OUR GOLD MINE

This “proprietary” web page is for our trusted friends only. Please help us keep it low key, as we perienced bootleg digging (claim jumping) on the property in 2011. Thanks!!

Enjoy the pictures, and come help us dig!

Last update: March 11, 2012

The pictures are thumbnailed. Clicking on one will bring up the full resolution image.

The “Utopia” gold mine is located on unpatented claims somewhere in the State of Montana. The gold is contained in glacially deposited placer gravels, somewhat reshaped by meltwater and occasional runoff from frog stranglers. These shots were taken at the top of the digs in 2009 and 2010. Our excavations extend approximately 600 feet down the drainage from this point.

It produces mainly coarse gold: bright flakes and nuggets, with the largest found so far weighing more than 1.5 ounces. A 1.3 ounce nugget was found in September, 2011. The photos on the left show "mine run", and the nugget on the right weighs about 16 pennyweights (.8 ounce).

The deposit was discovered around 1980, and we have been conducting a “hand tools only” operation seasonally (summerly) ever since. Presently, there are three partners, L to R: Amos Knapstad, Dave Edden, and Yours Truly. Here are some brief biographical remarks and something about how we came together.

I was one of several original owners, and eventually acquired 100% of the mine which is now shared with my two new partners Amos and Dave. My day job is community college math instructor (first in Brooklyn, New York and now in the suburbs of Houston, Texas), and I use the summers to escape to Montana and dig off my frustrations. On the left Dave and I are looking for sapphires at the Gem Mountain sapphire mine, and relaxing with a friend in his back yard.

One morning I was washing buckets of dirt in a stream below the mine. I had hit a rich pocket, and was picking nuggets out of a micro-sluice every few seconds – about three ounces of them were in a stainless bowl next to me when I was approached by a somewhat irked redneck. “You are fouling up my coffee water – don’t you know there is a cabin down below?” I replied, “No. Look in the bowl. Want to join me?” The Eddens and I have been friends ever since.

Dave Edden is an experienced hard rock miner who was forced to retire when the mine he was working in was closed by its corporate owner. His wife Gloria and their son James also work with us. That's Gloria at Gem Mountain on the right, saying: "Dang! That one's bigger than mine!"

I have collected corundum specimens (rubies and sapphires) for many years, and one of the World’s legendary sapphire deposits (“Yogo Gulch”) is located in central Montana. In the 1980's I had the chance to visit the site and meet Amos Knapstad, a “Sapphire Villager” who had digging rights on the mineralization. That acquaintance grew into an alliance for rock and fossil hunting, and now gold mining.

Amos not only hunts gems and fossils (left: in Green River shales, Wyoming) but he is also an expert faceter. My wife’s engagement ring contains a clean (VSI?) nearly 4 carat pale green round brilliant Missouri River sapphire he found and cut. From his pictures, it is not hard to see why he has been a “shopping mall Santa” on more than one occasion.

In the past, our operation has been “hand tools only”. We dig dirt, screen out the larger rocks, and transport buckets of screenings to a wash site, usually the Eddens’ back yard. There is no water where the gold is, and that is probably why it is still there.

At the mine, the oversize gravels, bedrock traps, and sidehills are “shot” with a metal detector. Most of the large nuggets are found in this manner.

The dirt is then fed through a sluice box, which is designed to cause water to flush out the less dense materials while retaining the “heavy fines” which are primarily a mixture of black sand and gold. Occasionally, a large “picker” shows up in the sluice (see small "picker" on left).

The final separation is done in a gold pan. My collar is up because the state bird of Montana is the mosquito.

This phase is usually followed by generous amounts of beer, B. S., and barbeque.

Nobody can accuse us of being extravagant or wasteful. I did actually eat that entire 4 pound steak after a hard day's work. Our accomodations in town are pristine, the campsite has few amenities, and we do have some interesting challenges every now and then. The bear picture was taken by Gloria in the Eddens' yard. I took the snow shot in Elliston, eight miles to the east, in the month of August!

Security in the winter is provided by several feet of snow. During the mining season we employ local sentries (ground squirrels and chipmunks, left). Compared to our dreams of gold, their wages are peanuts (right)!!

We'll be back for more in the summer of 2012. Maybe we won't get the big one, but we'll have a lot of fun looking for it. "Discovery lasts a moment, but the quest lasts a lifetime."