As the old prospector watched the last of the ambers fade into the night sky, he let his mind go back aways. You see it had been over 50 years since he and his father had been to this little canyon and in all that time not much had changed. He had arrived late in the evening and barely had time to set up camp. As sleep began to over take him, he said to himself, tomorrow daddy tomorrow. the gold will wait. The OL’29er

As the old prospector awoke that morning to the sound of birds, he thought back to that weekend many years ago and said to himself and the Lord, Well lets see if that gold is really there.

He was just 11 years old when his father told him about an old Mexican placer site out in the Old Woman Mountains. ’An oldtimer by the name of Jack Douglas’, had told  his father about this little canyon that wasn’t much bigger then  a drip in a bucket but had yielded nuggets the size of nickels just from panning the sides.

The old prospector and his father had spent a few weekends looking for the canyon, but only this one small spot could be found. The gold, if any, was to stay hidden for many many years.

Now with the advent of Google Earth, prospecting had become easier if not almost lazy, it was easy to scout a section of mountain for possible mining sites. It was by pure luck that the old prospector happened upon this small looking canyon in this mountain range.

As he sipped his coffee listening to the becon cook, his thoughts returned again to his father. His father had taught him all he knew about mining and prospecting yet this morning, he felt ike he was the student again. His father had dreamed of this day, was it a myth or a real story? The sound of cracklin bacon woke him from his morning daydream and he fixed up a couple potatoes and 4 eggs. After eating and cleaning up his breakfast mess the old prospector set out to find some gold.

The old boy climbed up the ridge aways so that he could study the canyon up close(a routine that he was taught by his father). As he studied the canyon, he noticed that only one small area looked promising. Like so many other stories, the vastness and gold amounts increased over the years. 

The old prospector set his drywasher up on the only likely spot that looked good and fixed some lunch. He metal detected both ridges and the canyon bottom, finding many old spanish artifacts as well as a few small nuggets.

It was now late afternoon when the old prospector started digging into the side of the bank and feather down to bedrock. He processed 4 buckets of material and set up to pan out his concentrates. As he began to pan, he realized that the gold was not quite as big as nickels but their sure was alot of it.

It would soon be night time and he had to clean up and get his equipment put away. After all the next day was his annevirsary and it would be a good idea to be at home.

Copyrighted 2008

The Old 29 Prospector