When I made the statement in last month’s newsletter that we would be making another attempt at having our situation heard in the U.S. Supreme Court, I did not know it would happen so soon. Gold miners tend to be a hard-headed bunch of good natured people. We do not give up easily. Not giving up when times are difficult, aside from an occasional surprise, is the only way we ultimately find the rewarding gold deposits. Sometimes very rewarding!
For those of you that have been following along, you know that State agencies in Oregon and California have been attempting to eliminate small-scale gold mining on the federal lands all the way back since 1993 or before. Our industry, more or less, overcame these attempts over the many years until 2007 when California passed a law which put an end to suction dredging. Their reasons claimed to be for the protection of fish. Though, honestly, there is not a single documented instance where underwater mining, in accordance with reasonable regulations, has ever harmed a single fish. Not one! At the same time, both States sell fish-kill licenses to millions of fishermen. What?
Let me make it clear that we do not have a problem with fishing. Our problem is with State officials who just make up the rules as they go along, regardless of the factual situation. Not just State officials, but also a majority portion of our elected officials, and a fair portion of today’s judges – whose sworn duty actually is to protect us from overbearing and unreasonable State officials.
But most judges these days just act as a rubber stamp on the dictates of overbearing government, and deliberately turn America’s productive citizens into criminals. I have watched this play out in the courts for the past ten years as our industry has attempted to bring sanity back into the management of small-scale mining. We have raised and wasted over a million dollars in legal fees and attempts to lobby legislatures, only to have elected officials, State employees and judges ultimately turn their backs on the truth and take away our freedoms. I have been caught by complete surprise by the way America’s leaders have turned their backs on our founding principles!
We have fought two cases all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, only to have them rejected. This is not a slam on the high court. That body receives so many appeals, it only accepts around five percent. As important as our situation is, whoever advises the high court determined that other cases were more important to America as a whole. We pray this third attempt to reach the highest court in the land will succeed.
Our case is extremely important, because it strikes directly at the heart of socialism in America, where government officials have the power to ignore the truth and do as they please with impunity because they are acting on behalf of “the State.” No; I am not exaggerating!
If you have any doubts about whether socialism is a good idea for America, all you need to do is take an honest look at what the House of Representatives have put President Trump through during their impeachment proceeding. All or most of America’s historical and iron clad jurisprudence, and the concepts of honesty and fairness, were swept aside because the majority in the House wants to get rid of Mr. Trump at any cost, even if it means the end of honesty and fairness for themselves and all Americans forever: “Shut up! We are the State. We can do anything we want to. If you disagree, you are an enemy. If you object out loud, you are treasonous!” This is socialism. Is that really what we want to pass off on our kids and grandkids?
Like him or not, Donald Trump is the duly elected leader of the free world. Watching what the democrats have put him through over the past 3+ years is not only appalling; it is the realization that socialism has already, to a dangerous extent, taken over America’s leadership, its government institutions, educational institutions at all levels, nearly all of our mainstream press, and the thinking of maybe as much as half of America!
America is in an internal war; the battle between people who want to control everything we think and do, and those of us who want to live productive, honest lives and be left alone. We do not want to be ruled by others who have no idea how to produce wealth and safe neighborhoods.
The truth is that the socialists pretty much had America all wrapped up until Donald Trump was elected. Just one man! He was elected because half of America was feeling that the country’s direction was going down the wrong path. This is why our enemies hate him so much! One guy came along at just the right time; at the tipping point of no return from total government control over America, forever. They had it all tied up. Now we are watching their disappointment play out through the worst of socialism. I predict that the left will generate widespread violence when America turns back towards our founding principles. Hope for the best. Plan for the worst!
In any event, the big realization I have had in watching the impeachment process play out is that if the left in America can do that to the President of the United States, we as small-scale miners never had a reasonable chance of winning our industry back. Even now, our only chance of a long term fix will be through the U.S. Supreme Court. This is because, even if Mr. Trump or his team enact new administrative rules that free us to do motorized gold mining on the federal lands, America’s enemies (within) will file lawsuits in front of left-leaning judges and have us stopped again. We will need the U.S. Supreme Court to ultimately vindicate our rights and freedoms.
The good news is that, because of Mr. Trump’s two appointments to the high court so far, the high court is no longer left-leaning. Our case is so straightforward, there is more than a reasonable chance we can win our industry back in full, if we can just get the court to review it. We can do that if we don’t give up. We just have to keep trying!
Our industry has just hired (this week) a prestigious law firm: They are called, “FISHERBROYALS.” They have a presence in ATLANTA • AUSTIN • BOSTON • CHARLOTTE • CHICAGO • CINCINNATI • CLEVELAND • COLUMBUS • DALLAS • DENVER • DETROIT • HOUSTON • LONDON • LOS ANGELES • MIAMI • NAPLES • NEW YORK • PALO ALTO • PHILADELPHIA • PRINCETON • SALT LAKE CITY • SEATTLE • and WASHINGTON, D.C. They will compose and submit an Amicus brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in the matter of THOMAS A. KITCHAR, et al., Petitioners, v. OREGON DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL QUALITY, et al. The Supreme Court allows “Friend of the Court” briefings to hear what other legal scholars have to say about the legalities in important cases.
Rather than go into the particulars of this case, I will link you to the Petition for Writ of Certiorari which our longstanding attorney wrote last month in conjunction with Pacific Legal Foundation. Mr. Buchal has been our steadfast, loyal advocate for the past 10 years. He was originally hired back in 2005 by mining associations in Oregon on this very case which is being directed to the U.S. Supreme Court. That’s 15+ years in court to try and regain their livelihoods! Who can stay in a fight for that long? Only Americans that are determined to hold onto freedom!
Tom Kitchar did a wonderful job in putting together a Summary which outlines the history of this 15-year battle, and how difficult our enemies and the lower courts have made it for us to obtain justice. You can find Tom’s Summary right here.
The New 49’ers hired Mr. Buchal upon strong recommendations from the miners in Oregon when the State of California secretlyconspired with environmentalists to eliminate our suction dredge regulations. That was more than ten years ago. He has been a brilliant and tough fighter on our behalf, but has unfortunately been up against a stacked deck. The lower courts in both Oregon and California, with perhaps a few exceptions, have been co-opted by the socialists.
Frankly, underwater and motorized mining have been forbidden in Oregon and California for so long, that many longtime supporters have either gotten too old, gave up or passed away. Some remain dedicated to the fight, but it has not been enough to keep up with legal costs. That’s what this Action Alert is about. Our industry needs a boost in our legal defense resources. More on how you can help down below.
Just to demonstrate how tight this is, any amicus brief (friend of the court) to the U.S. Supreme Court concerning our case must be filed by the 3rd of February!
We have already lost in the Oregon and California supreme courts. Fortunately, this Oregon case has been ongoing since before those decisions were made. Therefore, the original case remains alive.
Note that those who are named in the Petition are not allowed to support an Amicus brief. Mostly through tireless effort by Tom Kitchar of the Waldo Mining District in southern Oregon, initial support for the Amicus has been pledged by THE NEW 49ERS LEGAL FUND, PUBLIC LANDS FOR THE PEOPLE (PLP), WILLAMETTE VALLEY MINERS (WVM), TOM QUINTAL in Oregon, AMERICAN MINING RIGHTS ASSOCIATION (AMRA), BOHEMIA MINE OWNERS ASSOCIATION (BMOA), NORTHWEST MINERAL PROSPECTING CLUB (NWMPC), COUER D’ALENE MINING DISTRICT (CDAMD), GALICE MINING DISTRCIT (GMD), JOSEPHINE COUNTY in Oregon, and SISKIYOU COUNTY in California.
We have not yet raised enough money to fully pay for the services of FISHERBROYALS. There will also be more legal and political challenges as we, the Trump Team and all or most freedom-loving Americans attempt to free up productive activity for Americans again. I’m sure your financial contributions to any of the prospecting organizations listed above will be going to the right places. As to our Legal Fund, there is still time to buy tickets for our ongoing fund-raiser that will come to an end on February 14, just a few weeks from now (please see just below).
All I can do is give a deeply felt thank you to everyone who continues to support the cause for freedom!
The New 49’ers Legal Fund-raiser!
There will be 26 prizes in all:
Two Grand Prizes: 1/2-ounce American Gold Eagles
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles
Our office will automatically generate a ticket in your name for every $10 legal contribution we receive ($100 would generate 10 tickets).
This drawing will take place at 2 pm on Friday, 14 February 2020, at our headquarters in Happy Camp. You do not need to be a member of our organization to participate. You do not need to be present to win. There is no limit to the size or frequency of your contributions, or to the number of prizes you can win.
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online:
There is a learning curve to successful gold prospecting. One of the most effective methods of progressing through the learning curve is to go on prospecting adventures with others who more experienced than you are.
Group projects are limited to a certain number of participants. Scheduling in advance is strongly advised to ensure a position on any specific weekend project: 530 493-2012
The upcoming holidays will have our offices closed on December 23, 24 & 25 for Christmas, and January 1 for New Year’s Day.
Until further notice, we will continue opening the doors between 9 AM and 4 PM on weekdays. The office will be closed on weekends, except for the morning hours during the Saturdays when we are sponsoring the coming season’s Weekend Group Projects.
Members are invited to sign in your whereabouts on our properties over the phone in case there is some reason we need to find you.
Our mining properties are freely available to all members in good standing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unless the Klamath National Forest is closed due to wildfires.
For any problems, our Internal Affairs is available over the phone: Richard Krimm is our Director of Internal Affairs, email or call (510) 681 8066 (also available after hours and on weekends).
New 49’er Gold Prospecting Association 27 Davis Road P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, California 96039 (530) 493-2012 www.goldgold.com
We organize weekend group gold prospecting adventures during the summer months. All active members are encouraged to participate. There is no charge for active members. We appreciate it if you call ahead with your plans so we can plan in advance for how many people will attend.
The initial purpose of these projects is to provide hands-on learning experience under the guidance of multiple experienced members in hopes that it will improve your own ability to go out and find high-grade gold. This has been an important part of our successful operating basis for more than 30 years.
More recently, because the State of California has forbidden small-scale gold miners the use of motorized systems within 100 yards of a waterway, The New 49’ers, with our substantial resources, have the capability to increase gold recovery because we can fabricate specialized gear, we have intimate knowledge of where the gold is traveling in, and to the sides of the river, and because we are fortunate to have a dozen or so very experienced members who come out and help manage the program. Everyone who participates on Sunday receives an equal share of the gold that we recover.
This was the final weekend project of last season. About 70 members participated, including at least ten experienced helpers. We used my jet boat to ferry participants almost directly across from a primitive river access downstream from the very large parking and camping area on our very popular Wingate property.
Normally, myself with several helpers, verify in advance that the gold deposit we will work is going to produce well for the group project. Once we are sure about the area, a day or two before the project, we pull a larger group of members together and move all our gear to the site. If the area is somewhat difficult, or if it is on the far side of the river, we drop the gear off at an easier access point and use my boat to move the gear to the site. If the floating sluice is being moved, we can transfer everything to a new location in three boat loads.
The gold is plentiful all along the extensive Klamath River properties and side tributaries which we make available to our members. High-grade gold it is generally, but not always, more plentiful and easier to find if you can get across the river. This is, in part, because fewer people have prospected on the other side. There is also something mysterious about the nature of raw gold in that the best deposits usually are located in the places that are more difficult to reach.
This prompted us many years ago to buy a variety of different kinds of watercraft to help us move people and gear across the river; or sometimes, to places along the river that you cannot reach without a boat. Diane Helgesen captured Craig Colt and I hot-dogging it a bit on the river. This is extreme adventure at its best. Though we normally do not run around like this when we have project participants in the boat:
In addition to the increased access which the boat makes possible, adding some boat voyages along the river adds more substance to the outdoor adventure for everyone involved. We also use the boat to help disabled members gain easier access by picking them up and dropping them off at the closest developed river access where vehicles are able to reach the river. In this case, there is a semi-developed campground and river access about a quarter mile upriver from our project site.
This rich gold discovery turns out to be a massive area of exposed and shallow bedrock on the far side of the river.
Special mention should go to the dozen or so very dedicated helpers who contribute their valuable time to devote an occasional weekend helping less-experienced prospectors learn, and to help me make sure that the projects come out well on Sunday afternoon. This means minimizing any accidents (once in a while, someone will take a fall on the rocks), making sure participants are digging the best pay-dirt we have discovered at the site, and watching closely to make sure we are not feeding the recovery system too fast or losing gold in some other way. We could not put on these weekend projects without our volunteer helpers.
We did not need to sample this site in advance of this particular project. This is because we were out on the same site with a group earlier in the season. Once again, Dr. Gold made the discovery by bringing down a bunch of beautiful gold nuggets that he was picking right off the bedrock. I wrote that story up in our August newsletter.
While expanding on Dr. Gold’s discovery, we realized that there appears to be a vast area of exposed bedrock which has gold lying all over it. Some areas have some shallow streambed on top of the bedrock which is also producing gold. The area is perfect for crevicing and non-motorized mining. Most importantly, we discovered on this project that it appears the historical miners decided to work the gold deposits on an upper plateau and throw their tailing cobbles down the hillside on top of virgin, shallow bedrock “Virgin streambed” is stream bottom that has never been mined before. This is a very important development, because we seldom find virgin streambed up out of the water where the historical miners were able to reach. Check this out; you can see it for yourself:
Some of the sample pans were looking like this or better!
We always begin these projects on Saturday morning in a classroom setting in Happy Camp where we can do introductions and start building the team spirit which will flourish as soon as we begin recovering gold out of the ground. Then I take until lunch to present a simple talk on how to follow an organized sample plan, step by step, into high-grade gold deposits. Other than relying upon luck alone, the sample plan is a proven method of following the positive signs to discover the path that gold is following down the river and its banks, and what particular layer in the streambed contains the concentrations of gold. This information becomes more meaningful when we get out in the field and begin sampling.
Saturday afternoon is meant to be light duty. Mainly, we are trying to pinpoint the places where we will dig on Sunday. We also want to make sure everyone knows how to effectively manage a gold pan. Learning to pan for gold is the first important step in the learning curve. Said another way, if you cannot pan streambed material without losing gold, you cannot do a proper job of sampling. Sampling is the whole key to finding rich gold deposits.
We were getting some of our best samples by digging the gold right out of the bedrock
There was already a member out there who had set up his own hand-sluice in the shallower water near the edge of the river. He showed us the gold he had recovered on the day before. It looked really good! Here it is on video:
We don’t like to push it too hard on Saturday. This is because some people will not be used to this sort of physical activity during the hottest part of the day. But when you start uncovering gold in your pan, it’s a real challenge to not turn up the steam! Often, the ones who overdo it on Saturday don’t show up on early Sunday morning. Sunday is when we all pull together as a team to recover as much gold as we can in several hours of steady work. Everyone who is out there helping on Sunday is entitled to an equal share of the gold we recover.
Nearly every pan was producing a good showing of gold. There were only a few people on this project that needed some help with their panning. So we were only on the far side of the river for less than two hours. I was seeing some nice gold, including nuggets.
To get a head start on Sunday morning, my helpers and I carefully moved our floating sluice out into the river and set the water flow for optimum gold recovery. This is a larger sluice recovery system that we float right at the water’s surface. We can adjust how deep the front of the sluice dips into the moving water to set how fast our pay-dirt will be washed through the recovery system. Here was some of the action on video:
Fortunately, the boat landing was almost directly across the river from where we would be prospecting. Participants were following a primitive path to and from their cars.
I started bringing people back across the river at around 4 PM on Saturday afternoon. It took maybe ten trips to move about 70 people across the river. It all happens pretty fast because my helpers fit everyone into a life preserver before I return for the next load. There was plenty of time remaining for everyone to freshen up and pull something together for our Saturday evening potluck in Happy Camp.
Potluck was more than a full house of enthusiastic members. There was a large variety of food; plenty for everyone. I guess because I was so pleased during the previous potluck because someone brought a full plate of nicely-cooked beef, someone brought me a fat, juicy steak that was cooked rare, just the way I like it. I ate the whole darn thing!
We try to keep these potlucks short so people can get plenty of rest and sleep to be ready for the real action that will take place on Sunday morning. We start early so we can finish the physical work before the heat of the day reaches the project site.
I arrived down at the landing at 6 AM exactly on Sunday morning. This turned out to be a mistake; something I don’t remember that we ever encountered before. Because we were in the later part of August, it was still nearly pitch dark out on the river. I have been driving boats on the Klamath River for so long, I can do it in the dark! But that’s when there is enough water in the river to float the boat.
Sometimes late in the summer, the authorities fluctuate the amount of water discharging from the first dam upriver. These important changes either increase or decrease the speed and depth of the river. Out there in the dark, I did not see that the river had dropped by four or five inches overnight.
Oh Oh!
I didn’t realize the danger until we encountered the first of several aggressive sets of rapids. Late in the summer when the water in the river is low, there often is just one way through the shallow rapids. My challenge is to speed through the deeper water that lies between the shallow bar (all rocks) on the road side of the river and the truly dangerous fast water that is flowing over and around huge boulders on the far side. The margin for error is very close. Going downstream, I doubt that the boat will survive getting caught up in the boulders on the far side.
It is pretty easy for me to power the boat down the safe path when I can see where it is.
It was impossible to determine the safe path through the rapids because the river had dropped and changed all the flow dynamics. In the dark, the river was taking us downstream too fast to figure out the safest path. I knew we were in trouble. There is no changing your mind once a powerful river is washing you down through angry water. You just have to make the best of it – which means being prepared to abandon ship if the boat gets flipped over.
I will trade a few more dents on the bottom of my boat any day rather than take a chance on sinking it with a full boat of disabled passengers! I think my passengers believed that this was just a normal part of the adventure – until we started bouncing over rocks…
With five disabled people in the boat, since I could not see the slightly deeper slot out in the middle, I decided it was better to err on the shallow side of the river where the rocks are smaller.
Boom! Slam! Smash!
I cut the corner too close; and the boat was slamming over the rocks as we were swept downriver by the extremely fast, shallow water. Even though we were bumping rocks in the shallow water, I used the powerful motor to keep the boat pointed down river and away from the dragon tooth boulders that were looking to eat us for breakfast. Luckily, we made it through without doing any serious damage to the boat. By “serious,” I mean the engine will not run, or the boat is sinking. Serious damage would put an end to the Sunday program on the far side of the river. Fortunately, none of my passengers were hurt, though they were shaken up a bit. So was I!
We rounded the next bend to find the entire landing site crowded with people out there standing in the dark. Talking about dedication; everyone showed up early! The landing site was not in direct view of where the boat stumbled over the rocks. So they did not see our rocky ride. But they heard the noise of our collisions from about a quarter mile away. They said it was quite loud and sounded like we met our end. But that was not enough to keep the first bunch from putting their life preservers on and being ready to board the boat!
Thirty minutes later, we had the entire crew over on the other side of the river. Our project helpers organized everyone into teams, working several different locations that produced nice gold nuggets on Saturday afternoon. Some people were digging. Others were carrying half-filled buckets down to a large classification screen which is designed to split the pay-dirt into two sizes: (1) the material passing through a quarter-inch mesh screen, and (2) the larger sized material. Everyone was busy. Enthusiasm was everywhere. That’s saying a lot for first light on a Sunday morning! It was a cold August morning out there!
As the pay-dirt was run over the screen, others were filling buckets with the screened material. That’s the normal material that we feed into our recovery system. We usually don’t do anything with the oversized material that does not pass through the screen. But in the previous project we did in this location, we recovered dozens of nuggets – some which appeared too large to pass through a quarter-inch screen. We are not accustomed to digging in places which have so many gold nuggets.
When we were doing that earlier final clean-up, it occurred to me we should be panning the oversized material. So we started doing that on this project. One helper recovered four nice gold nuggets in just the first two buckets of oversize that he panned! Diane captured some video of my explanation and demonstration about the importance of processing larger-sized material when you are digging in a gold deposit that is producing nuggets. As long as things are going smooth, we do joke around a little bit to keep the mood upbeat and fun:
Another problem we have been struggling with as these projects are becoming more popular is that the participants can dig more pay-dirt than our recovery system can process. I’ll bet we left 25% of the pay-dirt we dug just sitting there on the bank during the previous project. Some participants were so jacked up to process the pay-dirt we left behind that they skipped the gold split altogether and swam over there with their gold pans!
We reduced the volume of pay-dirt by allowing the river’s flow to wash away most of the lighter fine particles.
This time, we tried something different. The dry, screened material was put into buckets which were submerged in shallow water. Swirling the material around caused the lightest material in the bucket to wash out. Gold is far too heavy to wash out of a bucket in this way. This method reduced the ultimate volume of pay-dirt to less than half. In this way, we were able to process all the heavier pay-dirt that we dug. Here we caught this on video:
Diane Helgesen is one of our most loyal and supportive members. She never misses a New 49’er event. She is designated as the “Gold Girl” during these projects. The Gold Girl keeps a plastic bucket with locking lid. Every time someone comes up with a nugget, or a handful of nuggets, or a good gold pan, Diane is right there on Sunday making sure all the gold ends up in the bucket. She also takes over the camera when I am going to give an explanation or demonstration. We have a lot of fun with the camera. Some of our fun usually is not appropriate for these newsletters. If you believe I went too far this time, drop me an email and let me know.
During the summer months, there is usually a steady stream of rafters floating down the river. These days, they are all mostly friendly. It didn’t always used to be like that. When we first began on the Klamath River in 1984, we were pretty-much the first modern day gold miners along the river. We were newcomers to long-established rafting companies who were not accustomed to sharing their river experience with us. But that was so long ago, we have now been on the river longer than most of today’s rafters. If we have gold to show, we always invite them over to have a look. Most of the rafting guides these days appreciate that our gold mining activity creates more interesting things for their customers to see. Here is some of that on video:
In fact, just in the last two years, I have noticed that there appears to be some kind of Renaissance happening that is lightening up the mood of our members, and even the people outside of our association. I say this because I have devoted nearly my entire adult life to helping others find gold – which is a very emotional activity. Especially when someone is not finding any! Diane captured the following video as I summarized what was happening further up the hillside and then got off on a sidetrack about how much more friendly people seem to be getting. We decided to not edit out my joking around to demonstrate that I have a lighter side even though it is not always visible:
Craig Colt is a longtime loyal friend and helper who is perhaps the best prospector I know (except for Dr. Gold). He was up the hillside near where the handfuls of nuggets were recovered on the previous project. And sure enough, several guys who were following Craig’s direction were recovering nuggets off the bedrock one right after the other. I snapped off one image of a bunch of nuggets in one person’s hand!
Craig led a team to the pay-dirt where one guy was recovering nuggets that could be picked off the bedrock!
We have been doing these group projects every season since 1987, so we have the program dialed in pretty well. Though we continue to learn more each time we do it. As overall project leader, I am down to two nagging worries that are not entirely under my control. The first is the possibility of someone getting hurt out there. We are walking around on uneven ground with loose rocks. There have been some falls over the years; none worse than the falls I have taken. Still, the possibility of someone slamming his or her head into the rocks is an ever-present concern. We insist that all participants wear shoes or sneakers to try and avoid as much of this as possible.
With more than 70 miles of gold properties available to our members, there are no shortage of places where we can find plenty of gold.
My second worry is that we will not recover enough gold to split amongst all the participants. This happened several times during our early years when we were not as familiar with our mining properties. These days, we have year-around members present that do nothing but prospect on our properties. In turn, they whisper to me about the hot spots they have found that can be worked on these projects.
While individual prospectors only need a small pull-off on the side of the road to park their car, and can dangle a rope to get up and down a steep embankment; these projects require lots of parking area, a rather easy trail down to the river, a toilet that is not far away; and using the boat if necessary to get back and forth to a river access where we can launch gear and recover it later.
Numerous members have made good discoveries along our Wingate property. With only one or two exceptions, our members have access to the entire Klamath River from below Wingate to well above Happy Camp. This is about 15 miles. That’s 30 miles if you count both sides of the river, just in this single stretch! The area is so vast, just this one stretch will not be adequately prospected during our lifetimes. There is a perfect landing site for the boat, lots of camping and parking, and plenty of room for participants to process pay-dirt.
Here is some video we captured of how participants were doing out there on an early Sunday morning:
When I saw the nuggets being recovered, and the gold in the sample pans, my worries about not finding enough gold were nothing to be concerned about on this day. Here is what we were recovering from the average bucket of screened material:
This was the average amount of gold we were recovering out of a bucket a screened pay-dirt!
Once I was certain the program was completely under control, I took the boat back upstream to make certain I was going to be able to get through the rapids that surely added a few dents on the bottom of my boat that morning. Besides the darkness, we were also going through a period where the river level was dropping. There comes a point where it is too shallow to drive the boat through. Before driving several disabled members through that danger zone, I wanted to be sure we could make it with minimal risk. In the daylight, it was no problem to drive the boat through there. Whew!
Still, when it was time to go, I noticed there were two missing from the group of disabled persons. They likely decided their chances of staying alive were better by getting some help climbing the path to where the cars were parked. I can’t say that I blame them! But I will say that it turned out to be a piece of cake to drive the boat up to the developed river access.
On this note; because the river is shallow, I must go up through a set of rapids at full power. This keeps the boat shallower in the river. Here; Diane positioned herself on the side of the river and captured us as we flew by:
If I can make the time, I also like to step up the adventures for some of our younger members by allowing them (closely supervised) to drive the jet boat up and down through a set of rapids. Here we caught some of the fun on video:
We called it quits at around noon. By this, I mean it was time to stop digging for the project so we could finish processing all the pay-dirt. Holes needed to be filled in, and tools all placed in a single location so I could boat them up to the landing once all the members were transferred across the river. We made plans to meet at our facility in Happy Camp later in the afternoon to do the final clean-up.
Something important to know about operating motor boats on a river is that the motor must be kept out in the deeper water. Therefore, when launching, you have to push the boat backwards out into the river so the motor does not get caught up in rocks, sand or gravel closer to the edge of the river. Otherwise, the river’s current will push the back of the boat into shallow water and the jet boat will suck in rocks or vegetation and cause the motor to stall. It is not good when this happens, especially when just up river from shallow rapids! Here is some video showing us recover from one of these very situations:
After all the pay-dirt had been processed, we pulled our floating sluice up into a calm, shallow area, disassembled the recovery system, and washed our final product into a large tub. There was a lot of gold visible in the sluice box. Cool!
This image is of our concentrates as we cleaned them out of the recovery system. If you look close, you can see the gold.
These gold recovery systems are designed to trap the heaviest material that is washed through them. Gold is the heaviest stuff out there, it being about 19 times heavier than water. Iron is around eight times heavier than water, but it is much heavier than the average material found in most streambeds. The weight of average material differs from one location to the next; but on the Klamath, average gravel weight is around four times heavier than water. So a typical recovery system will recover all or most of the gold, along with a bunch of iron sand – called “black sand.”
We could see a lot of gold in the recovery system. The entire contents went into the Gold Girl’s bucket and Diane asked me to put it safely away in the boat. I took careful control of the gold bucket through the remainder of the day.
We all met at our facility later in the afternoon to do the final clean-up and gold split. We do this in the shade of a tree that adjoins our picnic area. By “final clean-up,” I mean separating all of the gold from all of the black sand and other impurities. Over the many years, we have developed a process to accomplish this without the use of any chemicals.
This is accomplished by classifying the concentrates into several specific sizes and passing each size over ever-slower, more refined recovery systems. We begin by screening the concentrates through an 8-mesh screen. This is usually done out on the river after we have removed the concentrates from the recovery system. Gold nuggets are picked off the screen and put inside our gold bucket. These gold nuggets a are cause for a lot of excitement!
When we meet later in the day, the first thing we do is classify our concentrates through a 10-mesh screen (close to window screen). The material which stays on top of the screen is spread out in a gold pan and the nuggets are picked out with tweezers. This is fun, because the pieces of gold are also rather large and exciting.
The material that passes through the 10-screen is slowly fed through a Le Trap gold sluice. This is a very well-engineered plastic sluice box which provides nearly perfect gold recovery while reducing the volume of concentrates to about a handful. Craig Colt, then pans the tailings from the Le Trap so all the participants can see how effective the recovery system is. If we find one or two flecks of gold, they are added to our remaining batch of concentrates.
After a while, my assistant, John Rose and helpers came out with all the nuggets we recovered in a small, metal finishing pan. It was a lot of nuggets! All of the participants were excited about that! Participant excitement is like the sound of beautiful music in my world!
The remaining concentrates are then washed over a smaller, more refined recovery system called a “Gold Extractor.” This is a small sluice with very low profile riffles. If not fed too fast, the Gold Extractor will reduce the volume of concentrates down to about the volume of a tablespoon or two – with zero loss of gold. Craig also pans the tailings from the Gold Extractor to demonstrate to the group how effective this recovery system is. Craig did not find a single speck of gold in the tailings. The following video captured most important parts of the final clean-up:
We transfer the final concentrates into the small, steel finishing pan with the nuggets, and then I dry the final concentrates over a butane stove. Note that anytime gold is heated up, the process should be done outside in a well ventilated area. We are only heating the concentrates enough to dry them out.
Then the dry concentrates are passed through several different mesh-size screens. Each size is placed on clean sheets of paper inside on a secure table (no chance of it falling down or getting knocked over), away from the wind, dogs, and especially kids that are horsing around. This includes grown up kids! I’m serious about having tight control over the final clean-up steps; because this is the time when some participants really start getting wound up. Sometimes we all get wound up!
We use a magnet to remove perhaps half the remaining concentrates (magnetic iron sand). Then, light blowing over each size easily separates the gold from the remaining impurities. We invite participants to join in this final process.
All of this part is done in the shop-portion of our facility with the large outside doors open so people can come and go as they please. There was a lot of excited chatter as most people gathered around to watch us turn the remaining concentrates into raw gold.
I was really hoping we were going to meet our goal of recovering more than an ounce of gold. But as the blowing process was finishing up, I could see we were not going to make it. It is easy to be fooled into predicting a higher end result when the black sand is adding to the volume.
In the end, to my surprise, we recovered a little less than 3/4 of an ounce. It should have been more. The reason I say this is that I watch all or most of the sampling that happens on Sunday morning. We take occasional samples out of the buckets being directed to the floating sluice. We take samples of the raw material people are putting into buckets up on the hillside. The sample results on this project were as good as I can remember. Plus, there were the nuggets.
We are very careful to capture all the gold and keep it secured in our gold bucket – which remains under very tight control throughout the project.
So are we just over-estimating how much gold we are recovering because we are getting more larger-sized flakes and nuggets? Or are we losing gold in some part of our process? The only place this could have happened in our process is when we were removing fine material from our buckets out in the river or when we washed the pay-dirt over our floating sluice.
As I ponder over this, it occurs to me it is very possible that we fed the sluice too fast. We removed most of the fine sand before processing the pay-dirt. Therefore, the material would have been quite a bit heavier than normal. In some cases, so much fine sand was removed that the pay-dirt was reduced by about 80%. As I think back on it, the final pay-dirt was mostly black-colored like a set of concentrates. We could see gold in with the dark sand.
If you feed a sluice too fast, especially with heavy material, you can overload the riffles to the point where there is no recovery system at all, and the pay-dirt will wash right through into tailings, gold and all.
For example, we could never feed the floating sluice as fast as we do with concentrates out of a recovery system. The riffles in the sluice would become overwhelmed with black sand almost immediately. Perhaps this new method of removing lighter material from our pay-dirt will require us to slow down how fast we are feeding the floating sluice. We will need to be more mindful of this in the coming season.
In the end, there were enough nuggets that everyone ended up with at least one. Some got two. In addition, everyone received a portion of the remaining gold. The shares looked good. Everyone expressed gratitude to me and my helpers. I think most people were happy that the weekend project was finally over. Most people, including me, are not used to the physical activity required in gold mining. Bur if the State would allow us to suction dredge again, I would be back in shape in a matter of weeks!
Recovering gold is very satisfying. But there are other benefits to going out with us on these weekend prospecting adventures. Happy Camp and the Klamath River provide some of the most spectacular Pacific Northwest scenery and wildlife that you will find anywhere. Something about the golden adventure pulls participants together in friendships that will last a lifetime. I caught some of the feelings that members take away with them in the following videos:
But the day was not yet over. Since this was our final weekend project of the season, we pulled all of our gear and the boat off the river after we ferried all the participants across. All that gear had been backed to the rear door of our facility. We were asking for help packing it up the stairs where we have safe, dry storage. There were so many helpers, most people did not need to pack gear upstairs more than once.
Then, with lots of thankyou’s and hugs, everyone went away and left me to enjoy a quiet Sunday evening. This was another very productive mining season for me, and I was thanking my lucky stars for the way I make my living. I consider myself to be very lucky!
2020 Schedule of Events
There is a learning curve to successful gold prospecting. One of the most effective methods of progressing through the learning curve is to go on prospecting adventures with others who more experienced than you are.
Group projects are limited to a certain number of participants. Scheduling in advance is strongly advised to ensure a position on any specific weekend project: 530 493-2012
The upcoming holidays will have our offices closed on December 23, 24 & 25 for Christmas, and January 1 for New Year’s Day.
Until further notice, we will continue opening the doors between 9 AM and 4 PM on weekdays. The office will be closed on weekends, except for the morning hours during the Saturdays when we are sponsoring the coming season’s Weekend Group Projects.
Members are invited to sign in your whereabouts on our properties over the phone in case there is some reason we need to find you.
Our mining properties are freely available to all members in good standing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unless the Klamath National Forest is closed due to wildfires.
For any problems, our Internal Affairs is available over the phone: Richard Krimm is our Director of Internal Affairs, email or call (510) 681 8066 (also available after hours and on weekends).
Industry Legal Situation
As many of you know, we have been fighting for more than ten years to overturn the California and Oregon moratoriums on suction dredging. We struggled all the way up through the California Supreme Court – and lost there by a unanimous decision – even when all of the existing law is on our side. Sadly, a substantial portion of America’s judicial system favors the progressive agenda (socialism).
We have struggled to petition the U.S. Supreme Court twice to settle mining right differences on the federal lands between the federal and State governments. The problem is that the Supreme Court only agrees to take up around 5% of the cases requesting a final Decision. In today’s troubled politics, the Court chose other cases which it deemed more important to all of America.
Therefore, until the laws or regulations are changed to our favor, we are not allowed to use any mechanized system to extract or process minerals within 100 yards of any waterway in California and most of Oregon.
We will have another opportunity to obtain a hearing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. It is just a matter of when. Think of it: The bottom of (many) California and Oregon waterways are loaded with gold. Gold is raw wealth. It is the world’s most important and longstanding financial currency. The gold is there for the taking.
We proved in every study (many) over 40 years that when suction dredging is done according to reasonable regulations, we have never harmed a single fish. But those who have the power to regulate us at the State level do not care. They just want to put an end to us. Truth and justice have nothing to do with it.
For a while, I had strong hopes that the Trump Administration would adopt federal rules which would shield us from the anti-mining interests that are controlling State governments. But “the swamp” may have turned out to be more prevalent and invasive than even Mr. Trump anticipated – and they have, to a large degree, kept him bogged down and distracted by baseless (but serious) accusations during his first three years in office.
At the moment, it is looking hopeful that Mr. Trump and his team could turn the tide on the swamp creatures who have been attacking him. Their addenda is to turn America into a socialist country. We can forget prospecting for gold and most of the other personal freedoms that made America great if the democrats succeed in winning the presidency in the upcoming election. If Mr. Trump holds office for another term, I predict there is a reasonable chance that we will see mining reforms which will limit State authority over federal mining projects (prospecting and mining on the federal lands).
I personally thank all members who have been supporting us with dues payments. The New 49’ers Prospecting Association is doing just fine.
But Legal Fund contributions have dropped off dramatically this past year. We need to encourage more participation if we want to maintain the non-profit status of The New 49’ers Legal Fund. This is important, because the non-profit is basically the only way to raise money for legal matters. Trying to do this through a for profit private company will get us in bigger trouble than we are trying to resolve in the first place!
In case you did not see this, the winners of our October 18 legal drawing are as follows:
Ten 1-Ounce American Silver Eagles: Carol Hatley, Scott McGrosso, Robert Maytum, Bill Jarrell, William White, Stephen Keenan, Brent Harshbarger, Patrick O’Brien, Phillip F. Myska and Robert Rackley.
Ten 1/10th-Ounce American Gold Eagles: Phillip F. Myska, Matt Cottrell, Robert Maytum, Larry Sharpe, William White, Richard Culley, Patrick Matheny, Paul Fender, Walt Morrison and Tom Chambers.
Four 1/4th – Ounce American Gold Eagles: Lenny Rock, David Barna, Joseph Sawyer and Phil Robinson
The Grand Prize: 1-Ounce American Gold Eagle: Christopher Newman
If your name is on the list above and you have not heard from our office, please give our girls a call: 530 493-2012.
Thank you to everyone who contributed to this legal drawing!
The problem is that we are only attracting enough contributions to equal the value of the prizes.
Here is my sincere request for you to continue supporting our political and legal efforts at least until we see what the national political landscape is after the elections this November. I am talking about only three more legal fund-raisers: 14 February and 19 June and 16 October, 2020.
All of America will be substantially affected by the results of the coming election.
Thank you for sticking with us by helping as you are able!
Note: This is not about The New 49’er Mining Association which has thousands of members and makes more than 70 miles of gold-bearing mining properties available to our members. This is about the non-profit fund-raising apparatus that is fighting for reasonable regulations that will allow us the use of mechanized gear and suction dredges so we can regain access to the richest gold deposits – which are mostly at the bottom of existing waterways.
The New 49’ers Legal Fund-raiser!
There will be 26 prizes in all:
Two Grand Prizes: 1/2-ounce American Gold Eagles
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles
Our office will automatically generate a ticket in your name for every $10 legal contribution we receive ($100 would generate 10 tickets).
This drawing will take place at 2 pm on Friday, 14 February 2020, at our headquarters in Happy Camp. You do not need to be a member of our organization to participate. You do not need to be present to win. There is no limit to the size or frequency of your contributions, or to the number of prizes you can win.
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online:
So far, there has been very little participation in this drawing! This substantially increases your chances of winning…
There will be 25 prizes in all:
Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles
Our office will automatically generate a ticket in your name for every $10 legal contribution we receive ($100 would generate 10 tickets).
This drawing will take place at 2 pm on Friday, 18 October of this year, at our headquarters in Happy Camp. You do not need to be a member of our organization to participate. While you are welcome to attend, you do not need to be present to win. There is no limit to the size or frequency of your contributions, or to the number of prizes you can win.
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or through the following PayPal link:
There is a learning curve to successful gold prospecting. One of the most effective methods of progressing through the learning curve is to go on prospecting adventures with others who more experienced than you are.
Group projects are limited to a certain number of participants. Scheduling in advance is strongly advised to ensure a position on any specific weekend project: 530 493-2012
Montine Blevins Needs Help!
Thank you very much to the gals in our office for creating this letter to try and help Montine and Rusty cope with the ever-rising costs of medical treatment for Montine’s condition. Montine managed our New 49’er “welcome program” for many years. Prior to this last year, I am guessing that she has spoken with nearly all our active members.
We Still Have an Opportunity to Open Suction Dredges on the Federal Lands!
Those of you who have been following our newsletters will be aware that the substantial effort by our industry to regain our mining rights (the use of motors) on the federal lands in California and Oregon in both the State and federal courts have not produced a positive outcome so far.
We are now appealing to key officials in the executive branch (Trump team) of the federal government to perform a formal Rulemaking which will forbid States from enacting laws or regulations that prevent or prohibit mining on the federal lands to a greater degree than the federal mining law(s) allow to the federal agencies.
Once again, initially prompted by the small-scale mining organizations in Oregon, here is our latest effort to keep our issues on the front lines of the Trump Administration’s efforts to reduce or eliminate over-regulation which provides no measurable benefit.
Small-scale mining creates actual wealth and improves the lives of working Americans. This is an industry-wide effort.
While our efforts will continue, it is difficult to get a read on how effective we are being. This is because the Trump Administration is being attacked so viciously by the very same organizations that have made modern methods of mining, more or less, against the law.
If Mr. Trump survives the continuous attacks against him, it is reasonable to predict that America’s federal land management agencies will attempt to assist us. This is what we are hearing from the agencies. Please stay tuned. We will provide updates as they happen.
Your contributions to keep our Legal Fund alive (drawing above) will help us keep the battle going on our side. Anything you guys can do will be greatly appreciated!
Dave McCracken
General Manager, The New 49’ers Mining Association
New 49’er Gold Prospecting Association 27 Davis Road P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, California 96039 (530) 493-2012 www.goldgold.com
Mike and Lynda Leamy are longstanding, very supportive New 49’er members who are super-wonderful to have around. Lynda, because she always has a smile on her face and possesses a wealth of good will and a depth of wisdom which seems to have no bottom.
Even though he is perhaps the very best prospector we have in our association, even when he is digging up remarkable discoveries, I have never seen any sign of personal ego. I do see that he experiences pleasure from making the rich finds, and he takes joy in watching all the excitement that his discoveries generate with all the others on these projects.
We have a special bucket where all the gold found on Sunday goes. There is a locking lid so we don’t make any mistakes in dropping gold on the ground. There is always one very trusted person who keeps the “gold bucket” close to hand so we don’t lose track of it. On this event, our “Gold Girl” was one of our most dedicated members, Diane Helgesen. Diane also captured most of the images and video in this newsletter.
Back to Dr. Gold, I watched closely how, as soon as the gold he found was in good hands, his greatest joy was in returning to is discovery to uncover more gold. I have devoted nearly my entire adult life to mining gold. All I can say is that Mike Leamy is a true gold prospector all the way to his core.
And that’s one of the reasons I was so happy during this most recent Weekend Group Project. Mike and Lynda were going to join us. With Dr. Gold on the project, it was a sure thing that we were going to recover a bunch of gold!
This project began with 70 people, including myself. We always devote Saturday morning over at the air-conditioned Happy Camp Senior Citizen’s Hall and start with introductions. It is always interesting to find out where people come from and hear a little about their personal stories of how they came to be members of our organization in Happy Camp. Some members provide very colorful introductions. This all contributes to the special teamwork experience we will enjoy during the weekend.
And then, for the benefit of those who have not listened to my talk about how to pursue a sampling plan, we devote several hours to carefully explaining the most important fundamentals of gold mining – which have to do with locating high-grade gold deposits in the first place. We call this a “sampling plan.” The sampling plan is something that me, my mining partners over the many years, and thousands of New 49’ers have worked out by hard work and the pursuit of truth.
Truth? Yes; if you think about it, if you don’t already know where the rich deposits are, you have to find them through the process of digging small samples in multiple locations, and compare the different results to figure out where there is more gold. Then you continue to sample along the strongest line of gold until you discover a concentration of raw wealth. Concentrations accumulate during very large storms. Sampling is always about what you are actually finding (truth), as opposed to what you would prefer to find.
We allow everyone an hour to get some nourishment and pull their gear together once my talk is finished. Then we drive to the location where we will devote the rest of the weekend. We were back down on our Wingate property on this project. But we were going to be on the far side of the river where several members reported finding “good gold,” with some larger flakes and small gold nuggets. These reports were coming in from longtime members Craig Colt, Derek Eimer, Laura Bagley and Scott Coleman, all who live in Happy Camp and devote most of the winter months prospecting along our very extensive mining properties.
These guys are such good prospectors. They fully understand the requirement that we must do these weekend projects where there is plenty of gold to be found. They are so supportive of our association, if any of them report a good gold location, it is not necessary for me to confirm the place in advance with my own sampling. This is saying a lot about the prospecting ability and personal integrity of these wonderful members. I would normally confirm a deposit before bringing 69 members there to prospect for gold. This is because I have some uncomfortable experience in splitting just a little gold up between an aggressive group of members.
I never want to do that again!
At around 2 pm on Saturday afternoon, I led the way downriver about 9 miles from Happy Camp. I was towing my jet boat which would be used to transfer everyone across the river. There were so many cars behind me, I could not see the end of the line even on the long, straight stretches of Highway 96!
Everyone was directed to park alongside the road a short distance downstream of Wingate. There are paths to the river down there that would place everyone closer to where we would be on the other side of the river. I launched the boat at the Wingate boat ramp and brought along several members whose physical disabilities were not going to allow them to take the pathways.
There were several fairly large groups of excited members waiting alongside the river by the time we arrived there with the boat. I’m guessing it took perhaps a dozen back and fourths to transfer nearly everyone to the far side of the river where we would be prospecting. Out of an abundance of caution, every passenger in my boat wears a life jacket. I drive the boat slow and easy when it is full of people.
But I drive the boat as fast as it will go when returning by myself for the next load. My whole life has been centered around water adventures and boats. Here is a video that captured of one of my return trips:
While transferring people across the river, I found out that Dr. Gold parked his car along the side of the road, stepped out, and spotted a quarter-ounce gold nugget just lying there in the dirt. The nugget was mostly flattened out – like it had been run over by about a million cars and trucks. Come on? Who does that? Dr. Gold is the only one I know! I’m sorry to say that I was so taken back by this unexpected discovery that it never occurred to me to capture an image of the nugget. Too bad! Take it from me: It was big and beautiful!
This early discovery was a sure sign that we were going to find plenty of gold during our group project!
Saturday afternoon on these projects is largely about familiarizing everyone with the location where we will do a group production mining (very small scale) project on Sunday morning. Everyone scatters over the area doing pan samples. We want to locate the most productive places possible. Beginners are taught how to pan for gold.
Panning is not difficult. But you do have to train your body to perform the correct motions. I believe there were only 2 participants who had no prior panning experience. Experienced members were giving them a hand. I could hear part of this in the following video sequence:
I loved the water and boats before I joined the U.S. Navy at 19 years old. Back in those days, we were coming close to the end of the Viet Nam war. Needing to get my life on track and become an adult, I enlisted on the condition that I would be able to try out for the Navy SEALS. I put everything on the line; because if I failed in the training, I was going to spend the remainder of my 4-year enlistment chipping paint on some ship.
That was the most difficult and brutal training in the world at the time. Dropout rates were as much or more than 90% of the people who tried. In fact, nobody graduated from the class that followed mine. Though it was extremely difficult, I graduated into the SEALS with six others out of a beginning class of 57.
Making it into the SEAL Team put my whole life on track. It changed my outlook in many important ways. It also brought me warmly into a fraternity of very special people. While we might not always agree on everything, there is nothing that could undermine the respect we have for each other.
I don’t need to know an active or former SEAL to provide him with friendship and support on almost any level. This is why I am so pleased when SEALS or other special forces veterans join The New 49’ers. It happens every once in a while. We would have more of these guys if we could get motors back and regain access to the rich gold deposits on the bottom of the river.
On this particular project, Former SEAL, Steve Posey, brought his son, Travis, along for his first time. Steve has joined us in the past, bringing other special forces men along. Whenever we get visited by special forces guys, I go out of my way to accommodate them. Besides the camaraderie we share, these guys make up the tip of America’s spear. They risk everything so that America can remain free. Here is some video I captured of Steve and Travis:
While all the panning activity was going on, several others and myself moved our floating sluice out into the faster water and set it all up for the following day. This floating sluice was constructed in our shop using an extra recovery system from a Proline 6-inch dredge. We mounted that on 2 large pontoons. The support frame is designed so we can lower the sluice deeper into the river so that the proper flow of water passes over top of the riffles. Diane captured the following video that will give you a better idea:
Riffles are gold-catching obstructions which rest along the bottom of the “sluice box.” Because gold is around five times heavier than the average gravel we process, the gold will settle behind the riffles while most of the lighter sand and gravel passes right through. We have locking poles on each corner of our floating sluice to keep the platform steady and dialed in the way we want it. In this way, we are able to process volume amounts of hand-dug pay-dirt without the use of motorized pumps.
I ferried everyone back across the river after a few hours. We don’t want people out for too long during the hottest part of Saturday afternoon. This is because the real action and excitement of the weekend takes place during the cool hours of Sunday morning.
During these weekend projects, we always meet at 6:30 pm back at the Senior Citizens Hall for a Saturday evening a potluck dinner and short meeting, mainly to confirm our Sunday morning plans. We encourage everyone to bring something to contribute to the meal, and bring what they prefer to drink.
There were so many members at the potluck that there were not enough chairs to seat everyone! Nobody seemed to mind, though. The roar of enthusiastic chatter was a great way to end the first day. There were all sorts of wonderful food dishes.
Volunteers who came into the office and packaged up all the letters to be mailed out.
We are presently encouraging everyone to write a letter in support of a Petition being directed to federal land management officials to help get California and other state agencies out of the business of mining on the Federal lands. You can find a more thorough explanation about this in last month’s newsletter. I took the opportunity of having so many members present at the potluck to provide them with paper and pens. We collected a healthy batch of hand-written letters. Then we organized volunteers to come into the office the following week so that each letter could be copied to the 10 additional officials who are listed on the Petition and placed into addressed and stamped envelopes. We ended up with around 300 letters in all. These are being mailed in batches every day. Very cool!
Sunday morning is when we all work together to dig up and process as much of the better pay-dirt that we found out there on Saturday afternoon.
We met out at the Wingate property at 6 am on Sunday morning. The idea is to get all the physical work completed before the heat of the day reaches the work site. When I arrived downriver with the boat at exactly 6 am, it looked as though the entire crew had already arrived. I had 6 disabled members in the boat. So they were first to reach the work site.
We are very lucky to have around a dozen or more very loyal, very experienced members who volunteer as “helpers” on these projects. There is no way that I could manage so many people without the help of others. We usually bring about half the helpers to the other side of the river first. They will help participants safely step out of the boat. They will also distribute hundreds of buckets to the locations where we were finding more gold on the day before. The other helpers usually remain on the road side of the river to help me land the boat in the right place, get participants into life jackets, and help them into the boat so nobody slips and falls.
Is this place beautiful or what?
Once we transferred everyone over to the other side of the river, and everyone was lined out on what parts they were going to play, the whole bunch slipped into high gear; and it was like one big human engine of productivity out there. Diane captured some video of the site just as I finished bringing the whole crew to the other side of the river:
I don’t believe longtime member and local Happy Camper, Mark Turner, has ever missed a weekend project or any other type of activity when we have asked for helpers. Mark has constructed a large quarter-inch classification screen which will effectively screen dry pay-dirt at a speed of around six seconds per half-bucket. This is much faster than using the standard-sized round classifiers that we sell in the store. We only fill the buckets of dug material half way. Otherwise, they are difficult to carry over the uneven ground.
Proper classification of pay-dirt (“sizing”) is a very important part of gold recovery. Here is some video we captured of Mark demonstrating his production screen:
All I can say is that there was so much digging going on out there, it wasn’t long before nearly all the buckets were full of screened pay-dirt. As is normal, our participants, in all their enthusiasm, were generating pay-dirt about twice as fast as our floating sluice could effectively process it. By this, I mean that if you feed too much material into a sluice box at once, the riffles (gold traps) will be overwhelmed (buried), and the pay-dirt will be swept through and take some of the gold with it out into the river.
Here is a video that Diane captured on Sunday morning high above the river where we could view the entire program as I provided an explanation of what was going on:
It wasn’t enough that Dr. Gold stumbled upon a quarter-ounce gold nugget the day before up by the road. His magic touch carried right over into Sunday morning. I was down near the boat capturing images with the camera when Dr. Gold processed his first pan of material. There was only a single small fleck in the pan. Without any sign of disappointment, he shrugged his shoulders and headed back to the area he was digging.
Just a while later, Dr. Gold’s second pan produced two small flecks and a small flake of gold. This was nothing to get excited about. Most of the pan samples from the day before were more fruitful. Then off he went again. “Gold mining is not always the same,” is what went through my mind. “Sometimes you make a great strike; and other times you find very little.” But it was still too early in the day to rule out Dr. Gold’s magic ways…
Meanwhile, our buckets of pay-dirt had mostly been filled, screened, and were waiting their turn to be processed. This allowed everyone out there to back off a bit, take a seat on the rocks, enjoy the spectacular surroundings, and get to know each other better. Over the many years, hundreds of life-long friendships have been formed in just this way. These projects are not only about work. They are also supposed to be fun. We do have a lot of fun; and once in a while, something extraordinary happens to create wonderful adventures for everyone out there.
Seeing that she was relaxing on a rock waiting for another bucket, I took the opportunity to interview Lynda Leamy with the video camera rolling:
Just as if the event was scripted, as we were all mostly in a relax mode, Dr. Gold walked down to our processing site with a small plastic dust pan which was only holding about a handful of material. He was being closely followed by a small group of others who had been digging in the same area. There was a really nice flake-like nugget sitting right on top of the dirt. He suggested someone pan the material, “because there was more gold that we could not yet see.” Jim Bear panned the material, only to expose one of the best pans of gold I have seen in a very long time! This was an amazing lot of gold from what was only around a quarter of a medium-sized gold pan of unscreened dirt. Fortunately, I was right there to capture the excitement on video:
You will see in the videos that I joke around with Dr. Gold about having a secret jar of gold that he uses to salt the gold that he finds during our projects. This is just in fun. It’s my way of acknowledging his magical prospecting abilities. I’ve never met anyone who can stumble into gold like he does. I also have never met anyone who is foolish enough to throw large quantities of beautiful raw wealth onto the ground so he can find it again, and essentially give most of it away to others.
The truth is that there are too many others looking on for someone to secretly remove gold from a bottle or plastic zip lock bag and pour onto a dig site. Someone would certainly see that. Besides, it is a physical impossibility to place gold underneath hard-packed streambed. Only god has the power to do that.
Others were also finding nice big gold flakes and some nuggets. Here are some images of Jim Bear showing off his excitement. Jim, by the way, can be found on youtube at yellowbottom prospecting:
I encouraged several others to go up and dig closer to Dr. Gold. They went up there just to watch, because we were all waiting for buckets.
This sample came from about a handful of unscreened material!
Just a little while later, Dr. Gold came back down with a bunch of others who had been looking on. He was still using the small plastic dust pan. There was perhaps just a little more than a handful of unscreened pay-dirt in the dust pan. Right on top, there were three nice gold nuggets peeking out of the dirt. Once the material was panned, a fantastic line of nuggets and large flat flakes were exposed. Unbelievable! The Gold Girl was right there to capture it in our special gold bucket with the lid screwed on tight. I was there again with the video camera:
At this point, maybe about 10 am, a bunch of us started joking that we should leave Dr. Gold out there to finish the day while the rest of us went back to Happy Camp to relax for the rest of the day. We actually could have done that; because we had already dug and screened more pay-dirt than we were going to have time to process.
Pay-dirt that was dug and screened, but we left behind for lack of time to process it!
Normally, when we have more pay-dirt than we can process during the project, once we stop feeding the recovery system, I invite anyone who wants to take a bucket of pay-dirt back home, or to their camps, to process on their own. Lots of participants were excited about this idea.
We always make an effort to make these events good for any children or young adults who participate. Even if they don’t appreciate the events while they are happening, the experiences we share out in the great outdoors are personal adventures that they will strongly appreciate later in life
Since we were in a wind down mode, I asked 12-year old Travis if he wanted to take a shot at driving my jet boat up through a set of rapids. No hesitation; he was ready to go! His dad caught the action on video:
I called it quits shortly after about 10 am and carefully moved the floating sluice over into shallow water where we could safely remove all the gold and concentrates from the recovery system. As we removed the screens and riffles from the sluice, everyone broke out into joyful cheers as a bunch of gold came into view. The rubber matting along the bottom of the sluice was loaded with fine gold. There were nice big golden flakes and nuggets all throughout the upper portion of the sluice. This was the best clean-up we have seen in years! We were all betting that we recovered at least an ounce of gold. All the sluice concentrates and gold were poured into our special gold bucket. Here is some video which captured the final part of the sluice clean-up:
By “concentrates,” I mean that these gold recovery systems are designed to capture and concentrate all of the heaviest material that is fed into them. Concentrates normally consist of the gold and a bunch of black sand (iron) and small iron rocks.
Bringing disabled members up to the boat launch through some very turbulent rapids!
The day was going by fast, and we still had to separate the gold from about a third of a bucket of concentrates. I immediately used the boat to start ferrying everyone across the river. The time was around 11 am The heat of the day had still not reached the other side of the river where we had been working. My helpers were last to go. This is because they were making sure all the gear had been properly stowed, that any dangerous holes were filled in and that no trash had been left behind.
We never turn anyone away on these projects unless they are so disabled that there is no reasonable way for them to participate. Sometimes we get participants who have disabilities which will not allow them to hike up and down the trails to and from the river. But they are able to contribute once they arrive at the work site. As long as they are up for taking a ride both ways through some pretty serious rapids, we help them into and out of the boat and give them a ride that they will never forget. The water in the river is quite low this year. This dramatically increases the chances that we will slam into rocks as we race through the rapids and other shallow areas. But we didn’t hit any rocks on this day. Here it is on video:
We all agreed to meet back at our office to begin final clean-up at 2 pm. This allowed several of us some time to remove my jet boat from the river and bring it home. Diane is a big help on these projects. With the gold bucket firmly in hand, she remained with me until we arrived at the office. It is an important matter of personal duty to keep all the gold safe and secure until it is properly cleaned up and everyone is given their share. We are very serious about this!
I expected to have to pull all our final clean-up gear out of storage and set it up in the shade of our outdoor picnic area near the front corner of our office building. But when we drove into the parking lot, Diane and I were delighted to discover that John Rose already had all that gear set up and ready to go. Very cool!
John has been Assistant Manager of The New 49’ers for about as long as I can remember. It is because he loyally takes on these responsibilities that I become free to depart Happy Camp during the winter months so I am able to look for golden adventures abroad.
Boating is my favorite activity in the whole world!
Due to some good fortune that has come my way, I now have a 56-foot luxury motor yacht in the Philippines. Close friends and I have converted this 800 HP platform into a fantastic dive boat. I now devote the winter months voyaging around the Philippines, which is mostly water, doing spear fishing and underwater exploration. This is a lifetime dream come true for me.
Under John’s management, our Happy Camp program runs as smooth as can be. I am able to manage legal matters and compose newsletters anywhere on the planet that I have an Internet connection. The boat provides an Internet connection through a satellite uplink.
With the assistance of my experienced helpers, we made short work of the final clean-up steps with everyone looking on. There was a lot of gold! I bet Craig Colt a dollar that we were just short of an ounce. Then, to hedge my bet, I wagered a dollar with someone else that we recovered more than an ounce. It’s all in fun, and fits in nicely with all the excited chatter from the participants. All debts were promptly paid as soon as we weighed the gold on our scale.
The real value in this clean-up was in the 200 gold nuggets that we had recovered. Granted that most of the nuggets were small. A piece of gold is technically a nugget if it will not pass through a 10-mesh screen.
In the end, the scale weighed up 19 pennyweights (20 pennyweights equals a troy ounce of gold). We were a pennyweight short of making our target of a full ounce. Perhaps if we processed the remaining pay-dirt that had already been dug and screened, we would have more than met our target. But how could I know?
The spot price value of the gold we recovered on Sunday morning added up to $1,360. I made an offer to keep all the gold in exchange for throwing a big pizza party with all the beer or other beverages to make everyone happy. “All in favor?” Not a single participant was in favor of that idea. They never are!
There were 53 people at the split that had been present out on our dig. Divided into 455 grains (about 19 pennyweights), the weight of the individual splits was around 8.56 grains each. Normally, individual splits on these projects are between 6 and 7 grains. I cannot remember the last time the individual splits were above 7 grains. This, along with all the nuggets, gave everyone something to cheer about.
Four of the gold nuggets weighed more than 8.56 grains. One beautiful gold nugget was a pennyweight and a half! To keep things fair, we all agreed upon a drawing system that would allow the lucky four to pick their nuggets. Boy were those some happy people! Those were some really beautiful gold nuggets!
Then we needed to recalculate the remaining weight against 49 people. From there, I measured out just under 8 grains for each additional split. This is still at least a five-year record. Maybe ten years!
With John and several other members providing support, it did not take long to distribute the individual shares. It was challenging to make it happen through the roar of excitement being generated by the participants. This roar of excitement is all the payment I personally need in order to keep managing these weekend projects.
After a bunch of us packed the gear up the stairs in our building and put it where it belongs, everyone went off to experience more adventure in their lives. I was told that the big pile of pay-dirt we left out on site had been fully processed before dark on Sunday. I heard that some people even swam over there to get their share of what we left behind.
2019 Schedule of Events
Our first two weekend Group Mining Projects of the season went very well. One of the stories is published above. The other project will make for some excellent video-enhanced storytelling once we complete this latest effort to win our industry back.
The remaining 2019 weekend event will take place in just a few weeks: August 17 & 18. Otherwise, our numerous properties are available to all members 24 hours a day, 365 days a year for you to do your own prospecting adventures. That is, unless there is some emergency that closes the forest down, like a dangerous wildfire. We have not had any serious wildfires this year so far, so the air is nice and clear.
There is a learning curve to successful gold prospecting. One of the most effective methods of progressing through the learning curve is to go on prospecting adventures with others who more experienced than you are.
Group projects are limited to a certain number of participants. Scheduling in advance is strongly advised to ensure a position on any specific weekend project: 530 493-2012
Action Alert: We Still Have an Opportunity to Open Suction Dredges on the Federal Lands!
Action Alert by Tom Kitchar, President of Waldo Mining District
Now that we have the attention and support from Trump administration officials, the next step forward for us has been to draft a Petition to the Department of Interior (DOI) to perform an official Rulemaking process to change the federal regulations in a way that prevents States from interfering with mining on the Federal Lands, to do away with duplicative and unreasonable regulation, and to prevent the States from prohibiting mining on the federal lands.
The Petition was submitted in mid-June. This is an industry-wide program which enjoys support from all or most mining associations. There have also been letters of support from several county governments that have sustained serious economic harm because of the misguided policies against mining by some State agencies.
The petition has landed home where it needs to be. It is being taken seriously. Now, if we can just please take it to the next step: We need to encourage supportive messages from as many people as we can. This is the moment of truth! Notwithstanding any other opportunities that could arise in the future, this is, to a large extent, our last opportunity in the foreseeable future to regain the use of our mechanized equipment and gold dredges.
If you please send your messages to each person on the list, especially the two top DOI officials listed at the beginning of the Petition, and also to Mr. Trump; we could find ourselves in a federal Rulemaking process that will finally allow us to defend against the false claims being made against us by the radical extremists who are doing everything within their power to undermine the economic wellbeing of America.
We are thanking you with all sincerity for any and all help you can provide in this effort!
Planned Office Hours for the Time Being
Until further notice, we will continue opening the doors between 9 AM and 4 PM on weekdays. The office will be closed on weekends, except for the morning hours during the Saturdays when we are sponsoring the coming season’s final Weekend Group Projects: August 17 & 18. Our final Saturday evening potluck will also happen on August 17.
Members are invited to sign in your whereabouts on our properties over the phone in case there is some reason we need to find you.
Our mining properties are freely available to all members in good standing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unless the Klamath National Forest is closed due to wildfires.
For any problems, our Internal Affairs is available over the phone: Richard Krimm is our Director of Internal Affairs, email or call (510) 681 8066 (also available after hours and on weekends).
The New 49’ers Legal Fund-raiser!
There will be 25 prizes in all:
Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles
Our office will automatically generate a ticket in your name for every $10 legal contribution we receive ($100 would generate 10 tickets).
This drawing will take place at 2 pm on Friday, 18 October of this year, at our headquarters in Happy Camp. You do not need to be a member of our organization to participate. You do not need to be present to win. There is no limit to the size or frequency of your contributions, or to the number of prizes you can win.
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online.
Action Alert by Tom Kitchar, President of Waldo Mining District
After careful review of the court documents in the Rinehart and Bohmker cases, we realized that the BLM and USFS (Forest Service) mining regulations had been amended in the early 2000’s, basically allowing the States authority over mining on federal lands in excess of authority which the BLM or USFS is allowed by law!
About the time we recognized the problem in the federal mining regulations, we were contacted by a fairly high official within the Department of Interior (DOI) who had noticed all the letters and wanted more information. Then they wanted to help! I was told that they (DOI) wished they had known about the Bohmker case six months ago. I believe they would have submitted an amicus brief on our behalf to the Supreme Court defended mining; which would have greatly increased our chances of a hearing… and winning.
This is proof: Letter writing can work!
Be-that-as-it-may, the Bohmker case is dead for all practical purposes, and we had a choice to make: (A) GIVE UP, or (B) FIND ANOTHER WAY. Giving up means the eventual death of small-scale mining as we know it. We really do not want to give up what otherwise would be a thriving industry which generates raw wealth for America…not to mention, fulfills the dreams thousands of Americans and others have had since they were children.
It was then that we realized the answer was present the whole time, but we never recognized it. This was largely because we believed our case was such a “slam-dunk” based on much more powerful laws and court cases.
BACKGROUND: The U.S. Constitution is supposed to be the #1 Law of the Land. In the Constitution, Congress is empowered sole authority over all lands belonging to the United States. Congress has delegated management of the public domain lands to various federal departments. This includes the Department of Interior (BLM), and the Department of Agriculture (USFS).
In 1955, Congress amended the 1872 Mining Law by providing the federal agencies management authority over the “non-mineral resources” on unpatented mining claims, with the provision:
“…That any use of the surface of any such mining claim by the United States, its permittees or licensees, shall be such as not to endanger or materially interfere with prospecting, mining or processing operations or uses reasonably incident thereto…” (30 U.S.C. Sec. 612(b)) (emphasis added).
Please read that again; mineral development is the primary use of the federal lands. This is because mineral deposits can only be developed where they exist.
This has been taken to mean that the federal management agencies are not allowed to prohibit mining. Any restrictions must be necessary and reasonable. There is so much existing federal case law on the books, this reality is not in dispute.
Then, during the early 2000’s, both the BLM and the USFS amended their mining regulations requiring that all miners MUST OBTAIN ALL REQUIRED STATE PERMITS without placing any limits on what the States could require. BLM regulations even went so far as to say that the States could set higher standards or “more stringent” levels of restriction upon the federal lands than the federal agencies are allowed.
Oregon’s SB 3 (Bohmker) was not preempted by the federal Mining Law because the BLM and USFS regulations allowed the States to deal with mining any way they want!
What?
This raises a Question: If the BLM & USFS are prohibited from endangering or materially interfering with mining, how can those very same agencies provide the States with authority to do what the federal government agencies are barred from doing?
Answer: BLM and USFS cannot provide the States with authority that the federal agencies themselves do not have in the first place!
Action Alert!
Now that we have the attention and support from Trump administration officials, the next step forward for us has been to draft a Petition to the Department of Interior (DOI) and the Department of Agriculture (DOA) to perform an official Rulemaking process to change the federal regulations in a way that prevents States from interfering with mining on the Federal Lands, to do away with duplicate and unreasonable regulation, and to prevent the States from prohibiting mining on the federal lands.
The Petition was submitted several weeks ago (June 18th) with support from eleven major mining associations including The New 49ers. In addition to the Petition, Letters of Support are coming from several county governments that have sustained serious economic harm because of the misguided policies against mining by some State agencies.
The petition has landed home where it needs to be. It is being taken seriously. Now, if we can just please take it to the next step: We need to encourage supportive messages from as many people as we can. This is the moment of truth! Notwithstanding any other opportunities that could arise in the future, this is, to a large extent, our last opportunity in the foreseeable future to regain the use of our mechanized equipment and gold dredges.
To assist you with this, we are attaching the Petition. This needs to either be linked to emails or included with hard copies of support:
We are also attaching a simple article which describes what a suction dredge is: What is a Suction Dredge? Perhaps you want to enclose or attach this information in your message.
There is an additional link which provides some talking points to help if you want some assistance with your messages:
If you please send your messages to each person on the list, especially the two Secretaries listed at the beginning of the Petition, and also to Mr. President Trump; we could find ourselves in a federal Rule-making process that will finally allow us to defend against the false claims being made against us by the radical extremists who are doing everything within their power to undermine the economic well being of America.
Look for the most current news and updates regarding the Petition and possible Rule-making (with a possible public comment period) on the Waldo Mining District website at: www.waldominingdistrict.org. You will also find important updates on our own message forum.
We are thanking you with all sincerity for any and all help you can provide in this effort!
2019 Schedule of Events
Our first weekend Group Mining Project of the season went very well. It will make for some excellent video-enhanced storytelling once we complete this latest effort to win our industry back.
Remaining 2019 events: July 20 & 21; August 17 & 18.
There is a learning curve to successful gold prospecting. One of the most effective methods of progressing through the learning curve is to go on prospecting adventures with others who more experienced than you are.
Group projects are limited to a certain number of participants. Scheduling in advance is strongly advised to ensure a position on any specific weekend project: 530 493-2012
Until further notice, we will continue opening the doors between 9 AM and 4 PM on weekdays. The office will be closed on weekends, except for the morning hours during the Saturdays when we are sponsoring the coming season’s Weekend Group Projects: June 22; July 20; and August 17. Our Saturday evening potlucks will also only happen on these dates.
Members are invited to sign in your whereabouts on our properties over the phone in case there is some reason we need to find you.
Our mining properties are freely available to all members in good standing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unless the Klamath National Forest is closed due to wildfires.
For any problems, our Internal Affairs is available over the phone: Richard Krimm is our Director of Internal Affairs, email or call (510) 681 8066 (also available after hours and on weekends).
Winners from Our Most Recent Legal Drawing!
Here is the winning list from the legal drawing which took place on Friday, June 21 2019:
Ten 1-Ounce American Silver Eagles
John Roina of Sacramento, CA
Richard Grady of Waldport, OR
Guy Lawrence of Port Orford, OR
Robert Williams of Georgetown, CA
Karl Schrock of Palm Harbor, FL
Michael O’Connell of Crescent City, CA
Steve Rive of La Quinta, CA
John Bilik of Spring Grove, IL
Van Wilhite of West Point, CA
Ronald Copenhafer of Malibu, CA
Ten 1/10th-Ounce American Gold Eagles
William Frese of Cincinnati, OH
Robert Guardiola of River Banks, CA
Richard Speidal of Minden, NV
Clifford Robinson of Oakland, CA
R. Jim Pace of Hillsboro, OR
Robert Williams of Georgetown, CA
Robert Guardiola of River Banks, CA
Russell Steen of Huntington Beach, CA
Theodore Ehrhardt of La Valle, CA
Robert Williams of Georgetown, CA
Four 1/4th-Ounce American Gold Eagles
Bobby Whitaker of Bloomington, IN
Bobby Whitaker of Bloomington, IN
Mathew Nelson of Rigby, ID
Van Wilhite of West Point, CA
The Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle:
Michael O’Connell of Crescent City, CA
Our most sincere thank you to everyone who is supporting our efforts to win our industry back. There is good reason for hope at this time.
Best wishes,
Dave McCracken
New 49’er Gold Prospecting Association 27 Davis Road P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, California 96039 (530) 493-2012 www.goldgold.com
Without voicing any opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court has declined to ReviewBohmker v. Oregon, 903 F.3d 1029 (9th Cir. 2018). This was our second attempt to get the High-Court to weigh in on the very important matter of how much authority State agencies have to prohibit mining activity on the federal lands.
We can only speculate as to the reason our case was not accepted. I am told that the High Court receives so many requests that it is only able to review about 5% of the cases it receives. With all of the political turmoil right now in America, my guess is that there are other matters (immigration on multiple levels, abortion, gun control, the limits of Presidential authority, election tampering, and much more) which are perceived to be more expedient to the broad population.
The Trump Administration is also being challenged in the courts for relaxing environmental regulation on the federal lands. The decisions in those matters may affect our industry.
I am attaching a letter from our attorney which summarizes this matter. Let me please suggest that we keep trying. This was our second legal case to reach the U.S. Supreme Court in about a year. We should be pleased that our legal challenges are making it all the way up to one step from the top. This issue is so important to America’s future; it is just a matter of time before the Supreme Court Reviews it.
The matter will not be fully resolved until the High Court weighs in on it. More cases are certain to arise as States continue to prohibit Americans from developing mineral deposits which have been granted to them by congress through existing mining laws.
We have also heard from the new Director of the California Water Board that they have fallen behind in their effort to develop a water quality permit to support suction dredging. The reality is that there is not enough time to make it happen in time for our 2019 mining season.
Therefore, we will not have access to mechanized systems to support our small-scale gold mining programs this coming season. All I can say is that we will keep on trying as long as you guys continue to support our efforts.
Our 2019 summer in Happy Camp will largely be devoted to teaching members how to do successful gold mining using hand methods, and to provide several weekend projects that will generate fun, excitement and some natural gold for all who participate.
2019 Schedule of Events
June 22 & 23; July 20 & 21; August 17 & 18.
There is a learning curve to successful gold prospecting. One of the most effective methods of progressing through the learning curve is to go on prospecting adventures with others who more experienced than you are.
Group projects are limited to a certain number of participants. Scheduling in advance is strongly advised to ensure a position on any specific weekend project: 530 493-2012
Until further notice, we will continue opening the doors between 9 AM and 4 PM on weekdays. The office will be closed on weekends, except for the morning hours during the Saturdays when we are sponsoring the coming season’s Weekend Group Projects: June 22; July 20; and August 17. Our Saturday evening potlucks will also only happen on these dates.
Members are invited to sign in your whereabouts on our properties over the phone in case there is some reason we need to find you.
Our mining properties are freely available to all members in good standing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unless the Klamath National Forest is closed due to wildfires.
For any problems, our Internal Affairs is available over the phone: Richard Krimm is our Director of Internal Affairs, email or call (510) 681 8066 (also available after hours and on weekends).
Upcoming Legal Drawing in Just Two weeks!
Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles
Our office will automatically generate a ticket in your name for every $10 legal contribution we receive ($100 would generate 10 tickets, etc.).
This drawing will take place on Friday, 21 June 2019 at our headquarters in Happy Camp. You do not need to be a member of our organization to participate. You do not need to be present to win. There is no limit to the size or frequency of your contributions, or to the number of prizes you can win.
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online.
All contributions are tax deductible. You can find more information about the drawing right here.
My sincere thanks to each of you who support our efforts!
Sincerely,
Dave McCracken
New 49’er Gold Prospecting Association 27 Davis Road P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, California 96039 (530) 493-2012 www.goldgold.com
One of the important benefits to becoming an Associate or Full Member of The New 49’ers is that you are able to participate for free in all of our organized Weekend Group Mining Projects and keep an equal share of the gold that we recover.
We have sponsored these projects every season since 1987 when we realized that many or most members needed some direct exposure to successful gold mining projects so they could go out and find gold by themselves on our extensive gold properties along the Klamath River and its tributaries in northern California.
Reading about how to prospect for and develop rich gold deposits sets a good foundation. But there is no substitute for going out with a group of very experienced prospectors and participate in a successful mining project. Actually seeing how the techniques and processes work is very valuable to progressing through the learning curve. But perhaps the most important part of these projects is that everyone gains the objective reality and confidence that there really are high-grade gold deposits to be found if you just stick to a basic sampling plan.
Fortunately, we have quite a few experienced members who like to come out on the weekends with us and help less experienced members learn the basics as we aggressively sample for a valuable gold deposit. We try to find one that is close to the surface so we don’t have to dig very deep. Then we join together in about three hours of hard work to recover as much gold out of the deposit that we can. We had about 45 members on this particular project, including 10 or more volunteer helpers.
I thank my lucky stars for the volunteer members who join us on these weekends. There is no way I could manage projects with so many people on my own. I believe the largest weekend group we ever had was around 207 members. That’s not a group. It’s an army! Even with plenty of helpers, I had to buy a megaphone to communicate with so many people out alongside the river!
This project was planned on our Sluice Box property which takes in around 4 miles of the Klamath River just downstream of the small town of Seiad. That is about 20 miles upstream of Happy Camp where our headquarters is located. We have been making the Sluice Box property available to members since the late 1980’s. The property is always producing well for streamside mining. This is because it replenishes its shallow gold deposits every winter from high storm flows. We have sponsored quite a few group projects on Sluice Box, both with suction dredges, and by digging the shallow gold alongside the river.
Over the many years, there have been numerous gold rushes to Sluice Box both in and outside of the active waterway. As shown below, the property continues to produce good results. This is true even in the very same places that we have mined in the past. No kidding!
The reason we chose Sluice Box for this particular outing is that the most recent gold rush I was aware of happened towards the top end of the property during the 2017 season, and extended into the beginning of the 2018 season.
In 2017, there was so much energy in the group of members that made the strike, when I went up there to have a look, I got the clear impression that I would make a bunch of good members upset if I directed dozens upon dozens of new members nearby to do a weekend project. Gold has this effect on just about anyone. If you have not had “gold fever” yet, it is only because you have not found a rich enough gold deposit. It is only reasonable that if (when) you locate a rich deposit of pure wealth; you want to recover as much of it for yourself as you can. Most often, you don’t want to share the deposit with the whole world.
The only time I get the cold shoulder from a group of members out on the river is when they have found something really good and do not want a whole bunch of others moving in on them. We have rules that protect the deposits members find so they can take their time developing the site and not have to worry about others jumping in right on top of them.
As manager of The New 49’ers, I have to abide by our rules more than anyone else. Still, because it is good for other members, and helps keep our bills paid; it is in my personal interest to figure out how to introduce as many members as possible to high-grade gold deposits when they are discovered. Therefore, occasionally some members conspire to keep newly-found rich gold deposits a secret (which is impossible to do). To find them, we just have to watch where a bunch of members flock to along our extensive gold properties.
The thing is that high-grade gold follows a continuous path down more than 100 miles of the Klamath River. So when a rich discovery is made, I can usually organize an experienced sampling team to locate an extension of the very same high-grade by sampling further up and downstream along the very same path, down to the very same layer in the streambed material that is paying. If we cannot do this without stepping on the discoveries made by other members, we have plenty of other places to go.
I knew about the small gold rush at the top end of Sluice Box towards the end of the 2017 season. Myself and a few helpers launched my boat to go take a look at what they found, and to see if it would be practical to do the final weekend project a respectable distance downstream of the strike. As it turned out, there was a long stretch of river available downstream of the strike. But the vibes I was getting from the active members upstream was that at least some of them would be unhappy if we moved in there.
Having been managing The New 49’ers for about 35 years, I have learned that it is never a good idea for me to organize mining projects, or do my own mining, in close proximity to an active strike where all or some of the existing members are emotionally jacked up over the gold they are finding. Therefore, we did something else on our final project that season.
All of our sample pans were looking good, and the gold was coming right off the surface of the streambed!
With the 2018 season upon us, we returned to Sluice Box and only found a few members mining along the road-side edge of the river near the top end. As I said, there is a long stretch downstream of the original strike that has yet to be sampled or mined. These members were as friendly as can be, and actually encouraged us to do the project up there any place we desired. They showed us the gold they were recovering out of very shallow streambed material along the edge of the river and even out into the river as far as they could reach. The gold was quite good!
When we launched my boat and all the gear to support this project, all or most of the members who were already at Sluice Box helped us pack gear to the site and set it up. They went so far as to show us the gold they were recovering, and the exact streambed layer that was producing the gold. This was great! It meant that we already had a gold strike even before we began the project!
We do a Saturday morning meeting to introduce everyone, especially the project helpers. Then I devote the morning to a blackboard demonstration about how gold deposits in waterways and how to follow a simple sampling plan to, step by step, walk yourself right into high-grade gold. Then, after lunch, we go out to the site and devote the afternoon doing gold pan samples to confirm the gold deposit we will all work together for several hours on Sunday morning.
John Rose has been our project manager for quite a long time.
There are two objectives on Saturday afternoon on these projects. The first is to make certain that everyone is able to pan gold correctly. The reason for this is that if you cannot pan gold without losing any, you cannot sample for rich gold deposits. Sampling is the process you go through to locate and develop rich gold deposits. So gold panning is pretty-much the first important step in the learning curve. The second objective on Saturday afternoon is to confirm a rich gold deposit that we will all work together on Sunday.
It wasn’t long on Saturday afternoon before nearly everyone was recovering a good showing of gold in their pans. Our helpers dedicated themselves to helping beginners with their panning skills.
Putting on these projects requires me to delegate nearly all of the management duties to our helpers. John Rose takes charge of the entire outdoor program. This frees me to capture some images and video so I can tell the adventure story in a monthly newsletter at some later time.
Dickey Melton takes pleasure in feeding pay-dirt to our main gold recovery system.
Dickey Melton mostly takes charge of our floating recovery system, and makes sure that all the pay-dirt will be fed at the proper speed. By this, I mean as fast as we can without overloading the riffles (gold traps in the recovery system) and avoid losing gold that everyone has worked so hard to dig up. Here is some video we captured of Dickey showing how it’s done:
Diane Peirce is designated as our “gold girl.” She places all the gold we recover on Sunday inside of a good plastic bucket with a twist-on, locking lid. The thing about gold is that if you do not handle and take careful control of it as soon as it is recovered from the ground, the gold will find some way to get lost. This is absolutely true!
Diane Helgesen is a longtime supporter who never misses an opportunity to volunteer herself on any and every New 49’er event. You never met a happier or more loyal person. She also adds humor and fun times to the collective group chemistry. She took on the “gold girl” responsibility on this project. She also works with me in capturing images and video. When you see me slip off my more serious demeanor on camera and break out into a smile (sometimes I even laugh), you know it is because Diane is there behind the camera adding fun to what is otherwise a serious activity for me.
There are several reasons that I personally take these projects very seriously, even though they are mostly fun and entertaining for everyone else. Part of this is because there are rules we must follow to avoid problems with local officials. Also, with so many people out there on the rocks and in the water, accidents do occasionally happen – which is never good. This normally has to do with someone losing balance and taking a fall on the rocks.
Perhaps the main reason I take these projects serious is that the final clean-up steps and gold split on Sunday afternoon is my responsibility. Everyone works hard out there. Most people by Sunday afternoon have gained enough exposure to the processes we employ are already aware that prospecting is a hit or miss program. There are times when you don’t recover very much. I have been told endless times over the years that participants are happy with the education and exposure to gold prospecting, and really don’t care about how much gold they get as their share of what we recover. But I know from long experience that it is much more satisfying to everyone if they go away Sunday afternoon with a nice share of gold to show for their effort. While other very dedicated helpers contribute to this, the ultimate responsibility to make it happen falls squarely upon my shoulders.
When we are capturing this much gold in a single pan of the material we are processing, I don’t need to worry about how the splits are going to come out at the end of the day!
There are numerous regular helpers on these projects; too many to name here. But I must acknowledge Craig Colt and Derek Eimer who are perhaps our most serious gold prospectors. Also, Laura Bagley and Scott Coleman are local members who do prospecting nearly every day of the year, unless the snow is too deep to allow access to the streambed material. Nancy Aberg never misses a weekend project even though she has to travel perhaps 100 miles each way over windy roads to join up with us. Ray Derrick, now living in Arizona, also joined us on this project. Many years went by when Ray never missed a single weekend project.
We end off rather early on Saturday afternoon so we can freshen up and prepare for a potluck at the Grange Hall which begins at 6:30 PM. The gold panning was so productive on this Saturday; a bunch of the participants were still hard at it when I returned to Happy Camp. For some participants, the gold they recover on Saturday afternoon is the first gold they ever recovered. Some people never do break away from the gold adventure on the river and make it to the potluck. Instead, they go get flashlights to assist with their panning activity late into the night.
Even so, our potluck at the Grange Hall in Happy Camp was a full house. There was plenty of scrumptious food to go around. The roar of exciting conversations was so loud; it took some doing to quiet the room so I could tell everyone that dinner was ready. We have a bunch of local members who have either moved to Happy Camp altogether, or at least spend the entire summer seasons there. Many of these folks have already done the weekend projects, so we only see them around the office when they come in, or at the Saturday potlucks. All active Members are invited to join our group dig on Sunday morning.
We begin the group dig early on Sunday morning; usually at around 6:30 AM. The main reason for this is to complete the physical labor before the heat of the day reaches the site where we are working. When I arrived at Sluice Box, nearly everyone else was already hard at work. Everyone already knew at what layer in the streambed the gold was coming from. This time, the pay-dirt was directly on top of the streambed. So digging was going to be rather easy.
We had already set up and dialed in our floating recovery system on Saturday, so Dickey was ready for the first bucket of pay-dirt as soon as he arrived.
Our group helpers quickly organized participants into teams to perform the necessary functions to produce a continuous flow of pay-dirt to the recovery systems. Under John’s watchful eye, participants are sorted into diggers who fill plastic buckets about half way to keep them from becoming too heavy to pack over the rocks to a staging point. This is where the material will be passed through a classification screen. Longtime supportive member, Mark Turner, created a volume ¼-inch classifier that we use on these projects. In this way, we remove larger sized material (mostly rocks) that do not need to be fed into the recovery systems. Here it is on video:
Another team does the screening so that the classified pay-dirt drops into some large plastic tubs. Then others fill buckets with classified pay-dirt and walk the material down to where it can be passed out to our floating recovery system. Others gather up the empty buckets and distribute them back to the diggers. We captured the following video of how Sunday morning got off to a good start:
We discovered on earlier weekend projects that when the pay-dirt is close to the surface, a group project can generate rich pay-dirt faster than our floating recovery system can process it. If you feed any gold recovery system too fast, the gold traps become buried and some portion of the gold will be lost with the tailings. Not good!
So, to take some pressure off Dickey, John and Scott set up a large modified hand sluice in the river so even more pay-dirt could be processed. Here is some video I captured from up on the gravel bar:
Then I went out into the water to capture the pan samples Scott was turning up. All I can say is “Wow!” I did not stay out there for long because the diggers were so intent on filling buckets that the camera was getting splashed from the rocks they were throwing into the river:
As it was, the production crew produced more pay-dirt than both recovery systems could keep up with. It is not unusual on these weekend projects to have so many buckets of pay-dirt that there is not enough time to process it all. When this happens, we invite participants to take what they want to process for themselves at some later time.
Here is a typical pan that Scott Coleman showed me of the material that was being sent to the recovery systems.
Scott, Craig and Derek mostly devote themselves to running pan samples of the material which different participants are digging. This is to dial in the pay-dirt we process to the richest material we can find out there. As busy as they were, I did not see a single sample of material that was not worth processing. This is better than normal. Check out this video I captured of a pan sample dug by Scott. This was the very same material that was being fed into the buckets:
We are rather informal on Sunday digs in that as long as we are producing more pay-dirt than we will be able to process, participants are encouraged to take breaks whenever they feel the need, consume some nourishment and fluids, and pretty-much not overdo it. Here is my summary of what was taking place out there on Sunday morning. As you can see, things were going so well, I was in a light-hearted mood. Diane was also pulling my strings; we were having some fun out there!
We stopped the production team at around 11 AM. There remained at least an hour of processing pay-dirt which had already been dug. While the processing continued, the production team reclaimed the areas that had been disturbed. They moved rocks, gravel and tailings into the holes to return the gravel bar to the natural contours that were present before we got started. I gathered up about a dozen helpers to fill in a fairly large excavation that someone else had made downstream and did not fill in. That actually took us about an hour!
Members are supposed to reclaim their excavations when they are done. But sometimes fairly large excavations are left behind when members (or perhaps nonmembers) depart. When this happens, the rest of us must do the reclamation so we can stay off the bad list of local officials.
Clean-up of the floating sluice was really something to behold! There is a section of punch plate over top of the initial recovery traps. So there is no way to see how well we are doing until we clean out the whole system after all the pay-dirt has been processed. My trusted helpers were present when we cleaned out the floating recovery system, along with some of the participants. Check it out right here on video:
Directing a controlled flow of water over the concentrated material in the floating recovery system allowed the lighter material to be washed away while the much heavier gold lagged behind. Seeing all that gold in the recovery system was truly a sight to behold! Any worries I had about having enough gold to do a good split were evaporated from my mind as I watched the water concentrate millions of small flakes of pure wealth as we washed them into a large plastic tub. It was quite a show that reminded me of earlier days when we were allowed to suction dredge out in the river!
The Gold Girl was right there with her special plastic bucket to take possession of the very valuable gold-laden “concentrates” from the recovery system.
With just a little work, all remaining gear and tools were secured and put away safely.
Everyone was allowed some time to relax and freshen up. Then we at met at the Grange Hall in Happy Camp later in the day.
With all or most participants present at the Grange early on Sunday afternoon, we demonstrated the final clean-up functions using gravity methods. This is without the use of any chemicals. It is extremely important if you plan to do gold prospecting to learn how to do the final steps to separate all remaining impurities from the gold that has been recovered. By “impurities,” I’m mainly talking about heavy iron sands and small iron pebbles which also become trapped in the primary recovery systems.
Over the many years, we have perfected this procedure and have demonstrated it to thousands of participants on these weekend projects. The entire process takes a few hours, mainly because we go slow to explain what we are doing, and to avoid losing a single speck of gold.
The entire final clean-up process would only require an hour or so if I was working on my own concentrates. The reason is that I am not worried about saving every speck of gold, no matter how small. When allowed, I go for filling up bottles of gold (raw wealth) rather than allow my focus to be on a few (or many) tiny specks that don’t add up very well on a scale. But this was not my gold. So I invested the extra time to make certain that nothing of value was lost. This requires more time.
We allow project participants to participate in these final steps. Everyone is allowed to watch. This is not one of those programs where we take the concentrates into a hidden room and then come out later with a share for everyone. This is real small-scale gold mining where participants are allowed to be present every step of the way. The value in getting direct exposure to these processes cannot be understated. In my early days, I had to figure out most of these processes on my own. There were plenty of painful lessons along the way. As far as I know, The New 49’ers is the only mining association in the world that demonstrates all of the required steps necessary to become a successful small-scale gold miner.
In all, we recovered 292 grains of gold. This is a little more than 12,1 pennyweights (20 pennyweights equal one troy ounce). This was about $800 at today’s gold price – all in about 3 hours of work. I made an offer to keep all the gold for myself in exchange for all the pizza and beer necessary for all participants to celebrate our successful day. But not a single person was interested in that. They all wanted their shares!
So we split 6.4 grains by weight to each of the 45 participants that remained. Needless to say, making 292 grains of raw gold come out evenly between 45 people presents a challenge all in itself. It is easier for me because I have made these splits come out hundreds of times in the past. More importantly, I had to endure the personal embarrassment several times when we came up short on the final shares. True to my word, I had to make up the difference out of my own gold collection (ouch!).
The most difficult part in all of this is to keep order as we give the gold shares away. The noise of enthusiasm in the Grange Hall becomes almost deafening. During my early years, I used to try (and failed every time) to keep all this noise under control. It was impossible! After a while, I realized this was the enthusiastic response that we wanted to generate. We just had to learn how to work around it You have to accept thankful forms of appreciation however it comes to you! Looked at in this light, I am very thankful that I have devoted my entire adult life to small-scale gold mining and the wonderful people who are attracted to it.
By around 5 PM on Sunday, we had cleaned up behind ourselves and put the chairs and tables away at the Grange Hall. There were plenty of sincere “thank yous” and other kind acknowledgments as I slowly worked my way, with our clean-up gear, to my car. Then I retreated to my own quiet home space and poured myself a well-deserved cold one or two… “Whew; another successful weekend project!”
Here was one more time that we sent a bunch of enthusiastic members off with the confidence and knowledge that high-grade gold is available for the taking if you just work at it.
Being able to locate and recover your own gold, and stashing some away, provides you freedom from the misguided dictates of governments that have lost their way. Gold is the ultimate currency which has a fair exchange value wherever you go in the world – as long as you can manage your affairs so that the bad guys don’t take it away from you.
On that note, I suggest that if you are free enough to put true wealth away in the form of gold, you are already much smarter than those whose only opportunity to acquire gold is to take it away from others.
2019 Schedule of Events
June 22 & 23; July 20 & 21; August 17 & 18.
There is a learning curve to successful gold prospecting. One of the most effective methods of progressing through the learning curve is to go on prospecting adventures with others who more experienced than you are.
Group projects are limited to a certain number of participants. Scheduling in advance is strongly advised to ensure a position on any specific weekend project: 530 493-2012
We shall monitor walk in traffic at our headquarter office in Happy Camp as we progress into the 2019 season. Until further notice, we will continue opening the doors between 9 AM and 4 PM on weekdays. The office will be closed on weekends, except for the morning hours during the Saturdays when we are sponsoring the coming season’s Weekend Group Projects: June 22; July 20; and August 17.
If business is slow, sometimes the girls will close the office at 2:30 PM on Tuesdays. This won’t likely happen during the summer months. Still, we advise you to call the office in advance to make sure the doors will be open if you need to get inside to take care of business: 530 493-2012.
Members are invited to sign in your whereabouts on our properties over the phone in case there is some reason we need to find you.
Our mining properties are freely available to all members in good standing 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, unless the Klamath National Forest is closed due to wildfires.
For any problems, our Internal Affairs is available over the phone: Richard Krimm is our Director of Internal Affairs, email or call (510) 681 8066 (also available after hours and on weekends).
Most Recent Legal Fund Prize Drawing Winners!
Our office staff have informed me that all of the prizes have been sent out to the following winners from our most recent Legal Fund drawing which took place on February 22, 2019:
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles: William Frese of Cincinnati, OH; Kim Ellison of Hayward, CA; Steve Perris of Eureka, CA; Eric Hansen of Happy Camp, CA; Cliff Leidecker of Rogue River, CA; Ronald Mathews of Peyton, CA; Chris Johnson of Talent, OR; Van Wilhite of West Point, CA; Michael Tietz of Proberta, CA; & Dennis Zander of Klamath Falls, OR.
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles: Mark Newhagen of Hanover, MD; Steve Perris of Eureka, CA; Randol Thrasher of Atwater, CA; Kim Ellison of Hayward, CA; Russell Barrett of Redding, CA; Rebecca Parrish of Seattle, WA; Rodney Gunderson of Eatonville, WA; Ed & Diane Tillotson of Lake Havasu City, AZ; Stephen Perfetto of Menlo Park, CA; & Dennis Zander of Klamath Falls, OR.
Twenty 1\10th-Ounce bags of beautiful Alaskan gold: Michael O’Connell of Crescent City, CA; Manuel Alcantar of San Jose, CA; Stephen Perfetto of Menlo Park, CA; KMS Electric Co. Inc. of Palm Harbor, FL; Micro Sluice Gold Products of Chetek, WI; Hank Fender of Chandler, AZ; Clifford Robinson of Oakland, CA; Charles Herren of Marion, IN; Marvin E. Duncan of Happy Camp, CA; Ronald Copenhafer of Malibu, CA; Donald Esch of Salem, OR; William Sowell of Sidney, NE; Robert Williams of Georgetown, CA; James Goularte of Paradise, CA; Mark Newhagen of Hanover, MD; Dennis Zander of Klamath Falls, OR; Jeffery Palme of Prescott Valley, AZ; Charles Rosebery of Cordova, AK; Matt Cottrell of Galt, CA; & Cheryl Lee of Klamath Falls, OR.
Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle: William Frese of Cincinnati, OH
Congratulations to all the winners!
Words alone cannot adequately describe the feelings of appreciation we feel for all our supporters who send in your contributions to The New 49’er Legal Fund. Without you guys, our small-scale gold mining industry would have been a thing of the past many years ago.
As it is, we remain in the fight to regain our freedoms with a very important legal challenge that has been placed on the doorstep of the now right-leaning U.S. Supreme Court (Bohmker v. Oregon, 903 F.3d 1029 (9th Cir. 2018)).
If you have not done so already, we are asking all supporters to send a letter to President Trump, his Solicitor General and several other officials, asking for them to help put attention on Bohmker v. Oregon, and encourage the Supreme Court to review this case. For your convenience, there is an Action Alert below which links to a sample letter from which you can copy and paste to create your own letter. The timing to send in your letter is perfect right now! This is because our official Reply to California’s Opposition is due to the Court in early April.
We should also place some hope and faith in the Trump administration. Now that the 2-year cloud (hoax) has been lifted off of Mr. Trump, he and his team should be able to invest more resources into saving the once very productive resource development industries which supplied most of America’s continuous need for raw materials (timber, energy, minerals) from our federal lands.
In large part, Mr. Trump won the presidency on his platform of “draining the swamp” which definitely exists within American politics and continues to hold down a substantial portion of the American economy.
It is now becoming clear that the deep state (those very well connected individuals who are dedicated to turn America into a socialist country) organized a nation-wide all-out effort to bring down our president even before he won the 2016 election – all or mostly based upon a false narrative. It is a sobering realization of how powerful the deep state is when the President of the United States, even with all the resources at his disposal, can be brought to his knees for a matter of years all because of a false narrative perpetuated by perhaps half or more of all of America’s politicians, newscasters and political activists.
Our industry has been brought to its knees by, more or less, the very same powerful bad actors or their affiliates who have perpetuated a hoax that in-stream mining is harmful to fish, even though the many studies have proven otherwise.
This very same tactic was used to kill America’s once thriving timber development industry. Now, for lack of any reasonable sustainable development, we have vast reaches of public lands in America that have become severe fire hazards.
With a fair hearing in front of the U.S. Supreme Court, I believe we will be able to prove that the very same tactics by the very same or affiliated institutions, have succeeded in disallowing modern gold miners the use of any mechanized device to locate and develop America’s abundant gold deposits (true wealth) within 100 yards of any active waterway (Oregon and California, with other States not far behind).
This, when there is no evidence whatsoever to demonstrate that we have ever harmed so much as a single fish!
We are committed to keep fighting until either there is no hope remaining, or until we win back our most basic freedoms. As things are, perhaps we are closer than we have ever been to winning our industry back in full. My fingers are crossed on both hands!
Thanks for all you guys do to support our efforts!
Upcoming Legal Drawing Will Have 3 Ounces of Gold & 10 Ounces of Silver Coins!
Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles
Our office will automatically generate a ticket in your name for every $10 legal contribution we receive ($100 would generate 10 tickets, etc.).
This drawing will take place on Friday, 21 June 2019 at our headquarters in Happy Camp. You do not need to be a member of our organization to participate. You do not need to be present to win. There is no limit to the size or frequency of your contributions, or to the number of prizes you can win.
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online.
All contributions are tax deductible. You can find more information about the drawing right here.
Action Alert: We need to Push as Hard as We Can to Encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to Review Bohmker v. Oregon, 903 F.3d 1029 (9th Cir. 2018)
This case originated in Oregon and has been supported along its way mostly by prospecting associations based in Oregon up until the present. The case is challenging the State of Oregon’s authority to prohibit mining on the federal lands.
Many of you will recall that we made the final cut in the previous session of the High Court just this past year in Rinehart v. California. The Rinehart case was challenging the State of California’s authority to prohibit mining on the federal lands. Rinehart was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court largely because of the Solicitor General, who has the authority to provide “yes” or “no” advice to the High Court as to which of the final cases should be reviewed. The Solicitor General advised the Court to reject Rinehart largely on the grounds that this Bohmker case would soon be along, and it frames the very same arguments in a more straightforward manner than Rinehart.
I won’t go into the legal arguments here because of time and space. Let me just say that 150 years of case president supports our side. We believe that the existing High Court will also see it our way. The challenge is to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review Bokmker. After 9+ years of painful and expensive litigation, this is the industry’s final ongoing attempt to win our mining rights back.
Since the Solicitor General advised the High Court to reject Rinehart, our attorney is requesting we make an all-out industry-wide effort to encourage Mr. Trump to become involved, along with the existing Solicitor General and other officials who have an active interest in mining activity on the federal lands. Upon competent advice, we have added the Supreme Court to the list.
This is a letter writing campaign (postal mail). I have attached a sample letter which can be cut and pasted into a letter of your own – or you can just add in the correct date at the top, your name and address at the bottom, an original signature; and mail the letter to Mr. Trump. It would be very helpful if you copy your final letter and send it to each of the officials listed at the bottom of the letter, especially the Solicitor General.
Tom Kitchar, who has been President of the Waldo Mining District in southern Oregon, and who was already fighting for small-scale miners 30+ years ago when I started The New 49’ers, has taken the lead role in organizing the Petition, encouraging other mining interests to file supporting briefs, and keeping the industry informed of ongoing developments. I have granted Tom a free hand to post updates on our Internet forum. You can read Tom’s latest assessment right here: https://www.waldominingdistrict.org/
Our attorney believes that hard copy letters in the mail are likely to have a greater impact than email. I agree that perhaps only a single aid might view an email, while letters from a lot of people must be opened, handled and put into a location where they will stack up for many to see.
I won’t say that this is the end of our road, because there are dozens of other lawsuits between the Trump administration and various States over who has the controlling authority over the federal lands. The outcomes of those cases will perhaps affect us in a positive way. But this Bohmker case is the crown jewel for us; because it directly addresses the special status and property rights afforded to miners when we make valuable discoveries on the federal lands. Other resource developers on the federal lands do not possess these rights. Over a century of controlling case law confirms that mineral development is the priority use of the federal lands.
This is my strongest request for you guys to support this final effort by our industry to win our rights back. For as long as we have been fighting, and all the money we have spent over the past 9 or 10 years, it has all come down to this: We need to push as hard as we can to get Bohmker in front of the U.S. Supreme Court!
My sincere thanks to each of you who support this final effort!
Sincerely,
Dave McCracken
New 49’er Gold Prospecting Association 27 Davis Road P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, California 96039 (530) 493-2012 www.goldgold.com
Before we go into the Action Alert, I would like to make a few announcements which are important to this February newsletter:
1) 2019 Schedule of Events: June 22 & 23; July 20 & 21; August 17 & 18.
There is a learning curve to successful gold prospecting. One of the most effective methods of progressing through the learning curve is to go on prospecting adventures with others who more experienced than you are.
Group projects are limited to a certain number of participants. Scheduling in advance is strongly advised to ensure a position on any specific weekend project: 530 493-2012
Some months ago, the platform we were using to support our extensive Internet Forum went off line, taking all of our past history and list of subscribers somewhere into hyperspace.
Through countless hours of hard work, longtime supportive member, Jim Foley, has created a new Internet Forum which can be found at this link: http://new49ers.x10host.com/phpBB3/
This forum is the one place where you can get up-to-date industry news, make new friends who have similar interests as you, and have lively discussions about mining gear and the gold mining adventures (and misadventures) you and other prospectors are having. You do not need to be a member of The New 49’ers to become part of our forum conversation.
3) Upcoming Legal Drawing Will Have 4 Ounces of Gold & 10 Ounces of Silver Prizes!
In a wonderful gesture of generosity, Tamarand Campbell has donated two ounces of gorgeous natural gold that was recovered during Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush” reality show on television!
This gold has been divided into 20 prizes and added to a 1-ounce American Gold Eagle, 10 tenth-ounce American Gold Eagles and 10 one-ounce Silver Eagles in our ongoing Legal Fund drawing which will take place on 22 February 2019. That’s only about 2 weeks away!
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online by clicking Here.
Action Alert: We need to Push as Hard as We Can to Encourage the U.S. Supreme Court to Review Bohmker v. Oregon, 903 F.3d 1029 (9th Cir. 2018)
This case originated in Oregon and has been supported along its way mostly by prospecting associations based in Oregon up until now. The case is challenging the State of Oregon’s authority to prohibit mining on the federal lands.
Many of you will recall that we made the final cut in the previous session of the High Court in Rinehart v. California just this past year. The Rinehart case was challenging California’s authority to prohibit mining on the federal lands. Ultimately Rinehart was rejected by the U.S. Supreme Court largely because of the Solicitor General, who has the authority to provide “yes” or “no” advice to the high court as to which of the final cases should be reviewed. The Solicitor General advised the Court to reject Rinehart largely on the grounds that this Bohmker case would soon be along, and it frames the very same arguments in a more straightforward manner than Rinehart.
I won’t go into the legal arguments here because of time and space. Let me just say that 150 years of case president supports our side. We believe that the existing High Court will also see it our way. The challenge is to get the U.S. Supreme Court to review Bohmker. After 9+ years of painful and expensive litigation, this is the industry’s final ongoing attempt to win our mining rights back.
Since the Solicitor General advised the High Court to reject Rinehart, our attorney is requesting we make an all-out industry-wide effort to encourage Mr. Trump to become involved, along with the existing Solicitor General and other officials who have an active interest in mining activity on the federal lands.
This is a letter writing campaign (postal mail). I have attached a sample letter which can be cut and pasted into a letter of your own – or you can just add in the correct date at the top, your name and address at the bottom, an original signature; and mail the letter to Mr. Trump. It would be very helpful if you copy your final letter and send it to each of the officials listed at the bottom of the letter, especially the Solicitor General.
Tom Kitchar, who has been President of the Waldo Mining District in southern Oregon, and who was already fighting for small-scale miners 34 years ago when I started The New 49’ers, has taken the lead role in organizing the Petition, encouraging other mining interests to file supporting briefs, and keeping the industry informed of ongoing developments. I have granted Tom a free hand to post updates on our Internet forum. You can read Tom’s latest assessment right here: https://www.waldominingdistrict.org/
Our attorney believes that hard copy letters in the mail are likely to have a greater impact than email. I agree that perhaps only a single aid might view an email, while letters from a lot of people must be opened, handled and put into a location where they will stack up for many to see.
I won’t say that this is the end of our road, because there are dozens of other lawsuits between the Trump administration and various States over who has the controlling authority over the federal lands. The outcomes of those cases will perhaps affect us in a positive way. But this Bohmker case is the crown jewel for us; because it directly addresses the special status and property rights afforded to miners when we make valuable discoveries on the federal lands. Other resource developers on the federal lands do not possess these rights. Over a century of controlling case law confirms that mineral development is the priority use of the federal lands.
This is my strongest request for you guys to support this final effort by our industry to win our rights back. For as long as we have been fighting, and all the money we have spent over the past 9 or 10 years, it has all come down to this: We need to push as hard as we can to get Bohmker in front of the U.S. Supreme Court!
My sincere thanks to each of you who support this final effort!
Sincerely,
Dave McCracken
New 49’er Gold Prospecting Association 27 Davis Road P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, California 96039 (530) 493-2012 www.goldgold.com
Having obtained pretty good results during the first two Weekend Projects of the season along our Sluice box property up near the town of Seiad, we decided to try something new this time. Longtime supporters, and always present to help, Scott Coleman and Laura Bagley had been telling me of a place that was producing good gold for them on the far side of the river down on the lower part of our Wingate property. This is about seven miles downstream from Happy Camp.
We only have a limited amount of time on these projects to confirm good pay-dirt. This is done using gold pans on Saturday afternoon. Then we will devote the cool hours of Sunday morning to process as much of the pay-dirt as we can.
Because we have so much mining property available to our members, sometimes it’s challenging just to decide where to go. To reduce the chances of not recovering very much gold on Sunday, it is common these days for us to pull a team of members together in advance to make sure the pay-dirt is actually present in the place where we will do the project.
There have been many times in the past that I found what appeared to be a valuable gold deposit because I recovered one or two good pans – only to return afterwards and discover that the place I recovered the gold was the only place it existed in volume. We made this mistake on a project many years ago and only recovered enough gold on Sunday that each participant just got a single flake of gold. While the members were gracious about it, because it is the nature of gold mining to not find good gold everywhere; I was terribly embarrassed to have gathered so many people for a group dig and we hardly found enough gold to spread around. Some mistakes you only need to make once in your life. This was one of them!
There are multiple reasons why all of our projects produce plenty of gold to go around these days. One reason is that we know the river a lot better. Another reason is that we have members like Scott and Laura that prospect every day and share the information with us. And the most important reason is that we pull a team together in advance of nearly every project and do enough sampling in the targeted area to be certain the gold deposit is large enough to sustain a group project.
This took place in August. The river was really running low. So low, that we had to push my boat off the trailer at the boat ramp at Wingate. There have only been a few times over the years that we had to do that. Here it was on video:
This location below Wingate was ideal because there was plenty of parking up by the road, a well-developed path down to the river, and just a short distance over calm water for us to ferry participants to the worksite. There was also a nice sand beach where we could land the boat and help people in and out of the boat.
Someone had told me that if we hike up the hill some distance, we would come upon the place where the Old-timers stopped mining. Supposedly, there is exposed bedrock there, and the ancient streambed is exposed directly on top of it. I’m told the pay-dirt is extremely rich. So this is where I assumed we were going when I first arrived over there and made the following video. So I was surprised when Laura and Scott stopped about half way up the hill and started sampling:
The place Scott and Laura had made a good discovery was up the hillside along a pretty good path. So that’s the first place Scott, Laura and I went. Each of us got good pans, and the flakes of gold were larger than we have generally encountered this season. Here is their explanation of the gold discovery and Scott’s single, unscreened pan on video:
Still, it was going to require all the pay-dirt to be packed in buckets some distance to the river. This is something to consider when evaluating any discovery: How much of your labor is going to be subtracted from digging and processing pay-dirt? In this case, I would guess that it would take only about half the time to fill buckets, than it would to pack the buckets to the river. But the gold was good enough that we still could have made it come out alright.
The flakes of gold were larger up the hillside.
Sure enough, the gold in Scott’s, Laura’s and my sample pans all had good gold for the small volumes of gravel we processed. Some of the pieces were mid-sized flakes. This is important because bigger pieces of gold weigh up on a scale better than even a good showing of fine (small pieces) gold. We have been fooled many times in the past turning up a good showing of fines, which added up in the recovery system on Sunday looking like we broke the all-time record of two ounces on one of these projects. Then, once we separated all those fine particles of gold from the other heavy minerals, the final result was much less than what we were hoping for. So there is a lot to be said about finding deposits that are made up of more than fine gold.
This is a good pan sample considering the small amount of streambed material that was processed!
The big surprise of the morning was when Craig Colt started recovering the best results of the day by digging into compacted sand that was being held together by a root structure of dead grass. This was right down by the river much closer to where we were going to process pay-dirt on Sunday. Here it all is on video:
Several others on the team were also turning up good gold down closer to the river. Derek Eimer found a gold nugget using his gold detector, and then lost it. Then he found it again! Finding even small nuggets in a gold deposit is always a sign that more will be present.
Craig moved slightly further up the hillside and attacked the packed sand again, this time finding a thin layer of brown compacted streambed resting over rough bedrock. His sample results from the natural streambed were the best yet!
See the thin layer of natural streambed on the bottom just over bedrock?
We really don’t go out on these confirmation projects to mine gold. We just want to do enough sampling to be certain there will be enough gold to support a successful project. If the location is good, we will return the day before the project and use the boat to transfer all the gear to the site. Here was the moment when I decided we had accomplished our purpose:
In any event, everyone on our small team was finding good gold in their samples at this new location; so we called it a day. In all, we devoted about an hour to confirming the location. That’s the advantage of having an experienced team of gold prospectors!
Our jet boat is a really important part of our infrastructure to support these projects. Without the boat, we would mostly be confined to the road-side of the river. The jet boat will allow us to go just about anywhere on the river. When we have large groups, sometimes we break out our large Colorado River rafts and tow whole groups of members up and down the river. Talking about adding a thrill to a prospecting adventure!
The truth is that besides developing rich gold deposits along the bottom of a river, there are few things that please me more than playing with boats on any kind of water. Here is some video that captured how much access the boat provides for us, and our gear, even moving our 300-pound floating recovery system up through several sets of rapids:
As group digs go, this one only had around 45 people. We are used to twice that many or more. But the terrible wildfires over the past several years have often made the air quality along the river so uncomfortable that there would be no fun in being there. The year before, the smoke was so bad that we were forced to cancel two of our Weekend Projects.
We were lucky on this particular weekend. The breeze was blowing smoke away from our work site. We could even see blue sky!
We always devote Saturday mornings at an air conditioned hall where everyone can sit down and relax. After introductions, I give a talk about the history of The New 49’ers which include some entertaining stories about events that happened along the way, and some of the colorful personalities who have been along for the ride – or took us for a ride, depending upon how you want to look at it. Then I make a presentation about how to follow a sampling plan to, step by step, work your way into high-grade gold. It’s not that difficult to make rich discoveries if you just stick to the plan! But it is human nature for beginners to stray from the plan and become discouraged. So I do my best to present the importance of following a sampling plan when looking for high-grade gold deposits.
The whole reason we do these weekend projects is to demonstrate to members that the gold deposits really do exist, and there is a very simple method (sampling plan) for finding them.
Saturday afternoon is all about teaching beginners how to pan for gold. We do this after lunch out on the discovery site. It took maybe 5 or 6 trips with my boat back and forth to get everyone over there. Providing the boat ride to these projects adds more color to the entire outdoor adventure. Here is some of the boat action on video:
We have done some projects where we had to tow everyone in through several sets of rapids to gain access to the work site, and then tow them down through two more sets of rapids to get them back to the road-side of the river! That was a lot of adventure; pretty-much the limit of what I am willing to put people through.
And to think in all these years, we only flipped over a boat full of people just one time…. Thankfully, nobody got hurt. No; I was not driving the boat; I was not even in the country!
Therefore, I do all or most of the boat driving these days!
There were only several beginners who needed some help with their panning skills on Saturday afternoon. Everyone was finding gold in their pans. This was a good place!
We don’t like to stay out very long on these hot Saturday afternoons. The main reason is that once the participants begin seeing the gold in their pans, they get jacked up and sometimes overdo it. Then they are too tired to come out on the cool Sunday morning when the real action is taking place. I’m sorry that there was some wind getting in the way of the audio on the following video, but you can still get the idea of how things were going out there:
But some of the members were so pleased with the gold they were finding, it was difficult to get them back into the boat. We talked several into filling buckets with pay-dirt so they could pan the material on the other side of the river.
One time, a member was so determined to keep on panning, he insisted that he would swim back across the river before dark!
We also do a potluck dinner and short meeting at 6:30 pm on Saturday evening. All members and their friends are invited to attend. These events are a lot of fun. People get to know each other in this setting. Many life-long friendships have been brought to life during our potlucks. I follow the meal with some instructions about when and where we will meet on Sunday morning.
Longtime supportive member, Mark Turner, built a fairly large screening device that makes it more efficient to remove the larger rocks from the pay-dirt.
As uncomfortable as the alarm is sounding off at 5 am on a Sunday morning, the discomfort is nothing compared to attempting a serious group dig in the heat of an afternoon in August!
We meet down at the river access Sunday morning at around 6:30 am. It’s actually cold out there during that time of the day. By the time I went over in the boat for the last bunch of members, everyone had arrived. Normally I have to go back after a while and bring over a few stragglers. But not this time. These guys were jacked up to get some work done!
We could not sponsor these projects if we did not have around a dozen experienced members who volunteer their weekends to help out and be part of the fun. Even before I transferred everyone over the other side of the river, our experienced team had all the participants busy digging in the hotspots we confirmed the day before, filling buckets (half full) with the pay-dirt, running the material through a classification screen to eliminate the larger sized material; and then transferring the buckets of pay-dirt to the recovery system. I captured some of the action on video:
As this was a new place for us, it took a bit longer than normal to set up our floating sluice recovery system. This is a 6-inch modified dredge recovery system that we have set up on floats. There are adjustments to lower the front of the sluice just below the surface of the river’s moving water. The water then washes pay-dirt through the sluice. Gold, being around five times heavier than the average material we are processing, easily gets trapped in special gold traps (called “riffles”) along the bottom of the sluice.
Since it takes some skill to feed the pay-dirt into the recovery system at the right speed, we always allow Dickey Melton to do this job. He is very good at maintaining the balance of feeding as much pay-dirt as possible so we can recover more gold, while not overfeeding so much that the gold traps along the bottom become overwhelmed. If you feed too fast, the gold will never get exposed to the traps, and it is likely to run right through the sluice into the river. So Dickey probably has the most important job out there.
As it turned out, the water flow in this location was near perfect, because it was smooth, swift water just ahead of a set of rapids. The challenge turned out to be building a bridge of sorts, or at least a stable step, so that buckets of pay-dirt could be safely passed out to the recovery system. Here’s some video of when we were just getting things started:
By the time Dickey was satisfied the sluice was operating correctly, there were so many buckets of pay-dirt stacked up, there was no way he was ever going to catch up with the digging crew! This is the way we like it; never a moment when pay-dirt is not flowing through the recovery system! Here is the way it turned out on video:
Dickey carefully feeding the recovery system. How about that view of the river; is that beautiful or what?
It was particularly cool on this August morning. Shoveling pay-dirt on a nice cool morning is rather easy. There was a lot of happy chatter out there on the side of the river. My sidekick, Diane took a moment to capture me on video providing an overview of what was going on:
Craig devoted some time going around and taking samples of the material people were shoveling into the buckets. Some samples were better than others; but everyone was digging in gold. If everyone is digging in gold, and we are producing enough pay-dirt to operate the recovery system at capacity for about four hours, I am always confident that there will be plenty of gold to go around when it comes time to split it up.
Here are some overall views of our work area; a very nice place to spend a Sunday morning!
The sun reaches the gravel bar along that portion of river at about 11 am. The heat of the day begins after noon. Since we still have to separate the gold from all the impurities back in Happy Camp and split the gold, we like to have everyone back across the river at around noon on Sunday afternoon. We give everybody some time to freshen up and usually meet for the final clean-up between 1:30 and 2 pm.
When we removed the riffles (gold traps) from the bottom of the sluice box to recover the material we had accumulated, there was a strong showing of gold present. We always get a good thrill out of that! Here is some video of Craig cleaning out the floating sluice:
The material we clear out of our floating recovery system out on the river is a mix of gold and mostly other heavy material. There is always plenty of black iron sand and small iron rocks. These also get trapped in the recovery system because they are heavy. We call this material “concentrates.”These other impurities must still be separated from the gold before we do the split.
We usually bring the final concentrate back to one of the meeting halls in Happy Camp for final processing. But wildfires in the vicinity had those all tied up for places to support the fire-fighting crews. So we did the final cleanup and split in the shade of a tree next to the picnic area along the side of our building.
Our final clean-up steps begin with a Le Trap sluice box. This is a green plastic recovery system with low-profile riffles (gold traps) that recovers all our gold, but reduces about half a bucket of concentrates down to about a double handful. Final cleanup is always one of the most exciting parts of a successful gold mining program, because you get to see the thousands of pieces of gold add up in the recovery system. Here is a short video of my feeding the Le Trap:
Our concentrates are passed through a #8 screen before we run them across the Le Trap. Then we run the smaller amount of concentrate over a Gold Extractor. This is an even smaller sluice with much smaller gold traps. When set up properly, neither the Le Trap or Gold Extractor will lose a single piece of gold no matter how small, unless there is some anomaly – like the gold still remains attached to a piece of rock. We captured some video of the Gold Extractor working, and then when that part of the process was complete:
For the benefit of anyone’s doubt, both Craig Colt and Derek Eimer carefully pan the tailings from both devices and show the results to the onlookers. There were no losses on this project!
The Gold Extractor reduces the concentrate down to about a tablespoon volume of gold and impurities.
All material that remains on top of a #8-sized screen are taken by our project supervisor, John Rose. Under his supervision, several participants use tweezers to pick out all the small nuggets. The nuggets are placed with the remaining concentrate and heated up in a small metal pan just hot enough to dry them.
Once dry, the concentrates are passed through a series of different sized (opening size) classification screens. Between the use of a magnet (to remove magnetic iron sands), and some light blowing, each size-fraction of the gold is finally separated from all the impurities.
It is very important to witness these final clean-up steps. It’s already challenging enough to locate and develop a high-grade gold deposit. But reducing the concentrate to where you have the finished product of just gold is something that requires some practice.
Every gold deposit is different in the size ratios of gold particle size. Perhaps because most members were cleaning out bedrock cracks alongside the river, we recovered an unusual number of small gold nuggets – 37 in all. This was an amazing number of nuggets to find on one of these projects. Here is John Rose on video, who was so excited by the number of nuggets, that he was compelled to go outside and show everyone even before he was finished:
The final split was between 31 participants, so everyone received at least one nugget. To put this in perspective, even though we recovered more gold during other earlier weekend projects at Sluice box, I believe we only recovered a single gold nugget between those two projects.
The total weight we recovered at Wingate amounted to 264 grains – which amounts to about 11 pennyweights – just over half an ounce. While the volume of gold was less than during the earlier projects, the number of people out there digging was much smaller. This afforded everyone with a share weighing 8.5 grains. The usual split amounts to around just over 6 grains each. So we actually broke a record for the number of people on the project! Everyone seemed more than happy with that.
With another successful Weekend Project behind us, we all said our farewells and broke up at around 4 pm on Sunday afternoon.
Cherished Member, Alex McCrone, has Moved on at 11 Years of Age
The following is shared with us from his loving dad, Paul McCrone:
Alexander Paul Julian McCrone: 9/15/2006 – 7/27/2018
Alex was born on September 15, 2006 in the wake of a tornado…. literally…a Nebraska tornado hit the day after he was born. The devastation was bad enough that Baby-Alex and his family were evacuated.
Alex rested gently in the loving arms of Jesus on Friday, July 27, 2018. But the tornado of Alex’s spirit will live on in all of us who knew him and continue to love him.
There are few people who have faced life’s trials as gracefully and courageously as Alex did. Diagnosed with cancer at age four, he triumphantly beat the cancer monster twice and continued to live his life fully, infusing each moment with his family and friends with all the love possible.
A free-spirited philosopher well beyond his years, Alex taught us how to love, how to say, “I’m sorry,” and how to forgive. Alex wanted everyone to get along and appreciate one another. He loved to be active, playing baseball, swimming, doing karate and sharing his Pokémon cards with anyone who would play.
During his final days, Alex spoke words of wisdom to share far and wide: “A world without love is impossible.”
Every year during his time in school, Alex received well-deserved awards and recognitions including the Loyalty Award in second grade and the Character Quality Award in fifth grade. He enjoyed karate at the Fierce Tigers Martial Arts in Salinas.
Alex loved mining for gold! It was something he asked me, “Dad, when are we going MINING again?” He loved the glint of gold, and he always lit up whenever he got some.
Alex lit up a lot; he was better at panning than his Dad is! He seldom came away without some gold. Alex has the McCrone family record for finding the largest gold nugget.
Alex was in love with the Klamath River and the beauty of the Happy Camp claims, out of the town, in the forest, watching animals; the entire outdoor experience.
We loved going to the New 49er Saturday potluck meetings, with good food and friends, sharing what happened, listening to the tales. Those were truly some magic times we shared that I will never forget!
Note from Dave: Many of you who have attended our weekend prospecting projects during recent years will remember Alex. There was a long stretch there when they never missed a single outing.
Keeping the secret of Alex’s condition to themselves, there was never a time when I saw anything but a gracefulness between father and son and genuine kindness and gratitude towards the rest of us.
As I find myself getting older, I am losing more and more of the people I care about. I often feel a twinge (or in some cases, a lot) of guilt for not making my encounters as good as they should have been if I had known they were coming to an end. Finding a way to adjust to these losses is one of my own greatest challenges. I will miss Alex a lot!
Legal/Political Update
I ended off my September comments basically with the following:
Here is my prediction: If the Trump agenda manages to move forward, the Trump Team will ultimately overcome the stranglehold which America’s domestic enemies (inside all levels of government) who are determined to burn America’s forests down (and now entire rural communities), rather than return to sustainable forest management that creates wealth and prosperity for all Americans. This management approach will include us as small-scale gold miners who recover true wealth for America, remove mercury, lead and other toxins from the country’s waterways, and create prosperity for rural communities.
Even though the Republicans have lost their majority in the House of Representatives, as long as the Democrats do not succeed in wrestling away control of the U.S. Senate through the election shenanigans going on in several States, my prediction above remains the same. All of the important endorsements required to appoint federal judges and top level officials (like Attorney General) originate out of the U.S. Senate where it appears that the republicans picked up several seats.
There was not any meaningful mining law reform legislation moving through congress anyway. With the Senate and House split between republicans and democrats, and Mr. Trump remaining in charge of the Executive branch of the federal government, we can be certain that new laws at the federal level that will be harmful to working class Americans are unlikely to go anywhere.
Meanwhile, Mr. Trump will continue to move his “Make America Great Again” agenda forward by reforming and reducing the negative impact upon us from federal agencies through executive order, much like Obama did when he could not get cooperation from the Republicans in congress.
I do predict that the democratic-controlled House of Representatives is going to do everything they can to make Mr. Trump’s life even more uncomfortable, along with the closest supporters on his management team. Little or none of this should materially interfere with the Trump Team’s efforts to reform the federal agencies. None of this should affect ongoing litigation between some States and the federal government over who ultimately controls resource development on the public lands.
The democrats may begin impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump, because this just requires a majority in the House. However, the trial would take place entirely by the republican-controlled Senate, and would require a finding by 2/3’s majority of high crimes and misdemeanors. The chances of this happening are about zero. Impeachment proceedings, while distracting, may be the fastest way to get the past two years of Russia Collusion allegations finally resolved in Mr. Trump’s favor.
I saw on today’s national news that Mr. Trump is blaming the federal agencies in a very big way for the wildfires that are ravaging the west. This would seem to be a sign that new management policies are coming that will perhaps return to multiple use management, rather than conservation. If and when this all ends up in front of the existing U.S. Supreme Court, it really should go our way. Why burn entire forests and communities down, when the alternative is to sustainably develop them while creating wealth and good jobs?
On another note, we should not be surprised that the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against miners in the BOHMKER v OREGON case in which the miners are challenging a State’s authority (in this case, Oregon) to prohibit mining on the federal lands.
The New 49’er Legal Fund has offered to help with the costs of Petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court for Review.
Now we can only hope that the Trump Team has been busy replacing the Obama officials in the justice department who review the thousands of cases sent to the U.S. Supreme Court. Our Rinehart case, which basically raised the same question over who ultimately controls the federal lands, made it to the final list several months ago. But it was rejected mainly on the grounds that this BOHMKER v OREGON case was better suited for the high court to review. Let’s all collectively cross our fingers on this one!
While we wait, it appears that the California Water Board intends (perhaps intended) to adopt a Statewide water quality permit that will (perhaps) allow suction dredging under Section 402 of the Clean Water Act. I discussed this in my last newsletter. Nothing on this has changed, except it would appear that they have fallen behind schedule. Last I heard, they were going to put out a public disclosure in early October. I have yet to see anything. Several other industry leaders have been sending them queries; but so far, there have been no answers.
Veronica Rasmussen was our helper on this drawing.
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles: Ryck Rowan of Spokane, WA; Donald Hill of Vallejo, CA; John Willett of Porter, ME; Gradley Hughes of Riverside, CA; Jolynn Ruedas of Vacaville, CA; Ryck Rowan of Spokane, WA; Kenneth Parchinski of Alford, FL; John Stewart of Canton, CT; Bill Dimmett of Redwood Valley, CA; & Tracy Seeger of Puyallup, WA
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles: Jerry Rady of Escondido, CA; Ken Wilson of Australia; Terry & JoAnne McClure of Quartzsite, AZ; Ernest Nelson of Imperial, CA; Karl Leabo of Florance, OR; Dennis Zander of Klamath Falls, OR; Ralph Wiser of Reno, NV; Richard Davis of Valley Center, CA; Michael OConnell of Crescent City, CA; & Steven Gonzales of Burlingame, CA
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles: James Steffens of Las Vegas, NV; Ryck Rowan of Spokane, WA; Steven Eichman of Portland, OR; & Molnar Peter EV Budapest, Hungary
Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle: Matt Cottrell of Galt, CA
Thank you to everyone who is helping us to preserve small-scale mining in America!
Next Legal Drawing will Have Alaskan Gold Prizes!
In a wonderful gesture of generosity, Tamarand Campbell has donated two ounces of gorgeous natural gold that was recovered during Discovery Channel’s “Gold Rush” reality show on television! We have received the gold. We will follow soon with an image.
This is very cool!
This gold will be divided into multiple prizes, along with 10 tenth-ounce American Gold Eagles and 10 one-ounce Silver Gold Eagles in our latest Legal Fund drawing which will take place on 22 February 2019!
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online by clicking Here.
Unless there is some kind of emergency like a wild fire, our mining properties are always open to New 49’er members 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
To conserve financial resources during the winter months when there is so little walk-in traffic, we have reduced walk in office hours to 9 am through 4 pm, Monday, Tuesday and Friday. These new office hours will begin on 1 October.
There is a phone message service if you call at a time when the phone is not being answered.
Reminder that we have an emergency Internal Affairs telephone connection that works all of the time by calling Rich Krimm at (510) 681 8066. Please do not use this number in an attempt to discuss routine matters! It is for emergencies only.
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At the invitation of California Water Quality Control, myself and several other industry leaders were urged to attend two separate meetings in Sacramento during this past month of August.
Between the two meetings, the following people representing our industry were present: Myself, representing The New 49’ers; Rich Krimm representing New 49’er Internal Affairs (Rich has authority to make decisions on behalf of our organization during my absence); Jim Yerby representing The New 49’ers Legal Fund; Craig Lindsay representing the Western Mining Alliance; Bill Fisher; Jim & Emily Rankin representing the Shasta Miners & Prospectors Association; Shannon Poe & Jere Clemants (Joe) both representing the American Rights Association (AMRA). I’m sorry to not give mention to a few others, because I could not make out the names on the sign-in sheets.
Each of the meetings had a representative from California Senator Stone’s office in attendance. Please remember Senator Stone for this. His presence in these meetings is extremely valuable for keeping the process going in an honest and positive direction.
I am estimating there were at least five representatives from the California Water Resources Control Board (Water Board) at both meetings. But the two people taking the lead on this process are Renan.Jauregui & Afrooz.Farsimadan. Both can be reached in care of their names @waterboards.ca.gov.
Please note that these were informal meetings to help the Water Board better understand the way our industry works before they release a draft proposal. Once the draft is released, everyone will be invited to participate in the formal process. Nobody has been excluded.
Diana Messina, Section Chief of Surface Water Permitting, took charge of the first meeting and did a very good job of presenting the Water Board’s position. She is clearly very capable, and we can only hope that she will remain involved.
Here are some of the points that we discussed during the meetings, along with some of my personal thoughts and ideas along the way.
1) The Water Board has decided that it will adopt a Statewide National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System(NPDES) Permit to support suction dredging in the State of California. Section 402 of the federal Clean Water Act authorizes EPA and individual States which are delegated the authority by EPA, to regulate point sources that discharge pollutants into waters of the United States.To put this in perspective, there has been substantial debate and controversy, and even some ongoing litigation in Oregon, as to whether suction dredgers discharge any pollutants since we are adding nothing to the waterways that is not already present there.
While there are different viewpoints about this, I believe it is safe to say that, as a whole, if we should be regulated under the federal Clean Water Act, most of our community believes, if at all, we should be under Section 404. Section 404 of the Clean Water Act (CWA) establishes a program to regulate the discharge of dredged or fill material into waters of the United States.
Section 402 is under the authority of the U.S. EPA. Section 404 is under the authority of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps). My understanding is that the law only allows an activity such as ours to be regulated under one or the other of these CWA Sections, but not both.
Under Section 404, there are exemptions that easily apply to what we do with suction dredging. As just one example, due to substantial litigation by representatives of the large-scale mining industry, the Army Corps has been forced to allow incidental fallback, within certain limits, to be excluded from regulation under Section 404. The primary definition that comes to mind when considering“incidental fallback” is the material that washes off a large-scale bucket excavation project that is being used to deepen a channel in a harbor. As I understand it, the courts decided since nothing has been added to the fallback, and it is deposited into or near the primary excavation, it should not be considered a pollutant for purposes of regulation under the CWA.
But the definitions of incidental fallbackgo much further than what falls off a bucket. It also describes placer mining operations which excavate material from the bottom of a waterway, run the material across a gravity recovery system for the extraction of minerals without adding any other substance, and then discharges the dredged material back to or near the excavation site. This describes exactly what we do in suction dredging, only on a much smaller scale than what the litigation was about.
For a better understanding, I suggest you look at the Army Corps’ explanation in the Federal Register right here.
You will be interested to know that in light of existing law, the Army Corps has adopted nationwide exemptions for small-scale suction dredge activities (up to 4-inch intake size, I believe).
However, upper level management officials at the California Waterboard have decided to not adopt the 404 approach. Instead, they have decided to regulate small-scale suction dredging under Section 402 – which assumes we are discharging a pollutant into the waterways. The question remains what pollutant are we discharging? Please stay with me and I will present the underhanded tactics that are in play.
As we have discovered through ten years of litigation in California, and ultimately losing every case; the California court system has completely turned its back on ordinary citizens seeking relief from the unreasonable actions by the legislative and executive branches of State government. At least for now, the option of seeking relief from State court is not available.
I have taken it upon my own to forward the Army Corps 404 exemptions to the Water Board staff who are actively developing a 402 permitting scheme to regulate our industry. But my best guess is that the 404 exemptions will be set aside because the decision to pursue Section 402 has been made by others further up the chain of command. So we will need to move ahead for the short term with the realities of Section 402.
I say “for the short term;” because even though we do not see it on television, Mr. Trump’s “make America Great” program is moving ahead with momentum to open up resource development on the federal lands. In his various speeches, he has made references to shrinking the size of protected (from development) national monuments, other federal lands which have been made off limits to sustainable development, and possibly even allow some development inside of wilderness areas. You will only see the negative side of this in the main stream fake media.
There are multiple lawsuits initiated by some States, in concert with the (many) George Soros-funded extreme liberal and environmental groups, to try and put a stop to Mr. Trump’s “make America great” agenda. These are the very same groups, many who have infiltrated State and federal agencies and entire portions of State and federal legislatures, that have stopped suction dredging (along with timber development, farming, ranching, etc.) in California and elsewhere for the past ten+ years.
Even though we have never harmed a single fish in any way. But they know that. Our challenge has never been about fish. For those who oppose us, at least at the management level, it has always been about undermining the foundations of what made America great in the first place. I encourage you to take the time to go through the list of leftist organizations either owned directly or supported financially by George Soros. You will recognize the names of many of the organizations, including the environmental groups that have all but killed reasonable and sustainable resource development on our federal lands. For that matter, even on private lands.
The bottom line is that America finds itself in our second civil war! So far, the war is not taking place with guns and bombs. But think about it: the reason to bomb a mine or a factory is to put it out of production. If the mine or factory can be legislated or regulated out of production, we have the same result – except the people who have lost their livelihoods don’t understand the reasons why. We are told it is to save the fish or birds or bugs. But it is really about undermining the productive capability of America.
I know some people are turned off by Mr. Trump’s sometimes abrasive language and behavior. My answer to this is that we are not in a popularity contest. Let’s please just get past that! We are in a very close contest to win back the American dream! All I can say is that if it were not for Mr. Trump, we would have long since lost America’s second civil war with Hilary Clinton ruling the country.
Here is my prediction: If the Trump agenda manages to move forward, the Trump Team will ultimately overcome the stranglehold which America’s domestic enemies (inside all levels of government) who are determined to burn America’s forests down (and now entire rural communities), rather than return to sustainable forest management that creates wealth and prosperity for all Americans. This management approach will include us as small-scale gold miners who recover true wealth for America, remove mercury, lead and other toxins from the country’s waterways, and create prosperity for rural communities.
Said another way: We don’t need to challenge California’s decision to manage suction dredging under Section 402 of the CWA. This very same matter is already being challenged in Oregon. That aside, Mr. Trump will eventually win the litigation against the very same legal issues which are holding us back. If he cannot do it, we will never return to the America dream that we grew up in (those of us who are old enough to remember real freedom).
While we wait, it appears that the California Water Board fully intends to adopt a Statewide water quality permit that will (perhaps) allow suction dredging under Section 402 of the CWA.
2) I apologize for the long explanation above. But I feel it is important to set some foundations so the remainder will be more understandable.
3) Having devoted multiple hours in two meetings with the Water Board staff that are in charge of developing a water quality permit to allow suction dredging in California, and listening closely to their comments, my personal impression is that this mid-level staff has been directed to develop a water quality permit scheme that will work for our industry. I have not detected any animosity towards our industry. In fact, Diana Messina, a very capable person, who is the Section Chief of the Water Board’s Surface Water Permitting Section, made the bold statement that “the Water Board is bound by law to come up with a permitting scheme that will work for our industry.” Said another way: my impression is that this staff has no dog in the fight to prevent us from getting back into the water.
4) This development is a huge change to what we have been up against for a long time!
5) In fact, I get that the Water Board is truly challenged with the problems of imposing Section 402 requirements upon us that were really developed for (very) large industry that creates actual pollution which must be disposed of somewhere.
6) I get that the Water Board staff is looking for solutions that will balance the needs of our community with the requirement to mitigate real environmental concerns.
This is where we were in 1994 after two failed public processes (corrupt attempts to end underwater gold mining in California), when existing Fish & Game management was reprimanded by republican Governor Pete Wilson, and capable staff were finally assigned to assess the real concerns about suction dredge mining and develop regulations that would eliminate or reduce potential harm to acceptable levels. Those regulations sustained our industry and allowed it to flourish for 15 years!
7) Since the 2012 Fish & Wildlife suction dredge regulations, now fully adopted into California law, have basically reduced us to suction dredging along California’s larger-sized waterways, I strongly doubt that turbidity from our tailings discharges are going to be a serious water quality issue. The reason I say this is that there are multiple formal studies which have come to this very same conclusion. This is especially true along the Klamath River where water quality is poor to begin with.
8) The primary concern, in water quality terms, is the potential discharge of certain metals which are considered hazardous within the Section 402 guidelines. The State’s (flawed) position is that heavy metals, such as mercury, are locked in place at the bottom of waterways that are covered by “armored streambeds” which are not normally disturbed or moved by normal flood events. Generally, I would agree that this is true where the armored streambeds exist. However, the larger storm events (which are now more common because of warming trends) will create enough violence in the waterways to break up hard-packed streambeds and tumble everything further downstream, including any and all mercury or other heavy metals that may exist in the waterways.
Think about it: If large storms do not occasionally break up and disburse compacted streambeds, how is it that the bedrock channels are dug deeper into the earth over geologic time? Said another way: How is it that armored streambeds are in place at the bottom of a waterway if they were not washed there by large flood storms?
So the Water Board and our avowed enemies have based this process upon a flawed presumption from the beginning. Please keep on reading to gain an understanding of how large this mistake is.
It is typical progressive logic to ignore the long term and only focus on short term affects. Long term thinking is what will make America great again! Preventing suction dredgers from removing 98% of the mercury from waterways, even if 2% is left behind, when there is no other alternative to remove the mercury, is either flawed planning by short term thinkers, or careful planning by America’s domestic enemies. No matter the reason, it amounts to extremely poor, politically motivated, management.
Please allow me to shed some light on this: The California Water Board conducted a study years ago to see how much mercury would be recovered by a standard suction dredge in an area (Auburn Creek in the Motherlode) that had been identified by suction dredgers as a mercury hotspot. It was not a controlled study, in that they did not analyze the raw material in front of the dredge to determine how much mercury was present in the streambed or on the bedrock, and what portion was floured. “Flowered mercury” started in liquid form, but has been subjected to so much violence that it has been broken down into millions of particles so small that you cannot see them with the naked eye unless there is an abundance of them present.
I am somewhat of an expert on liquid mercury. I know from extensive personal experience that you cannot break down liquid mercury into floured mercury simply by passing it through a normal suction dredge. No way!
You can break mercury down through hours and hours of aggressive tumbling in a container filled with a set of dredge concentrates and metal balls or heavy rods that clash together with severe violence.
Many years ago, over the concerns about harming fish by sucking them through a suction dredge, a group of dredgers in Washington State demonstrated to interested lawmakers that sucking uncooked hotdogs through a suction dredge did not cause any damage to the hotdogs. So the notion that a suction dredge causes enough violence to flour mercury is absurd on its face!
I also know from extensive experience that a standard suction dredge will recover most liquid mercury, but not floured mercury that is moving with normal streambed material. The individual particles of floured mercury are so small that they cannot separate themselves from the turbulent flow that is moving larger-sized rocks being pushed by water through a standard sluice box. While the dredge may capture some, most miniscule particles of mercury will just wash through the sluice box with the flow of water and lighter gravel material.
Here is the big question: Is a suction dredge the “point source” of minuscule particles of mercury that already exist in the waterway? Of course not! Those particles originated from some other source long in the past.
In any event, the Water Board study determined that 98% of the mercury was recovered by the dredge. They found 2 % of overall mercury in floured form within the dredge tailings.
Without looking at the raw streambed material being processed, the Water Board determined that the dredge caused the flouring of the 2% discovered in the tailings. Wrong!! This determination would not be accepted by any scientific enquiry that is looking for the truth. The important unanswered question is whether or not the floured mercury pre-existed in the streambed material that was run through the dredge? Of course it was!
Here is the important point: My assumption is the reason the Water Board refuses to address this flaw in their study is that they want to make the case that since the dredge is the cause of the floured mercury, the dredge can be considered a Point Source which justifies managing our industry under Section 402 of the CWA. Upper level nonscientific decisions such as this do not originate by officials who want to help make America great. They originate from America’s domestic enemies.
On that note, the Water Board did return to the very same excavation site the following season and found that the bedrock contained ample amounts of flowered mercury. Where did that come from? The only conclusion to this is that mercury is migrating down some of California’s waterways with every storm event. But this new data did nothing to change their determination that the suction dredge was the point source. You know; only the truth is going to set our industry and America free again!
9) During the first meeting with Water Board staff, we posed the question about whether it is more productive for us to recover 98% of the mercury from California’s waterways, or to leave it all in place to migrate downstream over decades or centuries to contaminate future food supplies. While they were clearly sympathetic to our position, the Water Board staff made it clear that they are bound by existing law which does not allow any hazardous discharges of mercury from our suction dredge recovery systems.But are these discharges? Or are they just pass through of material that already exists in the waterway?
Understandably, this mid-level management group does not have the authority to change or bypass existing California law. So they are looking for solutions that will allow us back into the water without discharging hazardous metals.
10) The good news is that this dredge study and others were conducted in already-established mercury hotspots located by suction dredgers where puddles of mercury were visible on the bedrock. I believe such places are far and few between. For example, I have never seen a puddle of mercury in the Klamath River, and I have devoted many years of dredging there in high-grade gold deposits which would also accumulate mercury if it were present.
11) Other than a few defined areas, the State does not know of any other mercury hotspots along the rivers of California. So they are flying blind. They don’t know if and where any other mercury hot spots are, other than the several that have already been discovered by suction dredgers.
12) I encourage you to read the Water Board’s page which provides an explanation concerning the ongoing project to adopt an NPDES permit under the authority of Section 402 of the CWA. Project staff conducted five public workshops during early 2017. It would be safe to say that our two meetings last month were an extension of their information gathering process.
13) The dilemma Water Board staff is faced with is in not knowing if California’s waterways are completely inundated with mercury, or if mercury hot spots are rare. Years ago, some rivers were monitored for mercury in the water columns both during regular flow periods and during high water events when mercury levels always increased. There was also some monitoring of certain types of critters in the waterways which accumulate mercury when present. I don’t know what happened to those programs. But it would seem as though they would provide the best available information.
14) All of this aside, the Water Board staff has made it clear that they are moving forward with an NPDES permit. End of story. So the question remains how we can fit our suction dredge industry into the process so that we can get suction dredgers back in the water under the 2012 suction dredge regulations which have already been adopted into California law by the Department of Fish & Wildlife (DFW).
15) Just a side note on this: Through ten years of expensive litigation in the State of California, each of our multiple attempts to overcome the 2012 DFW suction dredge regulations failed within the California courts. There is a federal preemption case in the federal 9th Circuit Court that challenges State authority to prohibit mining on the public lands. This case will certainly be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. A positive outcome there might turn things around for us in California and all the other gold-bearing States. Some of the ongoing challenges to the Trump Administration also have the potential to free us from severely punishing State regulation.
16) Back to the NPDES permit: The main problem to small-scale miners is the cost involved. As I understand it, the permit application begins with a nonrefundable $2,000 application fee. Then there will be required monitoring costs. I believe Water Board staff said they have identified 5-to-7 metals they are concerned about. The primary metal is mercury. To maintain integrity in the process, the monitoring will need to be conducted by licensed technicians – who will forward the water samples to a California-certified lab. Samples of the water will be required upstream of the excavation, at the discharge of the dredge, and at some distance below the discharge. This process will be expensive. The average figure of an additional $4,000 was voiced multiple times by Water Board staff.
17) During the discussions, it was generally agreed that once a section of river has been monitored to satisfy the conclusion that harmful discharges of mercury and other dangerous metals were not present, the monitoring activity could be ended in that portion of waterway. I gather that the initial $2000 permit application fee is for a permit that is good for five years.
18) We do not even know yet how much an annual suction dredge permit will cost from DFW. The amount of $200 has been floated around.
19) Remember; the 2012 suction dredge regulations open most of the larger waterways for only three months. It used to be that we could dredge year-round on the Klamath and Trinity Rivers.
20) Then there is this ongoing discussion about recreational miners compared to commercial miners. We don’t need to make that argument here. But we do need to discuss how much time a person has available to go dredging. A person with a week or two is not going to spend thousands of dollars to go dredging! Even a person with three months to invest has no guarantee that he will recover enough gold over costs to even break even on a permit scheme that will cost thousands of dollars.
21) As I said earlier, with an occasional exception, I don’t believe the Section 402 permit scheme was created for individuals who just want to spend a few weeks enjoying the great outdoors, and perhaps exposing their children to the authentic golden wealth at the bottom of California’s waterways. Section 402 was created to deal with industrial industries which produce waste on a large scale.
22) To my surprise, and that of others in the meetings, the Water Board staff was also taking these prohibitive costs to individual suction dredgers into consideration.
23) As I understand it, their tentative solution is to permit mining associations which provide access to multiple mining properties to all of their members. “Mining association” is somewhat of a loose term that could apply to many different situations. As a large example, The New 49’ers provides perhaps 50 miles of waterway that would be allowed dredging under the 2012 regulations to around 1,500 active members. If our association arranges for the Section 402 water permit to cover all of our properties on behalf of all our active members, and arranges an adequate monitoring program, our active members would just need to obtain the suction dredge permit from DFW. This would provide a way for individuals to participate.
24) It was suggested that an independent property owner could potentially work with our association to include his property(ies) under our water quality permit, become an active member and obtain the dredging permit, even if his personal properties were not made available to others within our association.
25) Said another way, there is no limit on the ways groups of suction dredgers can come together to share the costs of the water quality permit so each can qualify for a suction dredging permit.
26) This association permit plan was devised by the Water Board staff as an idea to make the permit available to individuals who otherwise could not justify spending the money to go suction dredging for shorter periods.
27) To give you a better idea of the way the Water Board staff was trending before our first meeting, here is a link to the “Topics of Discussion” document they sent to us before the meeting. As you can see, the discussion was all about the idea of suction dredgers coming together in groups (associations) to spread the water quality permit costs out to become more affordable.
28) We were sent the same discussion document in advance of the second meeting.
29) New 49’ers is organized already to, not only obtain the permit for all of the properties we make available to our members, but also to include other, smaller associations and individual claim owners who have properties within the umbrella of our existing area of responsibility (most of Siskiyou County; most of the Klamath National Forest in northern California).
30) Our primary question has to do with how much, and how often, monitoring will be required over the five-year term of the water quality permit. If allowed some flexibility, step by step, I believe we could free whole reaches of waterways from the concerns over harmful heavy metal contamination; and perhaps even identify hot spots (if they exist at all) which would thereafter be made off limits to suction dredging.
31) Other associations at the meetings expressed some level of encouragement, though monitoring costs, how often and where, remain a concern.
32) According to Water Quality staff, they are hoping to release a draft permit for public comment sometime in February 2019. You can place yourself on the list to be informed at this link..
33) We should allow for twists and turns as the public process moves forward; but the present schedule is to have the Statewide NPDES permit finalized in April of 2019.
34) As long as the monitoring plan is something we believe we can accomplish and afford, we will immediately submit an application on behalf of all our active members for all of the properties we make available that are legal for suction dredging under the 2012 DFW regulations.
35) Therefore, I would predict that it is more than a 50/50 chance that our members will be dredging again during the upcoming 2019 season. We have not seen those kind of odds since we were shut down in 2009!
36) While I may be wrong, I see this as a temporary reprieve from the existing situation of no suction dredging at all – and the terribly flawed definition California adopted of a “suction dredge” as being any mechanical device within 300 feet of an active waterway that is being used to help facilitate excavation or processing material for the purposes of mineral recovery. Just to be clear, this is what suction dredging is!
37) I have my fingers crossed that ongoing litigation (which is out of our hands) at the federal level will bring this sort of nonsense to an end.
A Big Thank you to Those Members who have Sent in Your Annual Dues!
We bill all Full Members $50 for annual dues in August. September through the end of the year is when we must shoulder the load of substantial property tax and filing fees to the County and Bureau of Land Management. These are legal requirements which allow us to continue making a very substantial number of federal mining claims (60+ miles of gold-rich river and creek properties) available to our members.
In real terms, the true value of the gold along these extensive properties is probably more substantial than the net assets of any financial institution on the planet. We should be calling our properties the “Klamath First National Bank.” Ours is the only bank in the world where you can go out and make a draw anytime you wish. There are no interest or bank fees to pay. And you never have to pay the gold back!
This is as close as it comes to an opportunity to maintain some degree of personal freedom during difficult or troubling times. As far as I know, we are the only organization in the world that makes a very large bank of pure wealth freely available to our members on many, many properties that are in reasonable close proximity.
Having said that, most of us remain disappointed that the State has been preventing us from using motors to gain access to the more valuable deposits of gold which are largely out of reach to non-motorized programs. Please believe me when I say we are exhausting every effort to reverse this situation. As you can see from above, the situation will not last forever.
As it is, things being the way that they are; even if every Full Member pays the $50 annual dues, and every Associate Member pays an annual renewal fee, I personally support cost overruns with other sources of monthly income which I earned before becoming a gold miner, along with savings put away during better times.
Costs associated with maintaining our extensive properties, our material infrastructure, and to hold onto our very experienced and loyal staff, exceed the amount of income we bring in. I don’t expect this reality to change until either we get motors and underwater mining back, or until the dollar value of gold goes up so high that non-motorized mining will produce a living wage.
There remains hope that America will wake up and realize we need to produce value and wealth in excess of what we consume. Mr. Trump and his team appear to be leading the charge on this, though he is not getting as much support from congress and the mainstream press that he deserves. Like him or not, our existing president is leading the freedom and prosperity side of the existing civil war over the future of America. If Mr. Trump cannot succeed, there is nobody else to take his place with any chance of success. The whole world hangs in this balance. It remains too early to predict the outcome.
One of the developments that gives me hope is the ongoing efforts by the Trump Team and other conservatives to completely overhaul the Endangered Species Act. (ESA) There is a strong push right now to develop America’s natural resources in a responsible way, rather than to continue making them off limits. This in itself is a reason to help republicans maintain control of the house and senate during the midterm elections.
It is the existing ESA that succeeded in killing the once-profitable logging industry in America that produced thousands upon thousands of good-paying jobs. It would be interesting to see the statistics on how much timber is harvested off the federal lands these days compared to how much is burned to the ground in wild fires due to really stupid policies which have been adopted by State and federal authorities.
Our suction dredging industry in the Western U.S. has been shut down over concerns for the endangered or threatened Coho salmon. This, even though there is zero evidence that suction dredging ever harmed a single fish of any kind. In fact, the most recent study performed on the cumulative impact of all suction dredging determined that the effects were so small that they could not be measured.
But the deep State is not interested in real science that does not support their narrative. Therefore, productive activity is closed down by the States while they continue to sell millions of fish-kill licenses to anyone who wants to go fishing, and while our valuable forests, and now some communities, are burning to the ground.
These mid-level managers in the California Water Board are a breath of fresh air as they attempt to establish a program that will allow us to get productive again.
There are other signs that the political winds are finally trending more in our direction. My sources are telling me that the State of California has informed the Klamath National Forest (KNF) (where all our gold properties are located) that they should prepare for suction dredging to start up again during the 2019 summer season. KNF has taken this seriously enough to post an experienced Minerals Officer in the Fort Jones District that manages both the Salmon and Scott River watersheds. The Salmon River is ground zero where all the years of litigation started so many years ago..
Fake news and left-leaning political activism aside, in the end, it will only be integrity and pursuit of the truth that will lead us towards enlightenment and prosperity. There seems to be some meaningful progress at the moment.
There is more hope now than there was 2 years ago!
I am eternally grateful to those of you who stick it out alongside me and our loyal staff.
Our Message Forum Finally Went Down!
This has been coming for quite some time. We have not been able to reach the person who controlled the earlier platform upon which our Internet message forum has been located for a very long time.
Despite our efforts, we were also not able to save all our history. The forum was inaccessible to some members at first. Then more people could not get up there. Finally, the whole structure collapsed.
Therefore, longtime member and supporter, Jim Foley, got to work and created a whole new forum that is set up much like the original one, except the history of all our threads, posts and conversations are not there, anymore.
So it’s time to begin some new conversations!
You can find the new forum at the same link where the earlier one was by clicking here: 49’er Message Forum
I’ll make my first appearance by posting a link to this newsletter. Then another to the ongoing Legal Fund-raiser.
Grand Prize: 1-ounce American Gold Eagle
Four ¼-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1/10th-ounce American Gold Eagles
Ten 1-ounce American Silver Eagles
This drawing will take place in Happy Camp, California at our office at the close of business on 25 October 2018.
Legal contributions can be arranged by calling (530) 493-2012, by mailing to The New 49’ers Legal Fund, P.O. Box 47, Happy Camp, CA 96039, or online by clicking Here.
Unless there is some kind of emergency like a wild fire, our mining properties are always open to New 49’er members 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.
To conserve financial resources during the winter months when there is so little walk-in traffic, we have reduced walk in office hours to 9 am through 4 pm, Monday, Tuesday and Friday. These new office hours will begin on 1 October.
There is a phone message service if you call at a time when the phone is not being answered.
Reminder that we have an emergency Internal Affairs telephone connection that works all of the time by calling Rich Krimm at (510) 681 8066. Please do not use this number in an attempt to discuss routine matters! It is for emergencies only.
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There will be 26 prizes in all:
We rounded the next bend to find the entire landing site crowded with people out there standing in the dark. Talking about dedication; everyone showed up early! The landing site was not in direct view of where the boat stumbled over the rocks. So they did not see our rocky ride. But they heard the noise of our collisions from about a quarter mile away. They said it was quite loud and sounded like we met our end. But that was not enough to keep the first bunch from putting their life preservers on and being ready to board the boat!
As the pay-dirt was run over the screen, others were filling buckets with the screened material. That’s the normal material that we feed into our recovery system. We usually don’t do anything with the oversized material that does not pass through the screen. But in the previous project we did in this location, we recovered dozens of nuggets – some which appeared too large to pass through a quarter-inch screen. We are not accustomed to digging in places which have so many gold nuggets.
Here is some video we captured of how participants were doing out there on an early Sunday morning:
The remaining concentrates are then washed over a smaller, more refined recovery system called a “Gold Extractor.” This is a small sluice with 
In the end, to my surprise, we recovered a little less than 3/4 of an ounce. It should have been more. The reason I say this is that I watch all or most of the sampling that happens on Sunday morning. We take occasional samples out of the buckets being directed to the floating sluice. We take samples of the raw material people are putting into buckets up on the hillside. The sample results on this project were as good as I can remember. Plus, there were the nuggets.
I ferried everyone back across the river after a few hours. We don’t want people out for too long during the hottest part of Saturday afternoon. This is because the real action and excitement of the weekend takes place during the cool hours of Sunday morning.
All I can say is that there was so much digging going on out there, it wasn’t long before nearly all the buckets were full of screened pay-dirt. As is normal, our participants, in all their 
Normally, when we have more pay-dirt than we can process during the project, once we stop feeding the recovery system, I invite anyone who wants to take a bucket of pay-dirt back home, or to their camps, to process on their own. Lots of participants were excited about this idea.
There will be 25 prizes in all:
There are several reasons that I personally take these projects very seriously, even though they are mostly fun and entertaining for everyone else. Part of this is because there are rules we must follow to avoid problems with local officials. Also, with so many people out there on the rocks and in the water, accidents do occasionally happen – which is never good. This normally has to do with someone losing balance and taking a fall on the rocks.
We discovered on earlier weekend projects that when the pay-dirt is close to the surface, a group project can generate rich pay-dirt faster than our floating recovery system can process it. If you feed any gold recovery system too fast, the gold traps become buried and some portion of the gold will be lost with the tailings. Not good!
Directing a controlled flow of water over the concentrated material in the floating recovery system allowed the lighter material to be washed away while the much heavier gold lagged behind. Seeing all that gold in the recovery system was truly a sight to behold! Any worries I had about having enough gold to do a good split were evaporated from my mind as I watched the water concentrate millions of small flakes of pure wealth as we washed them into a large plastic tub. It was quite a show that reminded me of earlier days when we were allowed to suction dredge out in the river!
In all, we recovered 292 grains of gold. This is a little more than 12,1 pennyweights (20 pennyweights equal one troy ounce). This was about $800 at today’s gold price – all in about 3 hours of work. I made an offer to keep all the gold for myself in exchange for all the pizza and beer necessary for all participants to celebrate our successful day. But not a single person was interested in that. They all wanted their shares!
This took place in August. The river was really running low. So low, that we had to push my boat off the trailer at the boat ramp at Wingate. There have only been a few times over the years that we had to do that. Here it was on video:
Every gold deposit is different in the size ratios of gold particle size. Perhaps because most members were cleaning out bedrock cracks alongside the river, we recovered an unusual number of small gold nuggets – 37 in all. This was an amazing number of nuggets to find on one of these projects. Here is John Rose on video, who was so excited by the number of nuggets, that he was compelled to go outside and show everyone even before he was finished:
Alexander Paul Julian McCrone: 9/15/2006 – 7/27/2018
Here is the winning list from the 
