News from Gold Hill, April 23, 1859

Published in Denver, back when it was Kansas Territory, in the newspaper Rocky Mountain News on April 23, 1859, the following was published after visiting with a Gold Hill miner.  Gold Hill was only three months old at the time this was published, yet already, there were many men who had come to take the gold from this mountain.  Here is what the article reported...

Mr. O. P. Goodwin has just shown us a parcel of quartz gold, which he states was dug by himself about 8 miles west of Boulder and some 35 miles north of Cherry creek.  

These specimens are intermixed with particles of quartz rock, similar in appearance to that of California.  The largest specimen weighs 32 cents, and the parcel is worth something over $50.  Mr. G. states that he obtained it from a vein of decomposed quartz, six or eight inches in thickness and lying about three feet below the surface of the ground.

Gold Panning
After the silt and sand is washed away, flecks of gold remain.
Panning helps the miner locate where more, bigger gold may be found.

Quartz-Gold is quartz rock with gold in the quartz rock.
After locating where gold might be using panning,
then miners would start to dig to find larger amounts of gold.
Extracting the gold from the quartz was difficult and dangerous.
Extraction required the use of mercury after the rock was crushed.