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Prospecting
Prospecting is the physical search for minerals, fossils, precious metals or mineral specimens. Amateaur or individual prospecting, is small-scale personalized adventurous hunt for gold and other metals - as opposed to large-scale operations by commericial mineral resource companies, i.e., commercial mining. Traditional prospecting involves physical labor, traversing (usually on foot or horseback (mules were a favorite form of transport), panning, sifting and outcrop investigation, looking for signs of mineralisation. A prospector must also make claims, meaning they must erect posts with the appropriate placards on all four corners of a desired land they wish to prospect and register this claim before they may take samples.
Historially, prospecting involved combing through the countryside, often through creek beds and along ridgelines and hilltops, often on hands and knees looking for signs of mineralisation in the outcrop. In the case of gold, all streams in an area would be panned at the appropriate trap sites looking for a show of 'colour' or gold in the tail. Often, these shows were short-lived, exhausted and abandoned quite soon, requiring the prospector to move onwards to the next and hopefully bigger and better show. Occasionally, though, the prospector would strike it rich and be joined by other prospectors and larger-scale mining would take place. Although these are referred thought of as "old" prospecting methods, these techniques are still used today but usually coupled with more advanced techniques such as magnetic surveying and gravimetric analysis.
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Links
Colorado Prospector - Where the small scale miner finds access to public land, open to prospecting in and around Colorado's mineral belt. Free chat and forum.