Free Republic

Lucky for you, these gold rush hot spots have not yet run their mining courseMillions of Americans have tried their luck at gold panning. In 1852, the peak production year of the Gold Rush, $81 million worth of gold was discovered in California alone, coming to about $3.2 billion in today’s dollars. And still, two centuries later, prospectors search for gold in public areas across the American West. “Once you see your first flake of gold pop out of the pan, it hooks you,” says Andy Brooks, president of the Central Valley Prospectors gold panning club based in Fresno, California....

Part of my genealogy experiments. Jack Bell, father's father, won and lost fortunes from Alaska down through Central America. His story is like something out of an old western. Stetson and 45.

Volcano, Calif. – This circa 1850s settlement in the Northern California mountains was originally known for its odd name and rich gold mines, but a strange 1860s wartime experience brought it a different notoriety. Named for the bowl-shaped valley surrounding it, Volcano immediately attracted fortune seekers and soon the town had 17 hotels, a library, a theater, post office and courts of quick justice. During the Civil War, the citizens were divided between Union and Confederate sympathizers. As Volcano’s gold help pay for the Union cause, those favoring the rebellion conspired to steal it to divert south of the Mason-Dixon...

Gold Rush fans are used to miners going to great lengths to strike it rich, but in Discovery’s latest spin-off show, White Water, “Dakota Fred” Hurt and his son Dustin are headed deep beneath the water’s surface. In the new reality series, which premieres in January, the father son duo return to McKinley Creek, Alaska, where they’ve enlisted a team of intrepid divers, mountaineers and bush mechanics to search for gold deep in one of Alaska’s wildest creeks. Gold Rush: White Water premieres Jan. 19 at 10 p.m. ET on Discovery.

We have some great news to report for old school fans of Gold Rush as former star Dakota Fred Hurt has married Jennifer Sheets, his Executive Assistant and cook for his mining crew! In attendance at the wedding was fellow Gold Rush star Tony Beets and his wife Minnie Beets. [snip] Dakota Fred and son Dustin Hurt announced back in February that they were looking for crew members to run “a swift water suction dredge gold mine high up in the mountains of S E Alaska,” and the job posting included the sentence: “You will also need to be happy...

California's state highway markers -- those green, numbered signs placed along local freeways and rural routes across the Golden State -- are so familiar a feature of the automotive landscape that it's easy to overlook their symbolism. But the shield accomplishes a neat trick. At once it points ahead and back -- forward toward some spatial destination, but also back toward a temporal point of origin. Its shape mimics the spade carried by Forty-Niners into the foothills and sold by the opportunistic merchants who made the real fortunes of the California Gold Rush.

The names of the tech workers in this story have been changed.Ten thousand miles from Silicon Valley, in a room near the Black Sea, Yegor Karpenchekov dreams of money. At night, while the rest of Odessa sleeps and cocaine smugglers drift in and out of the port under cover of darkness, Yegor logs onto FaceTime and talks to a 70-year-old woman in San Francisco. Her name is Sally Faubion, and five months ago she recruited Yegor from the freelancer marketplace UpWork to code her apps. She believes "divine intervention" brought them together; for Yegor, it was likely $20 per hour...

It’s a town most people in Alabama don’t even know exists. But, that’s not the way things have always been, as this tiny Tallapoosa County community was once one of the largest cities in Alabama. The reason can be found deep beneath the woods near the main road that runs through town. James “Coy” Powell, whose ancestors have lived in Goldville for generations, said he hopes the history of this town doesn’t fade away like the population has. “It’s a sacred spot that I can go back and I can tell people like you, you know this wasn’t easy back...

"Gold Rush" on Discovery Channel tonight!!!!

NEW YORK — The price of gold, which has climbed for years like a blood pressure reading for anxious investors, plunged Wednesday to its lowest level in three months. Gold fell almost $58 to $1,614 per ounce. It has declined 15 percent since September, when it hit a peak of $1,907. It had more than doubled from the financial crisis three years earlier. The decline Wednesday came on an ugly day in the stock market. The Dow Jones industrial average lost 125 points — a day that last year probably would have caused fearful investors to buy gold as a...

Matthew 13:44 – “Again, the kingdom of heaven is like unto treasure hid in a field; the which when a man hath found, he hideth, and for joy thereof goeth and selleth all that he hath, and buyeth that field.”Gold! Treasure! History records a great number of “gold rushes” throughout the world. Americans experienced gold rushes in no less than Nevada, Alaska, Colorado, Washington, South Dakota, Wyoming, North Carolina, Georgia, Idaho, and California. A number of people consider the gold rush to be something of the past. However, a recent report on the Madre de Dios region of Peru shows...

The population of the District of Columbia is growing faster than that of any state in the country, according to a new U.S. Census report that shows an acceleration of a trend in which largely skilled and educated workers have flocked to the city’s resilient local economy and its well-paying jobs connected to the federal government. The city added 16,000 residents between April 2010 and July of this year, more than half as many as it added in the entire previous decade, the report said. In all, the District has added more than 45,000 residents since 2000, the nadir of...

JUNEAU, Alaska — Interest in gold mining in Alaska has surged, buoyed by high gold prices and the lure of a landscape that remains relatively unexplored. Industry leaders don't expect a gold rush, the likes of which this still-young state hasn't seen in nearly a century, with hordes of miners looking to make their fortune. That's because these days making it big — finding and developing a large prospect — can take years, if not decades, and billions of dollars in investment. Even recreational enthusiasts can spend hours in back-breaking labor with nothing to show for it but some golden...

I have been following through blogs many postings About Occupied Wall Street crowd and come to the conclusion I cannot add much else from what other people have said. Yet something struck me the other night over the differences between 0WS and of all things Discovery Channel, program Gold Rush. I never really followed Gold Rush yet it comes on just before Air Alaska a program that I enjoy. 0WS is typical of the modern day loser, self-absorbed with their pity and the concept somehow the system is gamed them.

Foreign governments have been getting in on the recent gold rush, driven by continued fears about Europe's debt crisis and the pace of the global economic recovery. Those concerns have been propelling the precious metal to record highs over the past 18 months. In fact, gold posted a new intra-day high Friday, when it reached $1,260.90 an ounce. A day earlier, it reached a fresh record high closing price of $1,248.70 an ounce. Last year, foreign central banks were net buyers of gold for the first time since 1997. India, China and Russia have been the biggest buyers. And more...

COLUMBIA, Calif. - Maybe it was the nail in Ray's head. Maybe it was the economy. His wife said one as much as the other drove the decision to auction off everything that wouldn't fit in the trailer and leave Vermont for the mother lode. "Thought we'd try to make a living at it," Kim Lague said, standing in a mining camp that was busier during the Great Depression than it was in the Gold Rush of 1849, and is busy once again. And so, 18 months after a co-worker's pneumatic hammer drove a 2 1/2 -inch stainless-steel nail into...

There's much talk of the world being back in 1929, another Great Depression. For some, it is more like 1849. Back then, hundreds of thousands flocked to California in search of their fortune after gold was discovered there, founding the iconic image of men standing knee-deep in water, desperately sorting away the sediment in search of treasure. Now, there are tentative signs of a new gold rush in the US, according to the Gold Prospectors Association of America (GPAA). Searching the rivers The group has seen a 20% in membership in the last year, driven by the deepening recession and...

On Jan. 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill, in Coloma, Calif., sparking a mad rush of some 300,000 people desiring to strike it rich. San Francisco grew from a tiny hamlet to a boomtown in no time, and in 1850 California entered the Union as the 31st state. With this history at their back, state leaders might have understood that people have a propensity to get up and move when a better life is to be had elsewhere. But no. After more than 150 years of being a destination, California is becoming a place entrepreneurs, investment...

George Andrew Jackson made one of the most pivotal gold discoveries in Colorado history around today's Idaho Springs on January 7, 1859. He had made his way up from camp at today's Golden townsite, later became a Golden citizen, and suggested the town be named after Thomas L. Golden who was the only person he trusted with the secret of his discovery. Today is the 150th anniversary of one of the great gold strikes in Colorado history, when George A. Jackson, having traveled from his camp at today's Golden townsite, journeyed up to the vicinity of today's Idaho Springs...

In a high-end Mumbai neighborhood, Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's personal high-rise, named Antilia, is under construction. When completed, the 24-story family home will include its own health club, terraced sky-gardens and 50-seat screening room. Antilia also boasts three helipads and a 168-car garage. This may sound like transportation overkill, if not outright eco-terrorism, for a family of six. But despite its 38-to-1 car-to-person ratio, Antilia has been billed by its American architects as a "green building." And under the leading standards for green architecture, it will likely qualify. Antilia's architects, Perkins & Will of Chicago, plan to evaluate its greenness...