Gold Bugs Break Out Shovels, Head West

Get out your picks and shovels. With gold prices approaching $1,000 an ounce, individual gold prospecting is exploding.

Membership in gold prospecting clubs is way up, and sales of small-time gold mining equipment has jumped. Prospecting outfitter Promack Treasure Hunting in Apache Junction, Ariz. reported that its business tripled last year. As history shows, the shovel sellers really make out in these things.

The Superstition Mountain Treasure Hunters prospecting club in Arizona said its membership skyrocketed to 400 from 70 last year.

The Gold Prospectors Association of America reports that membership renewals at the end of 2007 were twice as high as 2006, a complete turnaround for a pastime that was thought to be dying.

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Okay, it’s nothing like a real gold rush of 1849, when thousands swarmed West, but there’s definitely a surge in interest. Stories of hitting it big abound. Prospectors have been known to find $1,000 or more of gold over a weekend.

The Gold Prospectors Association, boasting 45,000 members, is the country’s largest.

Another, the New 49-ers, based in Happy Camp, Calif., says it access to 60 miles of gold-producing land, and offers educational and camping activities. The whole family can get involved.

Government lands often allow recreational prospectors to pan, but balk at dredges or sluices, plastic or metal channels designed to catch gold. For more serious prospectors, joining a prospecting club is recommended to avoid government-required fees and paperwork.

But don’t bother looking in Florida, New York or other Eastern states. Gold hunting locales are in Alaska, California and other Western states. Arizona produced over 16 million ounces of gold that would be at $15 billion in today’s prices.

All of the state’s mines shut down by 1998 after either running out of the metal or price declines made finding remaining gold unpractical. The big boys are now back as gold mining companies reopen mines and seek out new discoveries, mostly in western Arizona.

The state is also known for mysterious lost mines, the most famous being the Dutchman, named for Phoenix prospector Jacob "the Dutchman” Waltz. He died in poverty in 1891 just before mentioning a rich mine he had found in the Superstition Mountains east of Apache Junction. Diggers have been looking for it ever since.

Don’t quit your day job. Prospecting can be long hard work with no guarantee of much return. Unless you’re a human backhoe, odds in a casino might be better.

Gold prospecting for individuals is mostly a weekend job, if you can call it a job. Full-time prospectors are rare and mostly retirees. Most dig, pan and sluice to get outdoors as much as chance to get rich.

The thrill of finding a few flakes and the nostalgic feeling of an American tradition, of repeating history, are motivators – more so than money.

Some prospectors are snowbirds living out of their RVs. Some are fishermen and other outdoors folks who pan for a change of pace.

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