The southwest part of Colorado was the last area properly explored by US gold prospectors as they migrated across the state. Many towns such as Ouray, Telluride, Silverton, Durango, Rico, Dolores and Placerville owe their existence to the early prospectors. While my book (learn more about it here) and various […]
map
9 posts
To help those planning trips, this simple map shows you which areas of the state are covered in each chapter of the book Finding Gold in Colorado – Prospectors Edition. This image should print fairly well at 8×10 but be sure to set your printer to “best” print quality. Chapters […]
The BLM manages what it calls the Piñon Bridge Recreational Placer Mining Area to allow casual prospecting by visitors on the San Miguel River. The land highlighted in green on the map is open to casual use but is unclaimable because it was previously private (railroad company) land and was […]
Point Barr is unclaimable land on the Arkansas River where you can drive right to the riverside and get to digging! The gold here is the typical fine Arkansas River material. This means fairly consistent in size – small! This means it would be the ideal place to run a […]
A must-visit for any casual prospector spending time in the Colorado mountains, Cache Creek was a commercial operation that was shut down in the midst of productive operations. Of all the places open to casual prospecting in Colorado, this is the one to hit if you dream of finding a […]
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 […]
