A new Gold Rush on California’s horizon
Average reading time — 2 minutes
For hundreds of years, people have been fascinated by gold and have been looking for affordable ways to mine the shiny metal. Luckily for the adventurers, they don’t always have to go deep underground, sometimes treasure can be found in rivers.
In 1848, the first major gold-bearing vein was discovered in the town of Sutter’s Mill, California. 80,000 fortune-seekers came to the area near the Sacramento River to fulfill their dream of getting rich, and five years later, the population of the town tripled.
Today, the yellow metal still retains a high value, so gold prospectors continue to search for it. The United States is experiencing a new Gold Rush, fueled by persistently high prices of the noble metal and record-breaking rainstorms in California in January 2023. Flood waters washed away some of the gold-bearing layers of soil and carried them into the rivers of the Sierra Nevada, so now the lucky ones find new sparkling nuggets in them.
In the photo: the search for gold is part of American history.
In order to extract gold from the soil, wealth hunters used powerful hoses back in the 19th century, but today this method does not justify itself, and in some regions it is also severely limited by law.
In the photo: carefully sieving the soil using a normal tray.
Tony Watley, president of the Gold Country Treasure Seekers club, says California gold mining will be more successful than in previous years. However, to date, no one can accurately determine the amount of valuable metal that California stores.
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