Gold Panning at Cache Creek

The high country is really starting to put on a wonderful show. We got some very nice pictures of the turning leaves this past Friday while we walked around Cache Creek with Gayle Gresham and her husband John.

Gayle is writing a piece about one of her relatives and 'rustling' which should be interesting, and we certainly will be looking forward to reading it when it is finished. She has several generations of miners in her 'tree', and her G.G.Granddad happened to be working at Cache Creek while they were mining the area early on. She has been to the area several times, but never up around where they had stopped the mining, so we offered to give her a tour and teach her how to pan for gold like her ancestors did.

She was a quick study and proved that gold mining is in her blood. She picked up the swishing motion to separate the black sand from the gold at the end of the process really well, and with a little practice, we are sure she will be using that gold pan as well as the rest of us.

That was what she found in her very first spade full of dirt from Cache Creek. 4 small pieces of gold, and not bad if we do say so ourselves! We panned the day away along with a home schooled group from Colorado Springs who were on a field trip with their kids. Gayle spent a few minutes with them to give them some of the history of the area and to share a couple of stories about her grandfathers. (More on them later) :>D

We spent a very pleasant day with everyone on Friday...that is until we all decided the smoke from the "camp fire" wasn't a "campfire" but had become something much bigger. We have since heard from the Chafee County Fire Dept. that it did look like it began as a camp fire, so everyone needs to be very aware of the danger of fire out there concerning your camp fires.

Gayle runs a blog on the history of her family, which includes mining, that you can see here at http://www.coloradoreflections.blogspot.com/ , and I must say it has some very interesting information on it.

I have two more posts to get in before next week. As most of you know, this weekend is the Denver Gem, Mineral and Fossil show at the Merchandise Mart along with several other hotels and, we hear, some goings on at the Coliseum. That means I will be spending 10 hour days in the emerald booth with my friend Pedro from Colombia. Come out and see some of the most amazing rocks, gems, and fossils this side of the Tucson Show. Stop by the panning troughs set up each year by the Gold Prospectors of Colorado in the N.E. corner of the Merchandise Mart.

Lots more mining to do yet this year, so get out there and find some gold!

Good Prospecting to You,

Shirley Weilnau