A new gold rush

ITALIAN BAR — In the cold deep canyons of the Stanislaus River, James Anderson isn’t worried about the stock market. The weak dollar doesn’t bother him. Slumping home prices? No problem. He’s got no house but a bed in the back of his 33-year-old Dodge van.

Gold prices are up — and for Anderson and the legions of other prospectors scouring California’s old mining sites, that justifies the tedious and backbreaking work.

“When you rinse it away and see the gold sitting there, it sends something through your blood,” said Anderson, 68, who lives on Social Security and whatever nuggets, flakes and dust he finds in this rugged Mother Lode riverbed, near the town of Columbia in northwestern Tuolumne County. “It’s like an adrenaline shot.”

Stock market volatility, high metal prices and the popularity of outdoor adventure has triggered California’s biggest mining boom in three decades. As gold more than doubled in the last decade — now approaching $800 an ounce — Americans are returning to the foothills, buying picks, filing mining claims and sifting for their fortune, though few ever get rich or even earn enough to pay for the gas to cover the trek.

“Gold’s real. It is tangible, as opposed to what’s in a bank. Who knows what will happen to it there?” said Dr. Eric Madrid, a Temecula physician who left the stock market and put his savings into gold coins.

Madrid was among 80 members of the Gold Prospectors Association.…..read rest of story..

LDMA Gold Prospecting