An investment

　
A really bleak weather weekend has us prospecting from our desktop instead of on foot!
We don’t mind the weather… a lightning strike in the foothills near our home started a fire this week. Response was quick, but we’re glad this weather arrived to dampen any further sparks the lightning and wind might have fired!



X's mark sections blanketed with lode claims.

 We’re taking on a tedious task of choosing prominent gold producing areas, researching existing claims and looking for available claims. As we progress on this project, we’re seeing a considerable amount of property in the Northern Hills being staked by companies blanketing sections with lode claims. Several sections we were interested in are already staked.

Out intention is to sget ahead of those companies… one really valuable placer claim was staked this past week by a friend. The placer is only one aspect, however, as companies have no compunction about staking a lode claim right over a placer claim! We are recommending a lode claim over this friend’s placer as it looks to have gold-bearing quartz and schist.

Another placer claim we staked this week, in that same general area, surprised us while walking the boundaries with a well-established adit into quartzite and shale, which is prompting us to consider a lode over this placer also!  A return visit Monday sparked a geologic discussion that we will share with you later this week!

So why all this anxiety? History is repeating itself. Miners rushed to the Black Hills in 1876 to stake their claim. What they found when they got here was that they were too late, the best claims were gone! Mining companies then proceeded to buy those claims out, one at a time, until the major mining companies owned mineral rights to pretty much the entire Northern Hills! That situation cleared up a few years ago when a major mining company dropped huge blocks of claims before they left the region.

Now the average placer miner just wants some place to go, pan some gold and enjoy the forest. Those opportunities are disappearing fast in the Northern Hills. Once a section is staked with lode claims, the placer opportunities are gone. You might also want to think about it as investing in some mineral rights that would provide recreation AND might lead to negotiations with a company interested in lode mining!