New California gold rush reaches fever pitch

Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writer

Sunday, October 25, 2009

(10-25) 04:00 PST Jamestown, Tuolumne County -- She traveled 1,800 miles to find it. She knew it was there. And by cracky, in just one morning of panning the creekbed, Janet Gilray had a handful of gold flecks in her hand.

"Woo-hoo!" she screamed. "Gas money!"

There's a 160-year-old reason California is called the Golden State, and people like Gilray are making that reason fresh again.

A new gold rush is in full gallop all over California.

Driven by the record-high gold prices - $1,056 an ounce on Friday, double that of just three years ago - and the lure of easy money, prospectors are flocking to the state's 1849 Gold Rush fields with pans and sluice boxes.

Some want to beat the punishing recession, some just want a quick buck for fun. Some are with big companies, some are lone folks in sedans.

They all have dollar signs in their eyes.

Gold mining permits, or claims, on file with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for California have shot from 15,606 in 2005 to 23,974 this year. They're popping up in every corner of the state, from the Stanislaus River outside Yosemite National Park to the Klamath River near the Oregon border and the deserts of Southern California. 

Nowhere is hopping more than the Sierra streambeds from Sutter Creek to Jamestown, where the original 49ers carved their notch in history - and where Gilray was found with a pan in her hand last week.

Gold fever

"There's a real thing to gold fever. I feel it right now," Gilray said as she waded in Woods Creek, which produced millions of dollars of yellow stuff more than a century ago and is drawing thousands of the new 49ers this year. "You can really make money doing this."

Gilray is on sabbatical from her elementary school-teaching job in Indianapolis, and when she launched on a cross-country trip to put together an American history project for next year's class, she had no doubt where she'd end up. 

She had heard of the commonly held estimate that only 20 percent of the Gold Country's treasure was ever coaxed from the ground, and she was determined to scratch at that remaining 80 percent.

"I might be able to fund my whole project right here," Gilray said excitedly. Her handful of the morning was worth about $20, and there was plenty of day left.

Locals know better

The pair of brothers teaching her how to gold pan, Brent and Bryant Shock, tipped back their weathered bushman hats and sighed as they heard her words. 

Like virtually every other prospecting tour company in the Sierra, they've seen their Gold Prospecting Adventures business on Jamestown's Main Street explode, doubling to 6,000 customers in the past year alone. Most come just to have fun, such as school groups - but the ones hot to make quick cash have jumped from a couple a month to at least one a day.

Nobody seems to be daunted by warnings that prospecting is a back-breaking grind of kneeling in rocky water or in dank mines for years on end to eke out what usually amounts to a hand-to-mouth living. They've heard stories like the one - true - about a hobbyist who stumbled across an 8.7-ounce nugget near Bakersfield in May. They've seen "Gold Fever" and other popular documentaries on cable TV. 

"Guys call me up all the time and say, 'How can I get enough gold to pay my bills?' And you know what I tell 'em?" said Brent Schock, who with sporadic teeth and a bushy gray beard looks like the lifelong prospector that he is at 57.

"I tell 'em, sell doorknobs or shovels. The merchants were the ones who really made the money in that last big gold rush of 1849, and that's a lesson to remember.

"But hey, we're happy to show them how to do this," he said. "We just remind them that prospecting is very hard work. It's best to think of it as a great hobby."

He might as well be shouting into the wind.

"I used to be out there on my own a couple of years ago, panning the streambed with hardly anybody around," said David Basque, a 30-year-old prospector who lives in a tent on the Klamath River near Yreka (Siskiyou County). "But now? I see 15 cars a day coming through with guys looking for gold. 

"It's gone crazy."

Basque, a construction worker, started digging in the far north rivers about four years ago for fun and pocket change. But now that he's learned to pick out about 2 ounces a month and gold prices are stratospheric, he's spending more time with a pan than a hammer.

Going big

Joe Christopher of Texas isn't bothering with pans.

This month he set up shop at the historic, mountainous Dorado Mine about 20 miles northwest of tiny Weaverville (Trinity County) with a backhoe and truck-sized trommel and sluice screening machines - and he's aiming for millions of dollars.

As president of the Oil America Group in Texas, Christopher acquired the long-shuttered 19th century mine over the summer. With a small crew at his side, he is already exceeding the 3.5 ounces of gold per 100 yards of dirt that an assay study said he could expect.

"It's like going back to the Wild West," Christopher said. "This mine is out in the middle of nowhere, and it's not easy work. But we're getting pretty excited."

Christopher said he is branching into gold mining to shore up his bottom line when the oil business dips. 

"Gold holds its value well, even in bad times," he said. "And I think we're in the beginning stages of this gold rush. So far, we're happy."

Back in Jamestown, Bryant Shock counts his blessings that he's in one of the few growth industries in the worst economic downturn in generations.

"Our main business is teaching people to look for gold, but believe me, I never stop prospecting myself," said Shock, who at 54 looks like a slightly less grizzled duplicate of his brother. "I found a 1-ounce nugget just up the creek from town, and we do OK overall throughout the year. 

"I can't guarantee that you'll always find a lot of gold, but I will say this," he said. "You work hard and look long enough, you'll get some."

E-mail Kevin Fagan at kfagan@sfchronicle.com.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/10/25/MNFN1A9KBD.DTL

This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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