Georgia -- Dredging the Buchanan, GPAA "Farm Claim" -- 16th Trip Up...

Hey Gold Adventurers...

"Dredging" up some old pictures and memories here to recreate a Trip Report from probably about 2009. It was my 16th trip up to the GPAA Buchanan "Farm Claim" with my son Christian.

We'd drive the 3 hours up, set up camp, prospect most the day on Saturday & Sunday, BBQ our dinners, have a big fire...

Here's my first dredge hole on Saturday:



Here's me running the nozzle on my used Proline 2 1/2 inch high banker/dredge combo unit:



My first cleanup was O.K. but not great, so I moved to a different spot:



Half the fun.............and 99% of the fun for my son...............was the camping aspect:





Loved the late Fall leaves, the nights below freezing, the days warmer, two rib eyes on the BBQ and having a fire to warm ourselves, play with...

Yep. Gold prospecting can be a GREAT family builder.

Randy C-17A

I've been thinking of making a trip to the Buchanan claim in May.  My concern though is that the claim has been dredged to death and then some.  Are people still able to get decent gold from the creek or is it getting very sparse?

Thanks,

Tony

Tony,

Ha.  Many thanks for taking a look...

Great primitive camping right beside the Beech Creek, in the trees.  The private property landowner (as the "claim" is actually a lease) is a nice guy.  Just avoid digging too much into the banks of the creek and close to the gravel road crossing thru the creek just below camp.

Yeah, as one of the FEW Eastern U.S. places to go........."The Farm Claim" has been hit pretty hard over the years... Definitely try and drag/float your dredge as far up or down the creek as possible to get away from the hardest hit areas.........which is ANYWHERE close to the campground and road crossing to the other side of the creek.  Funny to me, in all my many trips, to see folks over and over just get their dredges wet and dredge and redredge and redredge the same creek within 50 yards of camp...  Ha.

Personally, even though the water can be deeper, murky, slower especially in the summer, I always seemed to do better dredging the bedrock downstream, towards the property line, which is a barbed wire fence that crosses the creek north to south.

Almost impossible to tell EXACTLY where the property line upriver is, and the bedrock there (some exposed) has been worked to death from what I saw in my 24 or so trips there in 4 years.  Panning & sluicing will yield almost nothing.  I did find a few cool Cherokee arrowheads in my dredge sluice over the years.

I never got skunked, but it's not Mother Lode Kalifornia by ANY stretch...  Pickers an uncommon treat.  Flakes to fines mostly.  VERY pretty high karat butter yellow gold....when you find it.

I did best just punching a hole in an inconvenient spot........straight to bedrock..........normally 1 to 3 feet..............then use my water blaster nozzle to REALLY blow/blast and suck up that really odd, layered, flaky, decomposing goldish colored Saprolite bedrock.  My dredge box would often just run and look like boiling gold metallic paint out the back.

IF the overburden and gravels are TOO loose, too easy to dredge............not layered and stuck together with hard pack clay..........STOP..........move.  If it just "flows" into your nozzle..........I can say with 99% surety it's been dredged in the last 5 years.  MOVE.  Need to "work" at getting your hole down to bedrock...  

HTH,

Come back with a Trip Report someday!

Randy  C-17A  

Good tips to ponder Randy! Ive never been to that property but I have been to Bamas Gold Camp (Craigsford  ? SP)close to when they first opened and enjoyed it! Great campground and good access to 2 nice gold bearing streams. I got a personal tour from the (then ) camp manager and help from his son putting the dredge in or what ever help I needed.

Randy, very nice pics and an excellent trip report. Thanks for sharing. Is that in GA?

Matt,

Ha. Yes.... Western Georgia way over by the Alabama border.....about 9 miles shy of Alabama. Still in the Eastern Gold Belt.

The gold belt runs from Eastern Alabama, around the Talladega Nat. Forest area, thru the upper 1/3rd of Georgia and into the Southeast section of North Carolina. MAYBE a tiny bit of the Northwest section of South Carolina too. Ridgeway in S. Carolina is the 1 notable exception, being center East in the state.

Most all the good gold in Georgia was all hard rock mined underground with gold in quartz veins. Very little productive placers and placer mining there. Mostly fine to very fine GA gold in a lot of the creeks/streams.......think like Cache Creek, with a picker being a uncommon treat.

Randy C-17A