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Tributers
E. Percy Brown and the Brookfield Mine
Barachois
Nova Rich Mines
Shad Bay Treasure Hunt
Montague 1937 Accident
Father Lanigan’s “Prospect”
George V. Douglas
The Stewart Brothers
Goldboro
Moose River's Touquoy Mine
Camerons Mountain
Jim Campbells Barren
Stanburne's Puzzling Gold Mine
Pockwock
Beaverbank Lake
Banook Mining Company
Deep Gold Mining
Wellington
Arsenic and Gold
Dynamite
War of Words
King of the Klondike
Oliver Millett
Kempt Gold Mining Company
Carleton
The Memramcook Fiasco
Love and Gold in Oldham
Montague 1893 Disaster
Central Rawdon Consolidated Mines
Cochrane Hill
Amateurish Early Gold Mining
Sable Island Gold
The Sea Wolf
Trueman Hirschfield
Alexander Heatherington
Prospector Joe Cope
Killag Quicksand
George W. Stuart
Wellington
Billy Bell
Cooper Jim Mine
South Branch Stewiacke
Walter Prest
Lake Charlotte
Acadia Powder Mills Company
The Ovens Anticline
Moose River Anticline
Avon Mine Explosion
Montague
Waverley Claims Dispute
Avon River
Moose River Disaster
Mooseland Scam
New York and Nova Scotia Gold Mining Company
Rosario Siroy and the South Uniacke Gold District
Blockhouse
Killag Gold District
Miller Lake
Baron Franz von Ellershausen
Mooseland: Nova Scotia’s first Gold Discovery
United Goldfields of Nova Scotia
Pleasant River Barrens Gold District
Lochaber Gold Mining Company
Rawdon Gold Mines
MacLean Brook
Gold in Clayton Park?!
Forest Hill
Meguma vs. Placer Gold
Uniacke
Voglers Cove
Gold River
Moosehead
Goldenville
Westfield
Indian Path
Harrigan Cove
Centre Rawdon
Nova Scotia’s Gold Mining History
WWII Gold
Middle River Gold District
Early Gold Discoveries
Halifax 1867
Paris Exhibition 1867
Mining and Tourism
An Act relating to the Gold Fields
Molega Gold District
Brookfield Gold District
Gays River
Halifax Gold
Caribou Gold District
Renfrew Gold District
Oldham Gold District
Whiteburn Gold District
Country Harbour Mines
Waverley Gold District
Robert Henderson and Klondike Gold
George Mercer Dawson
Cow Bay Gold District
Lake Catcha Gold District
Wine Harbour Gold District
Panning for Gold
The expression “pan out,” meaning something that is successful or works out well, comes from prospectors panning for gold.
A prospector panning for gold is an iconic image from gold rushes in the 1800s but panning is still an important method of prospecting today.
Panning means scooping up water, sand and gravel in a pan and swirling it around. The gold, which is very heavy, settles on the bottom of the pan while the lighter gravel and sand wash over the side. Simple but effective!
Panning is used to find placer (aka alluvial) gold that eroded from bedrock deposits and was carried downhill by a river until it settled out and became concentrated in an area.
However, most prospectors are not just looking for a few small pieces of placer gold – they want to find the larger, bedrock deposits from which the placer gold eroded.
Panning in rivers is an excellent way to quickly and inexpensively evaluate areas through which a river passes. In most cases heavy minerals, particularly gold, can be seen in the pan giving a visual signal of mineralization. The prospector continues up the river until no more gold is seen in the pan, meaning the prospector has passed the point where the eroded gold entered the river.
He/she then goes back downstream to the nearest tributaries and pans them to try to locate the source stream. The prospector continues up the tributary that shows signs of gold. As the prospector gets closer to the bedrock deposit, there should be more gold in the pan samples. (This is like the game in which you say someone is getting hotter as they get closer to something and colder as they get further from it.) In this way, panning can help guide a prospector to the area of the main gold deposit.
It also helps that rock is often exposed along river valleys and can be easily examined for additional clues. Boulders that have been carried downstream can also often be found and examined.
Nova Scotia has some placer gold but very little compared to places like California and the Yukon. The reason is Nova Scotia was repeatedly covered with glaciers in the past 100,000 years, until the last ice age ended 10,000 years ago. The glaciers dragged sediments and rocks along with them as they moved, scattering the gold of placer deposits that existed prior to the glaciers.
California and the Yukon, on the other hand, had gold rushes that were mainly based on placer gold and panning. They were not as heavily glaciated as Nova Scotia was so they had many more thousands of years of stream erosion than Nova Scotia. This liberated huge quantities of gold from bedrock deposits. Their placer deposits were mainly left intact because they had less glaciation, so they were just waiting to be discovered in the 1800s.
The provincial government has a brochure that discusses recreational mineral and rock collecting, including gold panning:https://novascotia.ca/natr/meb/data/pubs/ic/ic66.pdf. It explains, for example, the need to get permission to access land in areas that have been staked. It also discusses important safety measures.
The Ovens is one of the few places in Nova Scotia where placer gold has been found in significant quantities, due to The Oven’s bedrock deposits being in cliffs right on the shore. See the story of the Ovens’ gold rush at https://notyourgrandfathersmining.ca/ovens.