Way out in the wild center of southern California, in a scrubby patch of desert a few hours from Los Angeles, some things haven’t changed much in the last 200 years.
Not a single building dots the horizon, the only road in sight is rutted and made of packed sand – and a small group of prospectors hunch over dirt-caked tools to pull gold out of the ground.
The three are all members of a club called the Hi Desert Gold Diggers, a non-profit made up of gold-digging enthusiasts who’ve been scouring this landscape for years. Harkening back to the days of the Old West, the group offers members a real-life treasure hunt: follow a map with a set of remote coordinates, find the parcel of land and start digging. When and if they find buried treasure, they collect vials of the small pieces of gold, and then either keep them, turn them into jewelry or even sell them.
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, outside the city of Barstow, the diggers methodically shoveled sand through an old-world device called a dry washer, which shoots air up through the machine. Lighter materials, including dirt and sand, get carried off by the wind, while gold – with luck – settles to the bottom.
After 20 minutes, Yvonne Mack, the president of the gold-diggers club, pulled a plastic pan from the bed of her pickup truck and took a seat on a folding chair. She sifted a pile of the newly processed dirt with water, letting small rocks wash off the side. Finally, shining bright against a streak of black sand at the bottom was a flash of gold.
Yvonne’s husband, Jim Mack, eyeballed the sparkling flecks. “It doesn’t take much to get the fever,” he said.
This spring, that fever was arguably higher than it’s been in years. An especially rainy winter sent floodwater rushing through northern California, sparking a mini modern-day gold rush as people came from around the country to try their luck panning in bloated creeks and rivers.
While it might be less obvious in the desert, a place where hobbyist gold prospectors are accustomed to dry, hot conditions, wet weather can have a big impact here. Tropical Storm Hilary, which unleashed a record-breaking amount of rain in the Palm Springs region in August, sparked chatter in the gold-mining world.
“It’s actually kind of exciting,” said Donald Perez, a member of the gold-diggers club since 2000 who now handles the group’s gold claims and membership. “Because you know if that amount of water rushed down there, it’s just that much more gold being deposited.”
Aside from dramatic swings between flood and drought – a trend that is expected to become more common over this century – amateur prospecting has long been part of the fabric of southern California.
Typical prospectors include hobbyists for whom it’s their main passion, outdoor enthusiasts who appreciate any chance to rumble around the desert, and retirees who have come to depend on the unique sense of community. What they discover can be mere flecks of gold, like those found at the bottom of Yvonne’s pan, or more lucrative finds like a nugget, worth anywhere from hundreds to thousands of dollars.
For the Macks, prospecting is a quirky pastime, and a good excuse to get outside – but they also love the thrill of the hunt.
“Every time you dig, it’s like: ‘How much gold are we gonna find?’” said Yvonne, who heads to one of the Gold Diggers’ claims almost every weekend with Jim. “It’s like a drug.”
Gold runs deep here
Gold, of course, runs deep in California lore. Although northern California quickly became the most well-known prospecting area – after the discovery of gold in 1848 at Sutter’s Mill near Sacramento triggered the largest gold rush in US history – mines farther south have also struck it rich.
Roughly an hour north of where the prospectors from the Gold Diggers met to dig for gold this month, the tiny town of Randsburg has seen several miniature gold rushes over the centuries. The Rand mining district, which includes Randsburg, eventually became one of southern California’s largest gold producers; its total output is estimated to be more than $20m.
Today, California’s gold rush lives on with small-scale prospectors and miners. The Gold Diggers club has 10 mining claims filed with the Bureau of Land Management, and it lists rules members must follow: no heavy equipment, for example, and any historic artifacts should remain untouched. A sense of old-school mining culture shines through; the names of the club’s claims range from “Wild Bill” to “Black Jack” to “Hot Diggity”.
Whether it’s 1848 or 2023, many treasure seekers hold tight to the memory of the first time they struck gold.
Perez said he didn’t know prospecting still existed until a co-worker introduced him to it decades ago. One day while searching the San Gabriel River, after weeks of coming up empty, he saw the flash.
“Once I found my first speck of gold – it was just a couple tiny little pieces – that’s all it took,” he said. “And I was hooked.”
At a recent Hi Desert Gold Diggers meeting – meetings are held monthly in the common room of an assisted-living facility in Victorville – everyone knows that feeling. Jordan Owen, a special education teacher by day, said he and his family likely spend more money trying to recover gold than the value of what they actually find. “The fuel” to keep searching, he said, comes from knowing that gold lies just below a layer of normal-looking dirt.
A few dozen club members filtered in, some bringing trinkets of various kinds to share or sell. David Wolf, a co-founder, brought a stack of old mining magazines; another member had mercury for sale, for the right price. The club raffled off items too, including a tiny plastic bag containing half a gram of gold – found in the desert by a member – and thick silver and copper rounds. The club’s logo, an old-timey miner in a wide-brimmed hat, holding a shovel in one hand and a chunk of gold in the other, graced the backs of members’ T-shirts and the cover of freshly printed gold claim guides.
Wolf, who helped start the club more than four decades ago, has been lucky over the years. When his daughter got married, he sold 3oz (about 85 grams) of gold, currently worth several thousand dollars, to help pay for her wedding. Now 76, Wolf still frequently heads out to the desert with his pickaxe and other tools to look for treasure.
“I’m still doing it,” he said, sporting a giant silver belt buckle he crafted himself. “I just sit down a little more and rest more than I used to.”
Similar to those who made a living selling shovels to miners during the 1800s’ gold rush, there’s money to be made selling supplies to prospectors today.
Mining tools are sometimes sold more casually, through word of mouth. In a Gold Diggers’ monthly newsletter (aptly named the “Grub Stake”, referring to the supplies or funding given to a prospector in return for a portion of what they find), a ‘for sale’ section advertises dry washers and other products. The devices can be pricey; one custom dry washer was listed at $1,500.
Some bricks-and-mortar prospecting businesses, meanwhile, have moved online, club members say. In Randsburg, one small store called the Historic Owl Cafe, which doubles as a tiny mining museum, continues. The walls (and the ceiling) are covered with framed photographs, old newspaper clippings and a dizzying array of prospecting memorabilia.
In our mostly online world, that type of store is unique, Perez said. “You could spend hours in there,” he said, “just looking around at all the [historic] stuff on display.”
The future of gold-mining
Keeping a hobby like gold prospecting alive in the 21st century can be a delicate dance.
Just a few years ago, the Gold Diggers’ membership hovered around 50 people, said Yvonne, the club president. That number has more than tripled to about 160, growth they attribute to a larger online presence and increased prospecting outings. This year’s gold rush in northern California didn’t necessarily lead to more members down south for the Gold Diggers, but floodwaters always ignite the desire to go out and explore, Perez added.
The club’s membership currently skews older, but that’s slowly changing. Bringing the younger generation into the fold should be the goal of every prospecting club, Yvonne said.
“If you’re not willing to change the way you’re thinking in running your club, and all your membership is getting elderly, you’re destined to die,” she said from the backseat of her pickup truck this month as it bounced along dirt roads near Barstow.
Having younger members, she said, will also ensure that certain land-use standards are followed for years to come.
“We need people that want to be good stewards of the land in the future when I’m not here,” she said.
The club has rules for how to leave ‘a positive impact on the land’, including filling in any holes that have been dug before leaving, avoiding digging near trees and bushes and hauling out any trash. If members want to prospect in one spot for longer, they should make a ramp for desert tortoises to escape if one happens to fall in a hole, the club says.
Yvonne and Jim pulled up to the gold claim, a 35-minute drive from any paved roads. “Can you tell where we’ve been digging?” Yvonne said, gesturing around at the low-slung desert hills. “We’re driving right by it.”
To the untrained eye, the land looked untouched, just an expanse of hardy vegetation under a cloudless sky. The desert was perfectly silent.
“When I come back, I want to see a club member digging here because he doesn’t know I’ve been there,” Jim said as he sat behind the wheel. “That’s good reclamation.”
