PLACERVILLE, Calif. — Albert Fausel spends his days at his family’s hardware store rummaging through boxes of nuts and pacing the creaky old floor to greet his loyal clientele. But one recent sunny afternoon, he donned his wetsuit and diving mask and waded facedown into the shallow creek near his home.
Fausel used his gloved fingers to sweep aside the sand and gravel at the bottom of the creek and then, still underwater, let out a whoop of joy that could be heard through his snorkel tube.
He emerged with what gold prospectors call a shaving—not quite the size of a nugget, but big enough to hold between his fingers—and carefully passed the shiny object to his fellow prospector, a friend who calls himself Uncle Fuzzy.
In just 20 minutes of searching near the creek bank, Fausel had found about $100 worth of gold.
Today there is a rush in the California gold region, the kind that comes with the realization that nature is releasing another store of the precious metal.
California’s heavy winter rains sent a torrent of water down mountain streams and rivers. As the warmer weather melts the massive snowbanks, currents are dislodging and carrying gold deposits along the way.
Nearly 175 years have passed since the Gold Rush that attracted endless gambusinos, but the foothills of the Sierra Nevada are still home to an eccentric group of gold prospectors who pore over old maps in search of the site of the gold. some now-defunct tavern or walk through the rural area in search of nuggets and other artifacts.
Placerville is a 15-minute drive from the valley where James Marshall, a New Jersey carpenter, was building a small sawmill in January 1848 along the American River when something shiny in the water caught his eye.
Large chunks of the easy-to-find gold that had scattered in rivers for centuries disappeared after the first few years of the Gold Rush, and Marshall himself died penniless.
However, the miners resorted to shooting powerful jets of water up the hillsides and rummaging through what flowed down, leaving mounds of mining waste visible to this day.
That type of mining is now restricted in California, but prospectors say recent winter storms have had a similar effect.
“Every time you stand by a river and hear the boulders fall, you know the gold is moving too,” said Jim Eakin, the owner of a local firewood business who recounts a find from four years ago: a nugget this big , who bought a brand new Ford F-150 pickup for cash.
Eakin enjoys treasure hunting. He finds coins of all sizes and belt buckles from the Gold Rush era, and goes to a big gem fair in Arizona to sell his chips.
With the price of gold hovering around the highs of $70 per gram, Eakin counts himself among a group of prospectors who can “read the ground” and profit from winter weather.
“It’s going to be a great year,” said Tony Watley, president of the Gold Country Treasure Seekers club, which meets the third Monday of every month. “Everywhere we are seeing new erosion.”
Treasure Seekers meetings include a tell-and-share time where members show off their finds. At a session in March, someone placed nearly a kilogram of gold nuggets on the table that he had found with a metal detector, the method preferred by most club members.
“There was $50,000 in gold on that table,” recalled Mark Dayton, a club regular. “We’ve had more gold in the last two meetings than I’ve seen in the last two years.”
Dayton, an ex-cop and ex-firefighter, now makes a living as a treasure hunter. In just a few excursions in April, he found $750 worth of gold pieces.
One recent afternoon, Dayton was standing along the Cosumnes River with a friend, Barron Brandon, a former mining executive. The two men hammered rock and sand into a gap between the boulders. One of Dayton’s metal detectors beeped, and after digging further, they unearthed what had activated the machine: a piece of rod.
Brandon was not disappointed.
“The real gold is just being here,” he said.
By: THOMAS FULLER
BBC-NEWS-SRC: http://www.nytsyn.com/subscribed/stories/6693968, IMPORTING DATE: 2023-05-02 22:50:09
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