Gold Prospecting & Tourism – Lomax Placer

The Lomax Placer site gives you a chance to see and touch placer hydrauliking equipment at a site where it was actually used. You can also see a fully equipped gold assay office, small museum and learn to gold pan.

As you drive up Gold Run Road from Highway 9 (just southwest of the gondola base parking lots in Breckenridge) you’ll see a fancy Lomax Placer sign with a full-sized prospector on it just a few hundred yards up the hill, and then a gravel parking lot facing this view:

The assay office with our guide 🙂 It is well equipped and looks ready to do an assay right now. It was clearly set up by someone who knows what they are doing. Our guide didn’t know much about assaying so he asked me to do that part of the tour…it was fun to do, and I think I’ll end up volunteering here.

The facility is managed by the Breckenridge History. They run tours most days, learn more at Gold Panning in Lomax Gulch (breckhistory.org)
The displays are quite nice and show real respect for the challenges faced by early miners.

This last indoor pic is a miner’s cabin. I’d say it’s pretty high-end housing for an early miner.

The gold panning is done in the little natural stream using natural paydirt left behind by the original mining operation. The kids on my tour didn’t find any gold in the samples they dug. I suppose that’s a risk you take using natural paydirt :/

Anyway, it’s a very legit little spot and well worth a visit if you want to pan some wild Summit County paydirt.

Photo note: all pics by me, as usual. My thanks to my fellow visitors (and their moms!)and to our tour guide for agreeing to be in these pictures.

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