Strike Gold! Saturday is Mining Day

This Saturday visitors will have a chance to experience the life of a placer miner in the High Desert by panning for gold at our very own mining tent camp. Here one can see how exciting but lonely the profession sometimes was. Starting with the California Gold Rush, thousands of men scoured the West looking for mineral wealth. Often they would move from strike to strike, traveling from the California foothills to Nevada, Eastern Oregon and Washington, Idaho, Montana, Colorado and eventually Alaska over the course of half a century.

At our encampment, one can try panning or use our rocker, a simple sifting device that separates gold from the surrounding material. Many placer mining strikes occurred in dry stream beds where the gold would have been washed down from the surrounding hills. However, water was still necessary to separate the gold from the soil, and our site is no different. At our “Dry Diggings” enterprising miners would run water from a nearby spring to the mining site, but other miners relied on companies to deliver the water.

Mining Day is this Saturday, August 14, from 11am-4pm. It will be located at the Mining Encampment past the outdoor Otter Exhibit and costs $2 plus Museum admission.