Tuolumne County Historical Society Program – Gold Boulders
Date/Time
Date(s) - 03/08/2023
3:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Location
Tuolumne County Library
Categories
“Gold Boulders”
Rich Lundin, local geologist and archaeologist, will present a program about the Calaveras County 265-pound boulder that was recently sliced in half to expose finely dispersed gold. Using new technology, Lundin and other mineralogists employ a Falcon metal detector system tuned to find hidden gold in quartz placer gold dredge tailings. According to Lundin, many existing boulders escaped being crushed by early miners because they were too large. Some of these rocks showed no evidence of gold on the surface but had large deposits of gold inside the stone.
The significance of the findings goes beyond the new sources and high price of gold. The U.S. government is in competition with other countries to locate and produce rare earth minerals, which are often found with gold. Modern technologies are dependent on these rare earth minerals for “clean energy, information technology, defense, and industrial applications,” according to Lundin.
