What it Was Like to Pan for Gold (10 Photos)

Ever wonder what it was like to participate in the Gold Rush of the American West?  Throughout the mid 1800s and early 1900s, many plots of gold were found throughout California, Washington, the Yukon, and Alaska.  The most ambitious would often pack up their entire families and head to the discovery site, seeking out a mining plot/right and investing all they had in to the tools and setting up camp -- all in hopes of striking it rich.  

For those that didn't go "all-in", there was gold panning - a process by which one would use a large, round pan to sift through the silt, rock, and minerals flowing through a stream that might be downstream from a larger gold deposit.  Some turned this in to a large-scale operation, but most did so for a short period of time before moving on to a new location.  The following photos give a rare glimpse in to the life of a "panner".  

This fabulous photo from 1889 titled, "We have it rich," shows "Old Timers" Spriggs, Lamb, and Dillon hard at work washing and panning gold in Rockville, Dakota.   Many men did indeed find a spot that provided a significant amount of gold, and when they did, they tried to keep it as secret as possible.  

While some worked in teams, many panners did so as a solitary activity.  This old stereoscope photo from around 1875 is one of the earliest-known photos of gold panning in the Dakota Territories.  

In some areas of the US, miners were allowed to pan for gold on any lands that hadn't been formally claimed; however, when demand increased, cities in the US and Australia began to issue "Miner's Rights" (seen above) which granted specific people the right to mine or pan for gold in a specific area for a specific time.  In the more active areas, these also assigned specific plots of land to avoid any disputes among miners.  

One of the biggest areas for gold panning was in the area of Nome, Alaska around 1900.  As stated above, one needed precious few resources to begin panning.  Here we see a prospector loaded up with all of his tools:  a pan, a shovel, and enough provisions to last him a month.  

The water source in Nome, Alaska dumped right out in to the beach, and the outlet changed many times over the years; as such, men discovered that the entire beach had traces of gold.  At the height of the speculation, the entire beach was filled with men with shovels and pans.  

Another 1889 photo of the "Old Timers" in Dakota shows how they redirected a local stream and set up various 'sifters'.  They used these to sift out what was called "gold dust", which were small flecks of gold that wouldn't get caught in standard panning processes.  

To get greater efficiency out of their time and work, miners eventually built what were called sifter or rocker boxes to save their backs.  Here we see a man around 1910 using a rudimentary rocker box.  He'd use his "pan on a stick" to scoop up the sediment, then would shake the box to sift out any gold.  

Many had no time or taste for lugging around a large wooden contraption, so they stuck with what they knew.  Here we see an Alaskan miner in 1916, enjoying a day of panning with his trusted companion.  

As the stories of great riches shifted to great loss for most miners in the 1920s, many plots were abandoned completely throughout the West, leaving ghost towns in their wake.  Further, large-scale mining operations quickly made it difficult for the smaller miners.  That said, many men and families continued the tradition of panning for gold over the next forty years, as we see in this photo from Pinos Altos, New Mexico around 1940.  Indeed, there are many places in the West where you can still pay a small fee to spend a few hours panning for gold!

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