. Here are some of the more extreme examples…

source:www.gold.org

Wood gilding

The slow and careful process of gilding wood requires no less than 22 operations – all manual! The sheets are 1/110,000th of a millimetre-thick, and are laid on a 'gilding cushion' (the skin of a stillborn calf) before being cut to the desired size. The gilder, using a silk brush charged with static electricity, plucks up the gold leaf and delicately lays it on the suitably scraped wood

source:www.gold.org

Spread the wealth

Fine gold is so malleable that it can be beaten down to a thickness of 1112µ (.0001112 mm) into translucent gold leaf, so that one ounce (31.1 gr.) of it will cover about 16 square metres

source:www.gold.org

Recycling gold

Ever since it was first discovered, gold has always been recycled thanks to its inherent high value. So that means your modern jewellery or dental crown could contain gold that was mined in prehistoric times, and might have even been part of some priceless item belonging to ancient royalty! Today, at least 15% of annual gold consumption is recycled each year.

source:www.gold.org

The most expensive gold coin in the world

One of the world's rarest and most sought after collector coins, the 1933 Double Eagle, was sold at Sotheby's auction house in New York in 2002, for the record sum of $7.59 million. The coin led an eventful life, escaping a big gold meltdown in the US, falling into the hands of an Egyptian King and then being discovered by undercover secret service agents in New York

source:www.gold.org

Saudi Arabian Gold Coins

Where to Find Gold in the United States

Gold panning and gold prospecting locations info.

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See below for Gold Locations by individual State

Naturally occurring gold can be found in almost all fifty states. This gold may be still embedded in rock, known as "lode gold", or it may have been deposited in a placer (a natural concentration of gold particles in sand or gravel bars) after weathering from the host rock -- or it may be found in plant tissues, or seawater, or even present in minute quantities in beach sand. (Gold is found in copious amounts on Alaska beaches and even in Oregon.) If your interest in gold is more than academic, the trick is to find locations with enough gold to make it worthwhile to try to recover some of it.

The states in which major amounts of gold have been found are: (listed in no particular order) Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Georgia, Idaho, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, Wisconsin, and Wyoming. Although the historic records are generally not very good, small amounts of gold have also been found in Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and Vermont -- which taken together with the big producers means that in three out of every five states, you have a decent chance to find a little gold for yourself.

Where in these states should you look for gold? Government records, in the form of geological reports and maps, will tell you where and in what quantity gold has been recovered in the past. Because gold is washed down into placers over time, areas where a lot of gold has been found by earlier miners will -- even if the placer was played out -- very likely have gold again. Donlt believe the 49 ers got it all - far from it. Advance sin techno;logy and recent gold depostis continue to allow productive searches for gold bearing material.

Gravity is the reason gold collects in placers; gold is six to seven times heavier than ordinary sediments. Because it takes a lot more force for a stream of water to move gold, the gold will tend to get caught in cracks and crevices, to settle out where the flow slows, and to work its way to the bottom of deposited sediments. Knowing this makes it easier to figure out where in a stream to pan for gold. Dry streambeds can contain placers of gold as well, laid down by long-gone flows of water. Unless water is nearby, though, you'll need equipment other than a gold pan to recover it, such as a metal detector or drywasher.

One more reason for checking government records before you set out to hunt for gold nuggets: some public lands are off limits to prospecting, while other areas have already been claimed by earlier prospectors.

*Much of the information in this article comes from: Gold Mining in the 21st Century, by Dave McCracken; You Can Find Gold with a Metal Detector, by Charles Garrett & Roy Lagal; Dry Washing for Gold, by James Klein.

See below for listings of various locations of known gold deposits. We've organized them by states and areas of interest. Happy prospecting!

Some gold listings courtesy of reader submitted tips and especially: www.iowagold.net / www.klimaco.com

source:www.goldfeverprospecting.com/whtofigoinun.html#googtrans/en/ar

Gold Mines

The value of gold is of course a result of its rareness and also of its interesting physical characteristics. Gold is a so-called precious metal , which means it does not rust (oxidise) at normal conditions. It is resistant against many acids and a good electric conductor, which makes it usefull for electronic circuits. It is also usefull for jewelry because of its inertness, as it will not oxidise or change in any other way. The continually high value of gold made it an important factor for money. Originally the most valuable coins were made of gold. Later, when people found gold too heavy and difficult to handle, paper money was invented, which was just a sort of paper representation of the gold value. A good example is the British Pound, which originally corresponded with a pound of Sterling Silver.

Gold is normally found in pure form. This means it is not oxidised and it is not necessary to process it very much. But the amounts of pure gold are typically very little as it is normally evenly distributed in the rock. There are several geologic processes which accumulate gold, most important for classic gold fields is erosion. The rock is eroded, the gold remains, and the small pieces of gold are washed into the next stream. But gold is very heavy, and so it tends to deposit in holes on the ground of rivers, a deposit called placer .

Other deposits are polymetallic deposits, where hydrothermal processes, often in combination with sulfuric chemical reactions, deposited large amounts of different metals in submarine depressions or in clefts. Typically gold is the rarest metal in the ore, but depending on the percentage and the value, it may be the most valuable part. As it is rather easy to process those ores in furnaces and separate the different metals, those deposits are mine since the early Middle Ages.

Gold is found all over the world. It is part of any volcanic eruption, though in very small amounts. Depending on the geologic situation, the mining is very different. Modern techniques and the massive use of machinery allows the processing of low grade ores with only very small amounts of gold, some Gramms per ton.

The most important gold producer of the World is South Africa . The Kruger Rand gold coins are world famous. The mines in South Africa can provide several superlatives:

• The East Rand Mine ist the world's deepest mine , 3585m below surface.
• The Freegold Mine , owned by an Anglo American corporation, was until recently the world's most productive gold mine at 115 tonnes per year
• Driefontein Consolidated Mine has produced more gold than any other gold mine, about 2292 tons.
• The deepest single-drop mining shaft in the world has been sunk at the South Deep Gold Mine , owned and operated by Western Areas Gold Mining Company (Johannesburg, South Africa). It is located in Westonaria, Gauteng Province, South Africa. The shaft, with a depth of 2991.45m below the collar, has taken almost seven years of sinking.

Gold mining in Alaska 2

Active mines

The following are active gold-producing mines and advanced lode exploration or development projects.

Placer mines

Placer mining continues throughout Alaska. In 2007, an estimated 175 placer mines produced 53,848 ounces of gold, an approximately 15% drop in activity and production compared to 2006.^[4] All of these operations are seasonal, none employ more than a few dozen people. Many of them are family operations with roots reaching back several generations. One mine, at Nolan Creek, mines frozen gravels by underground methods. A significant portion of current exploration for lode gold in Alaska occurs in placer gold camps.

Lode (hard rock) mines

Large-scale hard rock mines producing gold

• The Greens Creek mine, owned and operated by Hecla Mining, located on private patented claims and on federal land in the Admiralty mining district, is primarily a silver-lead-zinc mine, produced 73,000 troy ounces (2.3 tonnes) of gold in 2006 and a similar amount in 2007.
• Fort Knox mine, owned and operated by Kinross Gold on State of Alaska-owned land in the Fairbanks mining district, produced 333,000 troy ounces (10.3 tonnes) of gold in 2006 and a similar amount in 2007.
• Pogo mine, owned and operated by Teck Cominco, on State of Alaska-owned land in the Goodpaster district, produced 260,000 troy ounces (8.1 tonnes) of gold in 2007, more than double production in 2006.
• Rock Creek mine, owned and operated by NovaGold Resources, on privately owned land in the Nome mining district. Constructed in 2007 and 2008, the mine began producing gold in September 2008, but is now on care and maintenance pending significant modifications to the mill, which has design flaws.

  Large-scale hard rock gold mines under development (construction)

  • Kensington and Jualin; adjacent historical underground gold-in-quartz-veins mines in the Juneau mining district which are poised to reopen after $270 million of exploration and construction efforts since 2005, pending efforts to permit disposal of mine tailings. The ore deposits occur on privately-owned patented lands, some mine facilities, including planned disposal of mine tailings occupy public land. Initially-issued permits were challenged in court, and eventually vacated. Over 2 million troy ounces of gold resource in 8.8 million tons of ore are reported.

    Advanced hard rock exploration projects of note

    • Donlin Creek, in the Kuskokwim Gold Belt, contains an estimated 29.3 million ounces of Proven and Probable gold reserves (calculated at a gold price of $750) and an additional 10 million ounces of gold resource. Donlin is one of the largest known undeveloped gold deposits in the world. If developed according to plans published in spring 2009 it will be one of the largest gold mines in the world. Applications for permits will begin in 2009 and construction could begin as early as 2012 A large and robust series of felsic sills and dikes hosts the gold in association with small-scale quartz (and lesser quartz and/or carbonate) veinlets. The sills intrude a thick sequence (5000+ feet) of non-metamorphosed, folded, graywacke, sandstone, and shale. The deposit occurs on private land owned by native corporations Calista Corporation and The Kuskokwim Corp. Donlin Creek LLC, equally-owned by Barrick Gold and NovaGold Resources, holds a lease on the land and operates the project.
    • Pebble Copper, discovered in the mid-1980s, is one of the largest known copper-gold porphyry deposits in the world. It is located on State of Alaska-owned land. The deposit contains measured+indicated+inferred resources of 72-billion pounds of copper, 94-million ounces of gold, and 4.8-billion pounds of molybdenum, within 9.1 billion tonnes of ore. Tens of million of dollars are spent annually on the project, an initial mining plan is expected in 2009, with permitting scheduled for 2010.
    • Nixon Fork mine in the McGrath Mining District. First exploited in 1907, this underground operation exploits high-grade gold skarn ore bodies along contacts between Cretaceous granitoid and metamorphosed Paleozoic sediments. The mine, after decades of inactivity, returned to production for several years in the mid-1990s, and again in 2006 and 2007, when a significant variation between actual and predicted headgrades occurred. An updated resource evaluation is pending further work.
    • The Niblack prospect, a zinc-copper-silver-gold VMS deposit on southeastern Prince of Wales Island, in the Ketchikan Mining District. Ore occurs as massive sulfide bodies hosted in a local rhyolite belt within a package of deeply deformed and metamorphosed volcanic and sedimentary rocks. In the last ten years, significant underground and surface exploration occurred at this early-1900s minesite. A recent estimate reports a near surface indicated resource of 4073 kg of gold, 59,424 kg of silver, 14,810 metric tons of copper, and 30,474 metric tons of zinc contained in 1,424,000 metric tons of ore; and deeper inferred resources of 3,919 kg of gold, 55,295 kg of silver, 31,235 metric tons of copper, and 106,192 metric tons of zinc within 1,893,000 metric tons of ore. Further exploration is planned.
    • Dozens of other significant exploration efforts for gold, across the state, contributed to the total of over $310 million dollars spent on mineral exploration in Alaska in 2007.
• source :en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining_in_Alaska

Gold mining in Alaska

Gold mining in Alaska, a state of the United States, has been a major industry and impetus for exploration and settlement since a few years after the United States acquired the territory from Russia. Russian explorers discovered placer gold in the Kenai River in 1848, but no gold was produced. Gold mining started in 1870 from placers southeast of Juneau, Alaska.

Gold is found and has been mined throughout Alaska; except in the vast swamps of the Yukon Flats, and along the North Slope between the Brooks Range and the Beaufort Sea. Areas near Fairbanks, Juneau, and Nome are responsible for most of Alaska's historical and current gold production. Nearly all of the large and many of the small placer gold mines currently operating in the US are in Alaska. Six modern large-scale hard rock mines operate in Alaska in 2008; four of those are gold-producing mines (an additional gold mine suspended production in late 2007). There are also some small-scale hard rock gold-mining operations. Alaska currently produces more gold (in 2007: 673,274 troy oz from lode mines, and 53,848 troy oz from placer deposits) than any state except Nevada. In 2007, gold accounted for 15% of the mining wealth produced in Alaska. Zinc and lead, mainly from the Red Dog mine, accounted for 73%; silver, mainly from the Greens Creek mine, accounted for 8%; coal and aggregates accounted for nearly 2% each. Alaska produced a total of 40.3 million troy ounces of gold from 1880 through the end of 2007.

source :en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_mining_in_Alaska

Gold prospecting

Gold prospecting is the act of searching for new gold deposits. Methods used vary with the type of deposit sought and the resources of the prospector. Although traditionally a commercial activity, in some developed countries placer gold prospecting has also become a popular outdoor recreation.

Prospecting for placer gold

Prospecting for placer gold is traditionally done with a gold pan or similar instrument to wash free gold particles from loose surface sediment. The use of gold pans is centuries old, but is still common among prospectors and miners with little financial backing.

Deeper placer deposits may be sampled by trenching or drilling. Geophysical methods such as seismic, gravity or magnetic may be used to locate buried river channels that are likely locations for placer gold. Sampling and assaying a placer gold deposit to determine its economic viability is subject to many pitfalls.

Once placer gold is discovered, the gold pan is usually replaced by sluices or mechanical devices to wash greater volumes of material. Discovery of placer gold has often resulted in discovery of hard rock gold deposits when the placers are traced to their sources.

Prospecting for hard rock gold deposits

Prospectors for hard rock, or lode gold deposits, can use many tools. It is done at the simplest level by surface examination of rock outcrops, looking for exposures of mineral veins, hydrothermal alteration, or rock types known to host gold deposits. Field tools may be nothing more than a rock hammer and hand lens.

Hard rock gold deposits are more varied in mineralogy and geology than placer deposits, and prospecting methods can be very different for different types of deposits. As with placer gold, the sophistication of methods used to prospect for hard rock gold vary with the financial resources of the prospector. Drilling is often used to explore the subsurface. Surface geophysical methods may be used to locate geophysical anomalies associated with gold deposits. Samples of rocks or soil may be collected for geochemical laboratory assay, to determine metal content or detect geochemical anomalies. Hard rock gold particles may be too small to see, even with a microscope.

Most gold today is produced in large open-pit and deep underground mines. However, small-scale gold mining is still common, especially in third-world countries.

source :en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_prospecting