For more than 6,000 years, people have cherished and fought over gold, and this metal was responsible in part for the making of civilization. Gold is the universally accepted medium of exchange. It is also a status symbol, and down through the ages people have adorned their bodies with this metal regardless of its great weight. Along with diamonds, gold is exchanged during marriage ceremonies in most parts of the world. Gold is even believed to have healing powers. People in Japan seek its medicinal powers by bathing in a tub fashioned into a shape of a phoenix made from 400 pounds of pure gold.

Gold does not tarnish and resists corrosion; gold coins recovered from sunken treasure ships that have lain on the bottom of the ocean for centuries look as bright as new. Gold is extremely malleable, and a single ounce can be beaten into a sheet covering nearly 100 square feet. Visitors to Bangkok, Thailand, are often awestruck by the apparent abundance of gold spread on the roofs of temples and other buildings until one realizes how extremely thin gold gilding can be made. Even glass coated with a thin film of gold can reflect the summer’s sun and retain a building’s heat during the winter to cut down on utility costs.

The California gold rush began in early 1848 with the discovery of gold at John Sutter’s sawmill near present-day Sacramento. Word spread like wildfire, and Californians headed for the hills to mine gold. They were soon joined by get-rich-quick men from other parts of the country, who stormed into California from all directions. Several thousand poorly equipped fortune hunters died along the way, most from disease, famine, and cold. Mining camps sprang into shantytowns, where miners lived under primitive conditions and claim disputes and drunken brawls were common. Supplies had to be paid for in gold dust, and prices were exorbitant. Of the many thousands who went into the mountains to dig for gold, only a few actually got rich, most of whom did so by mining the pockets of other miners.

The gold-bearing veins of the foothills of the western Sierra Nevada Range in California are usually steeply inclined ledges dipping down into the granite roots of the mountains. The hydrothermal veins of the Mother Lode system trend north-south, covering a distance of some 200 miles. The veins are composed of a hard, milky white quartz, generally no more than three feet wide. The quartz might have a few specks of gold and pyrite (fool’s gold) sprinkled throughout, but seldom did stringers of pure gold shoot through the veins. Most miners panned for gold out of the sands and gravels that washed down from the mountains.

Gold has a specific gravity or density of about 19, making it roughly eight times heavier than ordinary sands and gravels. Therefore, if gold sands are placed in suspension with water by vigorous swirling or sluicing, the gold falls out of the mixture and onto the bottom of a gold pan or sluice box. This technique is known as placer mining, and for this type of mine to be profitable, many tons of sand and gravel along with large quantities of water have to be processed. An individual panning for gold will most likely not get rich, but at the present price of around $300 a troy ounce (12 ounces per pound), he or she might possibly find enough to pay for provisions with a little left over. The forty-niners rarely did so.

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