Friday, October 30, 2009

How Individuals Panned For Gold During The American Gold Rush?

By Jack Wagon

In 1849, thousands of people started rushing towards California in quest of gold. Most of the people adopted a lot of methods to find out the huge deposits of this precious element in order to make hefty amounts of money. People used several techniques at that time but the most renowned method was panning. A lot of people succeeded in getting gold flakes through this method.

The glitter of that ever-adorable metal did not allow these people to quit their search, and they wanted to get more and more once they succeeded to get their first flake of the gold. They often redoubled their efforts when they could not find anything in their several attempts, especially when they succeeded to get some gold flakes in their earlier attempts.

As the number of emigrants was increasing, the government also felt the importance of that once unknown place. The government also extracted the gold deposits. They established several gold mining labs in the areas where gold was expected. Also, they adopted more advanced methods to extract gold rather besides panning.

Most of these forty-niners at California could be seen wearing long shoes and pans in their hands. Sometimes, these pans used to come up with some gold flakes, while most of the times their efforts were proved to be fruitless. When they used to get exhausted after several attempts, they used to vow to come again the next day to try their luck once again. It is also true that some of these miners had found so much gold that the government felt the need of establishing an official mint there.

At present, the use of plastic pans for finding gold flakes is quite common. In the past, only metal pans were used for finding gold flakes. Moreover, special technique was used to place these metal pans in the riverbeds or water.

The plastic pans, which are in use nowadays, are quite light weighted. Moreover, they are manufactured in such a way that they have shallow areas in these pans. The gold flakes get into these spaces which make the gold extraction much easier than before. Some other equipment such as, slats and bars are also used today, which were not used earlier. The invention of advanced tools has made it easier to separate the gold from the other materials.

However, the techniques used by the emigrants were so effective that they are still in use even after so many years. In the past, people used to place the pans where the water flow was considerably slow. At that time the pipette and tweezers were not in use so, the most suitable way was to separate gold with hands.

Most of the emigrants came from faraway places. They were determined enough to achieve their goal, and that is the reason that they strived harder. Their efforts together with courage and determination proved fruitful, and they accomplished their task of achieving gold at last.

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