Hand panning for gold the old fashioned way is Michael Davis, 16, from Marysville, OH at a gold mining claim in a river near Bellville. A Long Tom sluice (inset lower right) was a featured part of a recent weekend’s prospecting event. In the lower small photo are grains of gold that were representative of those found during the weekend.

GOLD PROSPECTING--
The modern, Bellville version

It was easy for me to sit on the bank of the river that afternoon and imagine the California gold rush of 1849 where the precious metal was discovered at Sutter’s Mill a year earlier and some 300,000 folks swarmed there seeking their fortunes.

In the process they enriched the westward growth of our young country and helped usher the California area into US statehood two years later.

Yup, yet today that ageless dream of finding gold is alive and well in the form of members of the Gold Prospectors Association of America.

About 125 “miners” romped in and about the Clear Fork Branch of the Mohican River just below the Gatton Rocks swimming hole recently for the 2nd annual Fossick (that’s Aussie for prospecting) at the GPPA’s Swank Claim.

That claim covers about a mile of the river on the late Freeman Swank farm downstream from the Cutnaw Road bridge. The second half of that claim covers another mile downstream from the bicycle trail’s bridge over the river.

Some of today’s miners pan for gold just like their historical counterparts, swishing river water over aggregate from the stream’s bottom and slowly emptying their pan to reveal (sometimes) specks of the precious metal that is 19 times heavier than water and rests in the bottom of the pan.

Other Fossick participants clustered around a Long Tom sluice where aggregate by the bucket full was dumped in its upper end and water was pumped from the stream, washing the raw material down the sluice where tiny gold grains would actually appear as they were trapped in the mechanism while lighter material washed away.

The really serious miners ran dredges. These are engine powered rigs floating on small pontoons. They are anchored in the stream and a powerful suction hose would suck the aggregate from the stream bottom and feed it across the dredge’s internal sluice.

Pat O’Masters from Columbus and the group’s very friendly vice president explained, “Gold nuggets have been found in Ohio but most gold found now is only a few grains in size and most can hardly be seen with the naked eye.” Ohio’s gold came with glaciation during ice ages of geologic time.

The weekend’s event produced an estimated 1/8 teaspoon of the cherished mineral which now sells for about $900 an ounce; roughly the equivalent of a level teaspoon.

The Fossick event, also known as a common dig, has participants all splashing in the stream and working the pans, the sluices, the dredges and other mechanical devices like a “Hi Banker”; all providing the common labor and all sharing in the day’s bounty.

Pat grinned in his form of reverse larceny, “We’ll likely give more gold away as prizes than the miner’s find today.”

Somehow, that nicely compliments this enjoyable salute by these modern prospectors to a significant period in our country’s history.

Three prospectors (top photo) operate a dredge tethered in the river between Bellville and Butler. In the festive, common dig (middle picture) prospectors are busy with a variety of gold mining equipment while some simply supervise from the bank. Amber Courtney, 18, of Leipsic, OH (bottom left) enjoys seeing a small piece of gold being pointed out by Charles Kilgore of Canton.