I need som help identifying a variery of rocks/minerals found in an area that was an active gold mine some hundred years ago. And also some tips on how I can separate what seems to be gold from what’s not. This comes from one piece of rock that I crushed almost into dust and then washed out a pan. Sitting left with what you see in the picture. Some of it was like a feather light dust that actually laid on top of the water like a golden flake. I didn’t know whether or not it was actually gold, I was afraid to throw away the water in the last rounds of washing. If this is actually gold I will have to search the ground where I washed and crush the rest of leftovers to dust as well because then I have thrown away a fair amount of gold to be honest. Let me know if this topic do or don’t belong in this discussion.
I will upload photos of rock specimens to identify if anyone is interested in helping out.
The amount stored in the little glass container on this picture weighs 46,7 grams
To compare the full box of cigarettes weighed 24 grams
And it’s not magnetic, not even a little bit of it.
Hi Lene, the Prospectors Channel on You Tube would probably be your best bet if no one here can help you
Gold vs Fool’s Gold How to Tell the Difference
You are ready to melt it into a button with a torch. If it all goes up in smoke with the torch and a button does not form, then you did not have gold. IF you do get a gold button, then you can run an SG measurement to determine purity. The SG of pure gold is 19.3 . Lets say you get a gold button with an SG of 17.69 (17.69/19.3 = 0.91666 OR 22k). If you don’t have the skills or the equipment to do the melt, then find someone that does, like a local jeweler etc. Good Luck.
Thank you for specific info on how to approach this from where I am now. I have the equipment and I think I have the skills. I have tried finding the SG on some gems and believe I got it right that time so I’m going to go ahead and try. Will come with an update on how it went when it’s all done 
Speaking strictly as an amateur (albeit one with a few hundred hours of gold panning experience in the California Sierras), I think I can safely say that you haven’t panned out the sand enough. If you agitate the pan properly, all the sand will eventually wash over the edge of the pan, leaving only the heavier gold at the bottom. What looked like gold, but was floating, was probably iron pyrite—“fool’s gold.”
A really experienced gold panner can filter out a pan full of pay dirt in a matter of minutes. It takes a beginner much longer than that, maybe an hour or more.
Thanx for the comment, I am with you on that…. Taking into consideration that I didn’t have a real wash-pan and that I only have tried doing it a few times before the result is probably far from what an experienced panner would have achieved in the same time as I spent on this. But hey, have to start somewhere. This gem,mineral, rock -obsession has been my ADHD hyper focus for approximately two years now and I have never held up on any hobby more than 3-6 months before as I get bored and move on to a new thing. But not for one second has this gem, mineralogy, rockhounding focus seemed to fade. So this is really exciting and so much to learn and figure out on how and why and what so I am looking forward to doing this for the rest of my life and hopefully one day I will have the experience to be able and confident in myself and know stuff like you guys do.
My brother and I have prospected for gold in the north east Georgia mnts for about 7 years. He is a metal detector enthusiast and I like rock hounding.
Together we have found over 17 ounces of gold. A few graham + nuggets and a lot of fine placer gold. Very fine gold will float on top of water due to the surface tension of water. A drop or two of dish soap in the water of a pan will allow the gold to sink.
Gold is 16 times heavier than water and usually heavier than any other material where it is found. There are a number of you tube videos showing how to appropriately pan for gold without shaking the gold out of the pan. Most mountain streams in North East US and west of the Rockies still have a limited amount of gold that can be found if you are patient, don’t mind mud, sweat, skinned knees, and fighting gold fever. Gold is often found in quartz veins.
Looking at the pictures you show, I agree that the dirt hasn’t been classified down far enough. Pan it down to where you have a couple tablespoons full. Keep the rest of the dirt to pan again since you seldom get all the possible gold the first few times you pan it. A good hand loupe and a pair of tweezers are helpful to sort through to last tablespoon full of dark sand. Gold is often mixed with black sand. Some of the black sand can be picked up with a magnet. Don’t discard the black sand. Gold has been known to hide under or mixed in with the fine sand.
Flour gold is barely visible, but I can testify that once you see it, you will recognize it. I would not suggest attempting to melt it down as raw gold is actually worth more than buttons.
If you are interested in gold and gemstones, the Gold Prospectors Association of America is a great place to start. Check out their website. Rock hounding, lapidary, and gold prospecting are closely related. I went from hounding, to gemology, to tumbling, to cabbing, to prospecting, to faceting.
I know this is a long response, but hopefully it provided some information.
Larry
Hey Larry!
So cool with your informative and educating reply. Thanx alot. I was wondering… can I send you some pictures on Email and Get your respons on what I have found?
What is this? Can someone help me with the puzzle? Its found underneath a 3 meter high stone wall that was part of a wash plant between 1875 and 1907, the wall is one out of three walls built like a staircase down a steep hillside and this wall was the one on top. It was all built into a huge building named “the fabric” this is where they used to crush all material taken out from the ore, and 3 m from the wall we saw the wooden pillars that was holding the crushing device in place. So they crushed their way down the floors of the building starting with big rocks from the mine on the top floor and eventually ended up with som white fine sand that they washed out to get the gold down at the bottom floor. Now this is about all information on what went on in the period they were mining in the area, and safe to say that I won’t be surprised if landowners and state announced that when the mine was closed in 1907 due to big losses and that the mine was not paying of it was a common belief that they’ve extracted all that was there. They had a new round to wash the sand from the fabric in 1935 and was expecting to find approximately 5 grams on each ton of sand, but what is said in the history of the mine is that they only found as little as 1,3 grams of a ton of material because the English mine company who run the mine before it closed did a good job fine combing the mineral from the ore and got the gold that was there.
I’m not sure what to believe. I feel there is something about the announced history that is a little off, but don’t know why I feel this way .
When hiking around the area we saw huge piles of bright yellow rocks where they dumped what had been discarded or dumped, we looked down a100 meters deep mineshaft. The rail wagon from when the mine was operative is still standing where it was left when mining stopped, also there is a laboratory located not far from the mines witch was left as it was with everything in it and this have been preserved and serves as a museum for everyone to see and learn the history of the area.
“Everyone” knows about this place and I keep wondering why no one would go there and wash out a few pans of dirt from some of the water streams in connection to the mine and also after going there and exploring the area I can’t help it but my mind goes on about how they can state that the area is cleaned out and there’s no gold left to be found. I can’t believe that they managed to extract every little piece of gold and if they did, what kind of tech were they using 200 years ago that could make them so sure there was no gold left in the huge piles of quarts and bedrock that was taken out of the mines under the mining periods. The piles are popping out from the surroundings as the color is bright and mainly yellow with some red and Grey banded gneiss and quarts mixed in. And if there is no gold in any of the samples we gatherer and brought home to go throug I feel like the yellow is making me mellow and a little confused, - yeah, daced and confused on why any of the yellow dump piles has gold on/in it.
I have a lot of different pictures on different rock samples from “the fabric” and sourrounding area, and some from a stuffsluse/corridor used to transport discarded material from the plant to the dump site. Corridor is collapsed but we walked up to where the opening was and dug along the bedrock down into some serious dirty dirt and filled up some buckets with it because we wanted to see what may be there.
I’ll post pictures if anyone replies and request it
Hope to hear from you very soon.
-Freeliesin- 
Hi Lene,
It sounds like you have done some great research on the mine and surrounding area. May I ask where the mine is located? And, what other minerals are nearby?
The last pictures look a lot like sulfur. Some gold mines used various methods to extract gold from the ore they found, including mercury, cyanide, and other very toxic items that can dissolve gold and allow heat, acids and etc. to extract the concentrated gold. Unfortunately gold miners in those days died at young ages. So be careful with any sediment that might be around where gold was extracted.
The last photos of the yellow solid material does not look like gold. Even very low kt gold will reflect light. Think of cheap gold chains of 10kt or lower gold that still shines.
The first pictures you provided on this thread could contain some gold - but I cannot see clear images of any flecks. It would be good to purchase an inexpensive plastic gold pan (I use an 8” plastic pan). Before you use it to pan the material, rub it down with sand or some fine grit sand paper to get rid of any oils created during manufacturing. I have found that dull well used pans work best.
View a few videos on gold panning techniques - a cup or two of dirt could take 10-15 minutes to pan down to a tablespoon of concentrate - so don’t get in a hurry. I always pan dirt I find into a 5 gallon bucket so I can re-pan the dirt several times.
I hope this helps some.
Lshyers