Address: 18170 Main Street Jamestown, California 95327
Gold Prospecting Adventure is located in a small town called Jamestown. It’s about 3 hours drive from San Francisco via I-580 East & CA-120 East. Gold Prospecting Adventure offers a variety of gold mining adventures for the past 40 years. There were two gold rushes at Jamestown one in 1849 and in 1880. Jamestown is a gold rush town, one of California’s original and the gateway to the Southern mines.
Our drive was fun and passed through a couple of smaller towns and back-country roads. When we arrived at Jamestown it really felt like a mining town with narrow roads and old structures. We saw a statue, branch jail, Jamestown Museum, Hotel, antique stores, and local restaurants. We had to check in at the store and were instructed to drive for a few minutes to the small creek to meet our instructor. There were a lot of gold panning or mining supplies, shovels, pan, samples of gold, a bag of sand for panning, and many more antique items. As we arrived at the small creek, we were greeted by our instructor named “Table Top” Terry. He was nice, friendly, knowledgeable, patient, and good with kids. We walked around the creek and found our little spot to dig for gold. We brought our own water boots but they have one available onsite. Terry gave us a brief history of gold mining, how to set up the sluice box, and explained to us the basics of the gold panning and sluicing process.
The creek area is secluded, clean, with lots of trees for shades and beautiful green grass. We wore all our water boots, grabbed our shovel, buckets, strainer, and proceeded to dig for gold. The creek water was a little bit cold but we later got acclimated to it. So, I dug deeper into the creek and dumped it into a deep plastic bucket with a large strainer on top of it. Then, my wife and daughter dumped all the big rocks on the side of the river. The purpose of the strainer was to sort out all the big rocks. We then proceeded to bring the deep plastic bucket with water into the location of the sluice box to separate the gold from the gravel. Terry helped us throughout the process and we all jumped for joy when we found our first gold flakes on the sluice box. Our hard work finally paid off digging through the river and sorting things out. We ended up finding 7-10 small gold flakes and decided to call it a day. We end up staying in the area for a while and enjoyed nature. We all played in the river, relaxed, and threw rocks at the water. After all the fun we then proceeded back to the main store to return our supplies and bought a few souvenirs from Jamestown.
Overall, it was well worth the price, hard work, and patience in looking for gold. We all had fun, quality family time, and a unique experience that we will never forget. Even though we didn’t find a big golden nugget for us to retire, it’s still one of the most memorable family “Strike it Rich” adventures. There is effort and hard work involved because if looking for gold is easy then we will all be rich. Enjoy!
Tips: Bring bottled water, towel, sunscreen, extra socks, or clothing as you will get wet due to standing in 6 inches to 2 feet of stream water. You will also be tumbling, and walking over river rocks. Just enjoy the experience and walk around the town and explore the area. A sluice box is used as a tool to separate gold from gravel and is used in a river or creek. Gold panning is traditional mining that separates gold from a placer deposit using a pan.
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