Gold diggers inspired by record prices

Mining clubs are popular with hobbyists who want to avoid the paperwork and fees required to stake claims to gold. The groups have forged various agreements over the years that allow members to mine on government or private land.

“It’s great to just go out and maybe find a little bit and just enjoy being out in nature,” said Rick Segebrecht, a plumber in Oregon, Wis., who started prospecting there five years ago. “And there’s always that chance every time we go out, you could find the big one.”

The Gold Prospectors Association, the largest gold-prospecting group in the country, lets members operate dredges and sluice boxes, which are metal or plastic channels designed to catch gold. Or they can spend a day sifting through dirt with a pan, on hundreds of thousands of acres across the U.S. and Canada.

Another club called the New 49ers in the former gold mining settlement of Happy Camp, Calif., has access to 70 miles of federal mining claims along the Klamath River.

“That’s almost the only way to get into mining anymore because there are so many bureaucratic steps,” said New 49ers President Dave McCracken. “We take care of all the legal and political stuff that surrounds this activity.”

The rare individual who does stake a claim must navigate an array of state or federal regulations to establish mineral rights and adhere to the Clean Water Act and other environmental protections.

Al Grillo / AP Toni Logan Goodrich, co-owner Oxford Assaying and Refining Corp. in Anchorage, Alaska displays gold flakes, next to nuggets and finished gold products at the shop as she talks, about how small-scale miners generate 95 percent of the business. The number of small-scale miners is increasing as gold prices spike to an the all-time high of more than $900 an ounce for gold.

In Alaska, the state still enforces a 19th-century law requiring prospectors to mark the four corners of each parcel with a post. Herschbach, who holds a large swath of claims in the Alaskan interior, said he and other serious miners use GPS to plot out their territory. Maps posted on government Web sites lay out which claims are occupied.

State officials said their data indicates a recent uptick in gold mining. Lately, the number of abandoned claims has dropped significantly, while the number of permits issued to small miners rose steadily from 233 in 2002 to 315 in 2007.

Even so, the era of the self-sufficient Alaskan gold miner is long past.

“It’s more of a lifestyle than anything else,” said Rick Frederickson, the acting mining section chief at the Department of Natural Resources. “A lot of these guys are pretty elderly, and I don’t see a lot of young people who want to do that for a living.”

Toni Logan Goodrich, who co-owns Oxford Assaying and Refining Corp. in Anchorage, said she believes high prices are bringing a younger demographic to mining. It’s a shift from 10 years ago, when she wondered whether her business of purifying and assessing gold would survive.

“I was thinking, ’I’m 30, what am I going to do? In 10 years, all my miners are going to be dead,”’ she said. “I think it’s becoming profitable, and younger people are getting involved.”

Goodrich displayed the impressive amounts of gold unearthed by her clients. In the workshop, her husband smelted 18 pounds of gold into a brick worth $250,000. Three fistfuls of gleaming nuggets and two quarts of gold flakes sat nearby, with a total value of another $500,000.

Many prospectors liken the hunt for gold to a weekend of gambling in Las Vegas. Others love the feel of the soil, the illusion of self-sufficiency in the wilderness and the link to America’s past.

“We like to see the gold at $800 or $900 an ounce, but we were doing this when gold was a hundred an ounce,” said Telgenhoff, who earns most of his money through his contracting business. “We’re going to continue doing this when gold drops again or goes up again or whatever.”

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