Panning the Old Way

Pay dirt...that gold stuff at the top of the pan is what any miner wanted to see.  The small amount here is easily $60 worth at today's prices.

Gold panning amounted to putting about a hand-full of gravel/earth into the pan and then loading the pan with some water and swishing the water/gravel mix around while discharging light material out of the lower edge of the tilted pan until the only remaining material was the most dense material remaining in the pan...gold.

There's a lot more to panning than this brief description above but we all had the opportunty to practice the skill with a bag of dirt which we got at Gold Dredge #8 after a brief panning tutorial.  

Between Mary and me, we got about $18 worth from our 2 bags.  Everyone got something to show for his work and someone from the dredge admitted to me that "some salting" had taken place to keep the guests happy at their last chance opportunity to pay back the cost of the cruise.  Nobody actually broke even!