How To Find Gold In San Diego County

Gold is all around us. It doesn’t take much knowledge to find even just a bit of gold.

Gold is about 19 times heavier than water and about 3 times as heavy as iron, gold will always sink to the lowest level as possible.

Rivulets are little rivers which form when water flows down a hillside, forming larger streams. It erodes the earth and rock and gold is caught in the flow. Gold falls into early cracks or is stopped by obstructions along the way. Gold collects in these cracks.

Gold sinks as soon as it can. Where stream bends and widens or where natural falls or obstacles are represent great opportunities to find gold. The gold you will find is mostly small flakes and very fine. Black sand magnets are useful.  If your gold is magnetic it is fools gold.

Gold prospecting takes place in San Diego County. It’s not just in the California Mother Lode where gold can be found.  San Diego is home to a rich gold prospecting heritage. There are also precious gems.

As the San Diego Reader reports:

In August of 1870, when Louis Redman went to pick wild grapes along a creek over the mountain from Julian, he happened upon the American Dream. Something glinted in the rust-colored leaves. He brushed them aside and found the rainbow’s end: a chunk of bluish quartz thick with gold. To mark his claim, Redman raised a small U.S. flag on a pile of stones. Someone named the mining town that sprouted on the site for the “banner.”