Placer mining is still important

The oldest means of mining gold is placer mining, recovering the gold particles — some of which can be spectacularly rich — along river beds by panning or washing. Placer mining accounts for a small portion of total world gold production, but its importance to local economies can be significant.

In the Yukon Territory, for example, placer mining is a $64-million-a-year industry. Other sources of income from renewable resources in the Yukon including primary forestry, farming, fishing and trapping, amounts to about $6 million a year. In fiscal 1988 placer mining turned out 124,000 oz of refined gold, the most since 1917. What’s more, about 700 people are seasonally employed by some 280 small mining operations.

But, largely because placer mining is the most ancient method known to man and produces relatively little gold, it is often relegated to the “irrelevant” category. Not many people care much about it, dismissing it as insignificant.

However, at the University of British Columbia, placer mining was considered a subject worthy of some scientific research. And, lo and behold, this most ancient of mining methods is now the beneficiary of modern “R & D.”

George Poling, a mining and mineral process engineering professor at UBC, and James Hamilton, a graduate student, have determined that a sluice box — something that looks much like a washboard used for washing gravel that contains gold — with an expanded metal riffle recovers gold more effectively than other forms of sluice boxes.

Their findings were the result of 18 months of study funded jointly by the federal and Yukon governments.

As a result of the research, many placer miners are converting to the new equipment and the federal government is considering setting up a placer gold laboratory in the Yukon. Steps like that could ensure that the territory’s 100-year history of gold mining will continue for another century.

It just goes to show that there’s always room for improvement.