Panning for Gold

Panning for gold has been on my bucket list for... ever. Why I ever waited so long to try and check it off, is beyond me. After all, I live in Colorado. 

This place played a big role in the gold rush and has a long history - complete with miners who risked everything to work their fingers to the bone and often died in their 30's of lung issues like silicosis. Alongside them were the kids who's jobs might have been considered more hazardous, or worse in other ways. They lit the gunpowder fueled explosives then ran like the Dickens to clear the area before detonation or were in charge of fetching the wooden toilet box from inside the mine and emptying it outside. Often coerced into hiding silver that was smuggled out with the poo, and rewarded by some sort of 'commission' when they cooperated with miners seeking to earn a little more than the mining company credits they were traditionally paid in - and had trouble spending anywhere but the mining companies general store. 

Long story short, last Saturday Mark and I fled into the foothills to step back in time, spend a fun and quality day together and allow me to check Panning for Gold off my bucket list. 

We took the Georgetown Loop railroad first.

The train was packed with tourists, mostly seeming to have come from Texas or Chicago, but a few foreign travelers too and of course, us... from an hour down the road. 

Also aboard were staff - dressed in period costume - staging stick-ups, talking in ol' timey jargon and generally making the affair very fun and entertaining. 

We stopped off the train somewhere in the woods. At the Lebanan Tunnel. And took a tour of a silver mine that operated until about the mid-1800's. 

I found a hard hat that fitted my wee noggin! Then we followed Joey, our guide, deep into the granite mountain. 

Once upon a time this mine in Clear Creek County was booming.... then someone talked someone else into valuing silver way less than gold and all of sudden the cost of getting it out wasn't worth it! Just like that, everyone walked away. But not before some smartypants European mine CEO ran an efficient (but ethically questionable) operation here and invented some really good tools and methods for extracting Argentiferous rock. Questionable is a term I use because these miners were subjected to dusty, dark and damp conditions 6 days a week. They often suffered from hypothermia, definitely inhaled toxic air, suffered irreversible hearing loss listening to mining machines inside the tunnels, sometimes sustained terrible debilitating injuries and were always simply replaced when they were no longer useful. 

Miners were disposable humans. :-(

The mine is 40 degrees, year round.  Cold. Damp cold. While my Swiss wool jacket appeared to be more than most people had packed, it was still a bit less than I wish I had. 

Joey educated us on all sorts of things from miners daily life, to inventions inside the mine and the difficult to pallet, statistics. He pointed out the black streaks in the rock that were "tarnished silver" and clues as to where they should shoot off another tunnel. The granite of this area is strong and stable so while there are wood and steel supports, there probably isn's as much fortifying inside the tunnels as you'd find in other places. 

Once back outside the mine we got a little lesson in panning for gold. Contrived? But of course! They gave us the pans, a baggie of sand laced with gold chips and a tiny vial for taking it home in if you managed not to swish it into the trough. This ensured that if we learned a little something our efforts would indeed be rewarded with success! Mark and I now have enough between us to maybe fill in a light scratch on a gold ring or some such. LOL.

(Yeah, I got all caught up in gold rush fever and forgot to take a picture of this part, sorry!)