The Lost Gold Ledge in Danville, Washington

Mt. Baker, Washington
Photo by Adam Lindsay

The town of Danville, Washington nestled right up against the Canadian border had a checkered past to say the least.  It started as Nelson, Washington, but the railroad changed its name to avoid confusion with Nelson, British Columbia.  The town had a store with entrances opening into both countries that the authorities closed down because of suspected smuggling.  The heyday of the town came with prohibition when many of its residents worked as guides for the whiskey smugglers guiding them over back-country trail out of sight of the revenuers so they could smuggle Canadian whiskey into the United States.  Once prohibition was over the town slowly faded away.

Before prohibition though in 1912 a prospector named John Falconer was working in the town during the summer as a laborer.  At some point a vicious thunder storm hit the area and a bolt of lightening set fire to a tree on the hillside southeast of the town.  Falconer rode a horse out of town along a game trail to put the fire out before it spread.  On the way it started raining and somewhere along the trail his horse trod on a rock sticking up from the ground.

By the time he reached the blazing tree the rain had put out the fire, so with nothing more he could do there he started back to town.  When he reached where his horse had scrapped the soil from a rock he could see it was full of pyrite so he stopped to get the rock.  It was not until several months later that Falconer realized the rock was full of gold not pyrite.  The gold slab was worth over $1,000 that contained over 50 troy ounces of gold that at the time was selling for $20.67 per ounce.

Around Danville the old timers called it “the golden plate” and thought it was only a small part of a gold ledge.  Falconer and his wife hunted for the place where his horse struck gold, but never could find the place again.

Since then many have looked for Danville’s golden ledge in the hills south east of the town but have never found it either.

It makes sense that there is gold there because it is close to the Cascade Mountains that supplied the heat necessary for the formation of gold deposits.  Two volcanoes that could have supplied the gold deposit are Mt. Baker in Washington and Mt. Garibaldi in British Columbia.

Gold Occurrences in Maryland

You can probably find gold under the capitol dome!

YHistorically there have been several active gold mines in Central Maryland that have produced both lode and placer gold; this also includes the District of Columbia  There is a gold belt that runs across the middle of the state where today there are no active gold mines presently, but there are plenty of people panning for gold.  This panning activity takes place in several rivers and creeks including the Potomac River as it flows through Washington as far south as Georgetown.

Georgetown is located across the Potomac River from Washington, DC so we have to assume that gold is in our nation’s capitol. Just think of that the Capitol United States is built on a foundation of gold. That is probably a novel idea since most of the gold diggers in Washington seem to be in the Capitol itself.

Crystalline gold.   USGS

Before it was closed during WW II there was an active lode4 gold mine located at the Great Falls of the Potomac in Maryland. All gold mining activity was banned by the government nationwide as it was felt the manpower to operate a mine would be better used in the war effort.  It was originally planned to reopen the mine after the war was over, but it never did.

There is ongoing placer mining and prospecting in the center of the state reportedly with a great deal of success.  This placer mining takes place on the rivers and creeks found in the area.  This gold mining belt extends across the state ending in Baltimore; can’t you imagine panning for gold on the banks of the Susquehanna River right in one of the Baltimore’s city parks!

The gold in Maryland was originally discovered by an Irish Union soldier while on KP duty, during the Civil War, that was washing frying pans on the banks of the Potomac River.  One of the ways to clean an army frying pan is to use sand as a cleaner.  The soldier probably had filled the frying pan with sand and gravel from the river that he sloshed around to clean the pan and found gold in the bottom of the pan.  It has been reported he was a member of a regiment from California.  If that was the case he was already familiar with the process of how to pan for gold, and was probably goofing off on his KP duty.

One of the precursors of gold is the presence of greenstone in the gold bearing belt thought by geologists familiar with gold deposits to be the source rock from which it is percolated by the action of hot groundwater.  The first chromite produced in the United States came from these same greenstone belts. The hot gold bearing groundwater that has percolated through the greenstone removing its gold content also carries many other dissolved minerals.  One of the principle minerals is silica that is deposited from the water at about the same temperature as gold.  Gold in quartz ore is often found together in veins making it one the most common forms of lode gold.

References:

Kuff, Karen, Cold in Maryland, 1987, http://www.mgs.md.gov/esic/brochures/gold.html

Prospecting for Gold near Washington, DC, http://www.infiltec.com/gold/