miner's lantern and a real sure enough hard hat. At the ripe old age of eleven he announced to his family that he was going to find a gold mine. That took a while, but it begins to look like he has found it.

David looks at rocks, sand or gravel like a farmer looks at soil, a timberman looks at trees or a hunter looks at spoor. His keenly honed instinct recently told him that there was some mighty interesting stuff on a hillside above Trail Creek, near what had once been a very productive mine. It was just one of 200 old mining claims the Mosch family

In true miner style, he collected the mineral-bearing rocks. and headed for George Treder's office to have them assayed. George is the one remaining assayer in Idaho Springs. The assay indicates that Dave may have found his gold mine. However, the Mosch's don't like to place a dollar value on possible discoveries. They well know that many a miner has sadly misjudged the value of his discovery during his excitement over finding his first glitter of metal.

David's reaction has been one of guarded optimism and cautious planning. If his discovery is as big as it appears to be, it will be a means of acquiring more mines and to increase his potential finds in the future. These will, in turn, finance his education to provide the training he will need in a world grown fiercely competitive for space and minerals.

The first question that naturally arises is: has David found something overlooked by earlier prospectors? The answer is "no." The original owners of the mine were well aware that there was gold in the ore they were discarding.

Why then was this ore discarded? The answer to this question is more complicated. The early-day prospector with his pan, pick and shovel was an inefficient miner who could profitably mine. only those high concentrations of gold that had collected in the beds of streams from eons of erosion or the larger veins of metal that had been deposited in fissures of rocks through geological processes. Low grade ore had to be cast aside because it cost too much to extract the small amount of gold it contained with the technology available at the time. Modern technology has vastly increased the amount of ore that can be processed in a given period of time. The price of gold is a second factor. As everyone knows the price of an ounce of gold has increased dramatically since the Federal Government removed all price controls in early

1974. Today it may be profitable to process ores paying as little as $9 per ton. This means that mines closed because their vein of high grade ore was exhausted are now being reexamined throughout the West.

The search for gold continues with an intensity that, in many respects, rivals the efforts of the 1800s. But it is no longer the lone prospector leading his burro into the hills in search of the mother lode who bears the brunt of the effort. In special situations the gold pan and the sluice box still have a useful function, but today's prospecting has become extremely complicated. To have a reasonable chance of success, the modern prospector must have both knowledge and capital.

He must be able to recognize minerals and mineral bearing rocks in the field, be familiar with geologic structures and understand complicated processes using the latest instruments.

The Geiger counter is well known and prospectors have used it to find uranium and other radio-active ores, other instruments less well known, also have their uses and may spell the difference between success and failure in locating a mine that is economically viable. The same geological processes that concentrated metals and mineral ores in pockets also frequently hid them. well. Sometimes they were buried under layers of soil or rock; at other times they were tucked away in fissures or hairline pores within the rocks; sometimes the metal desired was disguised by combining it with other substances to form an ore that looked entirely different from the metal. As the ore-bearing strata were eroded away, bits of the ore or sometimes the metal itself were carried down to be deposited with the sediment in stream beds or were leached out and left as trace elements in the soil.

The early prospectors paid special attention to the silt deposits left by streams. The gold pan and the sluice box retained the flecks of gold while the lighter sands and gravels were washed away. Those early prospectors knew very well that the gold they found

in the stream beds was the product of erosion and all dreamed of tracing the trail of gold dust back to the "mother lode." At least some were successful and gold panning gave way to hard rock mining. Through the years mining has now largely exhausted the stream bed deposits of gold. The modern prospector now often takes advantage of the trace metals that have been leached into the surrounding soil to help them locate the richer deposits that will make mining profitable.

The advantage is that the area receiving the leached metal is much larger than the area that overlies the concentrated deposits. This makes them easier to find just as it is easier to find an elephant than a mouse. But careful mapping of the area containing the trace element can lead to location of the richer deposit.

The prospector must have a method of distinguishing between extremely small variations of the key element. The key element may occur in all soil samples, and what the prospector looks for is an area where the concentration is significantly higher than the average. For example, if most soil samples are found to contain trace elements of gold amounting to 0.1 part per million, but a given area has concentrations up to 1 part per million, the difference could be significant. The prospector would carefully map the area containing the higher concentration and hope to find a pocket of ore that would be profitable to mine.

To measure the tiny amounts of trace metals in the soil, the prospector may use one of several chemical processes and employ highly sophisticated equipment, but chemical processing is only one available method used in the search for valuable ores. The Geiger counter mentioned above is based on geophysical principles - measuring radio activity and is useful in locating deposits of uranium and other radioactive ores. Some ores have magnetic properties and can be located through the skillful use of such instruments as the magnetometer and the dip needle.

Even the science of botany has

played a role in the search for deposits of metallic ore. Certain plants tend to absorb metallic solutions into their tissues that can be measured for indications of ore deposits hidden in the earth. It is all to say that mineral prospecting has become extremely complicated and success is likely to be in direct proportion to the training and skill of the prospector. The novice might stumble upon a valuable deposit, but the odds are against it.

Throughout the State of Colorado, mining and search for precious metals goes on as higher prices for gold and other metals. makes development more economically attractive.

Along the Dolores and San Miguel rivers in Southwest Colorado mining activity, while never on a grand scale, was occurring as early as 1878 and most of the less than $400,000 production happened before 1909. Now the ragged and deserted six-mile Hanging Flume high above the Dolores River gives mute testimony to the tenacity of faith in the river's ability to yield "pay dirt." The workmen, hanging 150 feet above the river as they worked to anchor the flume to the cliff, never finished their job. The project was abandoned after the panic of 1893. The partly finished flume was used to bring water to wash the gold bearing sands of Lone Tree Placer mine, but even that limited use was abandoned because the yield was too low to make the operation profitable. But the hope remains that somewhere within the silt deposit along the river's edge there are substantial deposits of gold.

One miner who has kept faith in the mineral potential of Southwest Colorado is Tom Youngblood who operates the Leeco Mine along the San Miguel River. Like David Mosch, Tom comes from a mining family. To him mining is a way of life, and he knows both the risks and the rewards.

Today his brothers are operating uranium mines, but Tom has built up an impressive placer operation. His days are long; he follows the rules, and he takes the profits, when they come,

with as much stoicism as he does his losses. Tom runs a 36-hour operation. Beginning at 8 a.m. on a given morning, he works sand, soil and gravel through his four sluice boxes with jets of water. Not until noon the following day, when he carefully gathers precious bits of gold dust from the riffles of his boxes, will he know if he's had a profitable operation. For every ton of material, he is satisfied if he takes a single ounce of metal. His operation is far from the source of gold, so any nuggets he gets will be worn pieces, shaped by the forces of erosion into intricate designs of startling beauty.

Madame Marie Sklodowska Curie, the great Polish physicist who discovered radium, visited the Slickrock area in San Miguel County of Colorado in the early 1900s. Her visit prompted a rash of filings for mining claims for radium. The fever burned bright, but radium mining was never profitable. During that period one corporation bought 3500 acres of ore-bearing lands in the Paradox Valley. Radium mining had already proved disappointing, but they were gambling on it once again becoming profitable. Instead of radium it was vanadium, abundant in the area, that the miners found profitable to mine. In that early day operation vanadium was taken from an ore known as carnotite which also contained large quantities of a troublesome metal called uranium. In those days uranium had no value and was discarded as waste from the mill. Tailing piles thus became the homely resting place for the useless uranium that later served as the detonating agent for the first atomic bomb and brought a dramatic end to World War II.

When the war was over, the Nation became caught up in enthusiasm over the possibilities of using atomic power for domestic uses. Suddenly there was a demand for uranium and the unsightly waste tailings of countless mining operations soon became the mother lode for a host of small prospectors, miners and geologists.

Those same metals, radium, vanadium and uranium still spark the economy of the west slope of Colorado. Individuals and corporations are working together to improve production methods and output.

The search for precious minerals goes on. In Idaho, the De Lamar Silver Mine near Marsing is expected to go into production in the fall of 1976. The owners, Earth Resources Company and the Canadian Superior Oil Company are primarily concerned with silver, but about one fourth of the mine's total value lies in its deposits of gold. The ore will be mined from open pits and the owners anticipate processing 1200 tons of material per day.

Public lands in Wyoming continue to provide sites for the development of uranium mines. However interest in the State's vast deposits of coal have tended to overshadow other kinds of mining activity for the time being.

Among the more important deposits of gold discovered in recent years are those found in Nevada. Near Carlin and Cortez prospectors have discovered significant quantities of a high grade fine grained gold that is expected to have an impact on the Nation's economy. The discoveries provide a good example of what improved technology has done for the mining industry. Early prospectors missed the deposit since the gold is intermixed with a shaley limestone as microscopic grains that can be detected only by use of sophisticated chemical processes. Further, it can be profitably extracted only through a complicated milling process.

The Carlin mine is now the second largest producer of gold in the Nation. Estimates place the ore body at 11 million tons, and it is believed that there are 31⁄2 million ounces of marketable ore within the mine. The ratio of gold to ore is low (about .3 ounces per ton) but this is offset since the ore can be easily extracted (open pit mining) and modern technology provides an easy way to separate the ore from the metal.

Open pit mining appears to be the most economically feasible