Prospecting 2016-10-05

Because the gold in the California gravel beds was so richly concentrated, the early forty-niners simply panned for gold in California's rivers and streams, a form of placer mining. However, panning cannot be done on a large scale, and industrious miners and groups of miners graduated to placer mining "cradles" and "rockers" or "long-toms" to process larger volumes of gravel. Modern estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey are that some 12 million ounces of gold were removed in the first five years of the California Gold Rush.