Field Notes

Mining Notes

A small gold prospecting camp with buckets and a dry washer set up in White Elephant Wash in the Gold Basin area of northwestern Arizona
A prospecting camp in White Elephant Wash, Gold Basin area. Photo by loboford220, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.

The Lone Jack is worked as a small placer mine. These pages document the gear and setups we use, in case they help you dial in your own.

  • Settling Tanks

    Our recirculating setup: how settling tanks keep muddy water out of the pump so a small sluice can run all day on a few gallons.

  • Sluice Updates

    Ongoing tweaks to our sluice box — riffle angles, matting, and what actually caught gold in the field.

  • Dry Washing & Detecting

    The bread-and-butter methods of the Lost Basin: bellows dry washers for the gravels and metal detectors for the desert pavement.