Hard Rock Mining
Keep in mind the differece between the mining of "placers" and hard rock gold. In placer mining, nature has done the work of breaking down rock to yield gold nuggets, fines, flakes and gold dust in its pure form. This can be recovered from streams by using shovels, gold pans, picks and suction dredges. Ancient river channels could be persuaded to give up their treasures by using high pressure water cannons called monitors and then running the eroded material through long sluice boxes. This "free" or unencumbered gold needs no further treatment.
Hardrock gold is harder to locate and recover. One has to drill, blast and remove the stubborn ore and crush it to a fine powder and then treat it chemically to separate the gold from the ore! There are 65 miles of hardrock mining tunnels in Eureka Mountain.
To learn more about the process, visit our Assay Office