Where and how to dig year-round in Colorado. Includes links to specific prospecting sites recommended for each season of the year.
metro Denver gold panning
14 posts
There was recently a broadcast of a short piece about prospecting in metro Denver with long time fellow prospector and friend JJ Long and me. The local TV station, KDVR 31 runs special interest stories about cool things across the state. When they decided to talk about gold prospectors, they […]
Announcing the latest book in the FInding Gold in Colorado series: The Wandering Prospector. Available now!
My book on gold prospecting across Colorado is now available here and ‘in stores everywhere’. It has even been updated for 2023. Awarded recognition as the “#1 New Release” in its category on Amazon in June 2018 and a “Category Bestseller” in May 2021 and frequently since! Over 9,000 sold […]
Cherry Creek was one of the first places early prospectors found gold in Colorado. In 1858 William “Green” Russell and his party even briefly set up the gold camp “town” of Russellville south of the modern town of Parker on Cherry Creek. They moved on toward Denver fairly quickly looking […]
I’m sitting at my computer, looking out the window at yet another winter storm (we’ve had almost 6 feet of snow this month (12/2016) here in Summit County!) and satisfying my gold fever with a little winter reading. I thought you might like to see some of the best of […]
The chunk of Clear Creek in north-central Denver from Broadway to Washington St. has some really good gold. This stretch of river also has quite a few bridges over it which does two good things: provides some shade for summer digging Means there’s bigger gold in the top gravels that […]
Dudley’s bar is upstream from Big Bend (see my other post on Big Bend) a bit. This part of the South Platte is just down stream of the confluence with Clear Creek and due to some quirks of river flows during high water events, there’s GOOD gold on the west […]
Digging in the city means participating in recreational gold prospecting as a guest of a local government, parks & rec district or similar organization. While the tools of prospecting are the same (shovel, pan and sluice, maybe an electric highbanker like the Gold Cube), the process of finding a spot […]
Goldstrike Park is an Arvada City park at the confluence of Ralston Creek and Clear Creek…both of which are gold bearing and open to non-motorized prospecting. On Ralston Creek, you can find fine gold just about anywhere in the stream bed. A large cobble bar has developed under the 56th […]
The gold in metro Denver is in almost every waterway big enough to have a name. In the early days of the gold rush this was confusing and frustrating for the first American prospectors. They found gold way out southeast in Elbert County, due south of what’s now Denver in […]
A friend of mine has done his own blogging about places to go digging in metro Denver and he has some great spots to tell you about. Red Wilcox is the co-inventor/owner of the Gold Cube, Banjo Pan and the inventor of the Gold-n-Sand hand pump/dredge. (Note: I have an […]
This is a bad news, good news story. But first, a little background. Grant-Frontier Park is on the South Platte River just South of Evans Ave (and west of Santa Fe) in central Denver. This has been a popular gold prospecting location since the very beginning of US citizens coming […]
This is a spot you have to see to believe! Big Bend has good gold and lots of it! It’s officially called Steele Street Open Space Park and is part of the Adams County Open Space parks. You arrive at a parking lot on the east side of Steele Street […]
