Gold Mining, Dummy Style

Entrance to inactive gold mine

We come across a great deal of content in our searches that can charitably be classified as cockamamie, incoherent, brainless, preposterous, ridiculous, or – our favorite word – dumbass. A not surprising amount of that content can be found in the pantheon of eHow.com niches, which is precisely where we came across a therapist/gardener freelancer whose Sciencing.com article purported to tell us "How to Mine Rose Quartz & Gold." Meet newbie DotD Judy Kilpatrick...

We sort of thought that the OQ was asking about hard-rock mining, e.g., open-pit vs. underground; not to mention methods such as drilling and blasting. Kilpatrick, however, was apparently convinced that the question was about picking up a few rocks somewhere; which is probably why she told her readers that,

"Active and inactive mines, in many locations, are open to the public for a fee. At these mines, you can be a prospector for a day, digging and panning for quartz or gold. At other locations, it is possible to stake a claim and mine for minerals."

We won't bother to point out to Judy that it's highly unlikely that you're going to find much gold in an inactive mine; and even if you did the ore would requiring substantial processing. Be that as it may, Kilpatrick's notion of how you locate gold deposits is rather... funky:

"Locate a gem mine on Federal property open to the public for mining. Search the Internet using the State name and mineral you want to mine to locate mines in that particular State, if a mine exists in that area. Locate Federal property through the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Contact the BLM of the State in which you desire to prospect to obtain information on available locations."

We aren't really certain where Judy came up with that (mis)information, but we're here to tell you that none of that works; partially because there's no such thing as a "State BLM" and partially because the BLM doesn't control national forests, which are much of the federal land in rocky terrain. Moving right along, Judy then reworded some "rockhounding tips" from an old blog, including,

"Observe all written rules. Back fill any holes that you dig on private property..."

Given that we're mining rose quartz and/or gold, the notion that we'll "dig" any holes is ludicrous. After that silliness, Kilpatrick renders some rather useless instructions for panning gold; again, a strange idea when it comes to mining rose quartz.

Such are the limitations of allowing a "flower grower and... mental health therapist" to instruct us on mining. No wonder she's our Dumbass of the Day!

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