Gem Fever

Blue Sheppard and the Stewart Mine

When I first met Blue Sheppard at the Gems of Pala, I saw a miner, a master gem cutter, a mentor and a man — all shrouded in the mystique of the world famous Stewart Mine.

Wearing his trademark black leather vest, a rumpled shirt, heavy boots and holding his miner’s helmet under one arm, Sheppard wiped the sweat from his brow as the Californian sun began to beat down on Queen Mountain.

As the small but fascinated crowd of weekend gem hunters began to sift through the fresh tailings he had just brought down from the mine in the hills above Pala, Sheppard’s eyes lit up as he began to talk about gemstones. His spirit and brilliance came shining through. I knew then I was only seeing the surface of Blue Sheppard and the  Stewart Mine. I just had to dig a little deeper.

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LDMA key to future of prospecting

Tom Massie recalls how Lost Dutchman’s Mining Association got its name

There are many tales about how  the Lost Dutchman’s Mining Association got its name.
Many assume, it has something to do with the famous Lost Dutchman Mine, but both Tom and Perry Massie know the real story.

“I remember being a little kid. I musta been nine or 10,” Tom began. As the tale goes, George “the Buzzard” Massie had a close relationship with his father-in-law, Pete Kuipers.

“You see, my grandpa traveled around with my dad doing seminars,” Tom said. “They were just sittin’ around one day just BS-ing and my dad said something about the Lost Dutchman. He was referring to Pete because Pete was a Dutchman and he was ‘lost”

Outdoors groups spruce up San Gabriel

California Trail Users Coalition pitches in to help pack out garbage

Imagine a Southern California gold bearing stream that isn’t trashed, literally.  At noon on June 11, 2011, the East, West and North forks of the San Gabriel River really were about as clean as they are ever going to get. Unfortunately, trash and garbage re-deposits faster than gold. Miners and prospectors from the San Fernando Valley Chapter of GPAA, PLP and the Route 66 Gold Miners Club joined with a whole host of the Angeles National Forest users for “Operation Super Canyon Sweep,” an annual 15-mile river cleanup project of the California Trail Users Coalition. Beginning at 8 a.m., 185 volunteers from six organizations gathered at the Off Highway Vehicle Center on Highway 39, where they were issued large trash sacks, gloves and water.  Some people did their aching backs a favor by providing their own trash retrieval tools.
Teams dispatched via bus to designated areas where they cleaned-up all trash that they could physically pick-up and stuff into a trash bag.  

The price of gold: as influential as a global power

By Jessica Bruder Correspondent July 16, 2011
Christian Science Monitor

Lee Mace knelt on a sun-dappled riverbank in the heart of California's mother lode. For two hours, he'd been taking turns with his wife and their three children, shoveling dirt into a home-built oak box, pouring buckets of water over the top, and rocking it back and forth like a cradle. Gravity carried the heaviest particles through a series of screens to a trap at the bottom, where Mr. Mace removed them to cull by hand in a shallow prospector's pan.

Newedge sees gold at $ 1,800 by March

Gold prices will surge to $1,800 an ounce by the end of this year, and silver will soar to $70 an ounce by March as physical demand climbs in Asia and investors seek a haven asset, Newedge USA LLC said.

Case of the double-headed gold coins

It's a case that combines history and mystery--and very valuable gold coins. The stakes were certainly high: One of these rare $20 pieces sold for a record $7.59 million in 2002. Here's the story. A jury decided that a Philadelphia woman, Joan Langbord, who found the coins in her father's bank deposit box, never should have owned them, and that the U.S. government was right to take them back.

No better time than now to go prospecting for gold!

With the price of gold spiking to record highs on the international stock markets in recent months, some experts are predicting that it could surpass $2,500 an ounce within the next two years.

Gold prices have already reached $1,700 an ounce, more than doubling since 2007. Not only is this exciting for the Gold Prospectors Association of America and GPAA members, but it has led to more interest in prospecting and attention to the protection of property rights on public lands.

GPAA President Brandon Johnson said annual memberships to the GPAA have shown substantial growth since 2007.

“It’s the best time to get people involved and pull people off the fence if they are thinking about getting involved. It’s a good opportunity to educate people about what’s going on with their land rights and the benefits of joining the GPAA. Prospecting needs GPAA as much as GPAA needs prospecting,” Johnson said.

Gold prices to be driven by news events next week

(Kitco News) - Gold prices will likely be driven by news events next week as there is still no decision yet on whether to raise the U.S. debt ceiling and the uncertainty can lead to volatile trade.

Market watchers also said that next week brings options expiration and first notice day for the market, which can impact the direction of trade.

August gold futures on the Comex division of the New York Mercantile Exchange settled at $1,601.50, up 0.72% on the week. The contract set an all-time nominal high price of $1,610.70. September silver settled at $40.122 an ounce, up 2.69% on the week.

Prospectors undermined in the media

Miners and prospectors have been handed a bum rap from environmental extremists for the past 40 years. Radical environmentalists tend to conjure up images of hydraulicing — an outdated and outlawed mining technique of eroding away entire mountainsides with high-powered water cannons — and strip mining, as examples of what miners have done to the environment. Why? Because it serves their purpose. But, what often well-meaning but misguided followers of these groups fail to realize is that suction dredging, which has surfaced as a center of controversy in the media lately, actually helps clean toxins, such as mercury and lead fishing weights left by anglers, from our streams and riverbeds. And, prospectors often pick up the trash dumped in water, on the trails and strewn over the riverbanks. While some radical environmentalists, such as the Center for Biological Diversity, argue smallscale suction dredging harms fish and fish habitat, there has yet to be a single credible study to substantiate such alarmist findings. To the contrary, some studies even report that suction dredging creates fish habitat. Basically, the belief that suction dredging is bad for the environment is based more on a preconceived emotional response to mining in general — a response based more on faulty assumptions than on facts and on the image of antiquated commercial mining methods. Suction dredging does not harm fish habitat!

East Coast, West Coast, Alaska photos online

We have added more albums and more photos of the Scott River, Italian Bar, Loud Mine, Vein Mountain and the Alaska Gold Expedition 2011 to the GPAA facebook fan page: www.facebook.com/GoldProspectors