The Geology of Coarse Gold

Formation
By Chris Ralph

The goal of metal detecting for gold is finding coarse nuggets. In order to better understand
where and how to find them, it might be good to examine how and where coarse gold forms.
Nearly all placer gold, both coarse and fine, originates from the erosion of primary hard rock
gold deposits. Some placers are re-concentrated from older placers, but at least some time in the
past, these came from primary deposits. A small amount of coarse gold has probably resulted
from secondary enrichment processes, but the majority grew as a primary deposit from
circulating hot water solutions under pressure – these are often called hard rock deposits.

Its hard to imagine things like gold or quartz being dissolved by water solutions, but if the water
is hot enough, the pressure high enough, and the chemistry is right (acids, and other elements
like sulfur are present), then gold, quartz and other things you don’t expect to see dissolving will
go into solution. The solutions move by natural convection (hot things rise), and as they rise the
waters cool as they move farther from the heat source in the ground and closer to the surface.
The gold is combined with sulfur to form gold-sulfur chemicals that dissolve in the water. I have
specifically decided to avoid going into the geochemistry of gold solutions in this whole
discussion, because I just don’t think it’s necessary to do that. The important fact is that at heat
and temperature, gold will react with sulfur and other elements to form soluble chemicals. These
chemical complexes are not all that stable, so that when the waters cool and the pressure drops,
the chemicals decompose, releasing the gold to form nuggets. Sulfur is very common in
geothermal waters (like hydrogen sulfide - the odor of rotten eggs). Most natural hot springs
have that sulfur odor quite strong, and most gold - quartz veins have at least some sulfides like
pyrite present.

Also as the waters cool, things like quartz and sulfides become less soluble and they come out
of solution to form veins. The most common conduits for these solutions are natural fault zones;
this is why most veins are shaped like fault zones, a long and narrow plane. This is the process
that forms nearly all gold-quartz veins. Veins also commonly form at the meeting of two
different rock types, also for the reason that on the contact where the two rock types meet is a
zone where water circulates better than through the solid rock itself. Sometimes a zone of broken
or fractured rock develops with no strong single fault shear, and in that case a series of small
parallel veins may develop. These are known as stockwork zones, and it is not unusual that
coarse gold would form in these situations. Sometimes strong single vein systems will fray out
into a stockwork system at the ends of the vein, or where it crosses into a different rock type. In
some conditions, pipe or plug shaped deposits may form where geologic conditions favor tube
shaped openings.

At times the circulating mineral waters can go though wide zones where a whole area of rock is
porous, and if there is enough solution moving and depositing gold, you might get a big
disseminated deposit, like those mined by open pit here in Nevada. The most common
geochemistry required to dissolve gold involves sulfur, which is why sulfides like pyrite, galena
and arsenopyrite are so commonly associated with gold veins. In most gold bearing veins, the
gold does not form into well-developed crystals. Unlike quartz which often forms good crystals,
gold requires a very specific set of circumstances to grow into good crystal shapes. Few gold
deposits produce good crystal specimens, as most gold forms naturally as irregular masses and
lumps. Many of the irregular masses have a form suggesting that they might have been melted at
one time, but that is virtually never the case. However, where the right conditions are present,
gold can form in a variety of crystal shapes, including dendrites, leaf, deformed octahedrons and
cubes. The placer field at Rye Patch (Majuba) in Nevada is one of the places where the
conditions were right for the growth of crystallized gold. This location has gained a reputation
for some nice looking specimens – the term "chevron" is used to describe the typical shape. Not
all Rye Patch gold has the chevron shape, but the chevron shaped nuggets are fairly common.
The chevrons I think are a combination of the dendrite and the octahedron forms. Some unusual
set of chemistry, temperature and pressure conditions present at Rye Patch led the gold to grow
into these attractive V shaped crystals.

The prospector using a metal detector is primarily interested in coarser gold as larger nuggets
are easier to detect, and of course, more valuable! It turns out that coarse gold most commonly
forms in small veins (for the sake of argument, lets say for our discussion that coarse gold is stuff
a Penney weight or larger). Big veins, with a width and length large enough to be mined
commercially underground, almost always produce small gold - wires, small pieces, etc - even
though they may be fairly rich. Of course, there are a number of exceptions to this rule, but
generally speaking, it is true. So why, in general,does big gold form in small veins, while mostly
only small gold forms in big veins?

Growth of coarse minerals from water solutions requires stable conditions where large crystals
or nuggets can continue to grow over an extended period of time. It takes some time to grow big
gold, so conditions must be fairly stable to allow this to occur. This is pretty much the same for
quartz, tourmaline, mica or gold – and most other minerals that commonly grow from water
solutions. Rapidly changing conditions, including rapid drops in pressure or temperature
generally lead to the formation of fine-grained crystals - the minerals are forced to come out of
solution so fast that large crystals cannot form.

Often, the source of the heat is some sort of cooling magma (lava, still molten or solidified but
still hot). This kind of heat source throws off so much heat energy that the rock may well be
warm to within 100 feet of the surface, even if the source is over 2000 feet down. The
temperature does not drop off suddenly once the solution gets a short distance from the source.
The drop in temperature as you move away from the heat source is gradual, and usually fairly
linear, at least within a few hundred feet of the surface. So the temperature of the rock (and the
water solutions as well) becomes directly related to how far they are from the heat source. The
rate of cooling then becomes a simple function of how fast the fluids move upward.

With that in mind, small feeder veins, and splits off the main vein are kind of the quiet
backwaters for the solutions forming veins. Smaller openings just don't allow as much flow
volume, and the slower flowing solution can take its time to cool and release its mineral load.
The small flows of the small veins move upward slowly and have a chance to take their time to
cool. This results in fairly stable conditions in the growth zone where decreases in temperature
and pressure are such that minerals, including gold, can grow to a good size. These smaller veins
are still spotty in their values, with some parts rich in coarse gold, and other parts low in grade
and nearly barren. Usually these veins are far too small for any commercial underground mining
operations, with widths of up to a few inches and strike lengths of 5 to perhaps 50 feet.

Wide fault zones and other large openings in the rock generally lead to more solution flow, and
greater quantities of quartz, sulfides and gold, which means bigger veins, but also it means more
rapidly changing conditions, which means rapid deposition. This generally leads to growth of
fine grained minerals. In larger openings, the larger flows move quickly upward and the
solutions become over-saturated, so the minerals in solution must drop out quickly, forming fine
grained minerals of small size. In fact, it is common that, where there are large fault zones which
conduct the fluids quickly upward, the waters are still fairly hot when they actually reach the
surface. This often results in the formation of a hot springs. Steamboat Hot Springs, just south of
Reno, is a classic example of this. Most productive hard rock veins are not uniformly rich, but
have rich sections, which are called ore shoots. These are usually oriented down the dip of the
vein, and represent places where rapid changes in pressure or temperature caused the metal
bearing solutions to drop much of their metals content. For the average underground mining
operation, the fact that the mineralization is fine grained is no problem, but the advantage of the
greater volumes of gold deposited is important. Often, even on the occasions when coarse gold is
formed in a larger vein system, it occurs where the vein pinches down or splits out into smaller
veins.

Lets take a look at some field examples. In some districts, small vein openings are all that
occurs. The top of Rich Hill in Arizona is an intensely jointed granite. Hot solutions circulating
through the joint cracks in the granite were all of the "small vein" type. There were no large
faults that allowed larger volumes of fluid to circulate. Erosion over the years concentrated the
coarse gold which grew in these small veins, which in turn produced an extremely rich placer
deposit. In the same way, the placers at Gila City (Dome) in Yuma County Arizona produced
some considerable gold, though no rich veins were found at that location. The Arizona Bureau of
mines came to the conclusion that "many pockety or small low grade veins supplied the gold".
At Gila City, the accumulation of gold from those many small sources resulted in a rich placer.
Still another example would be the placers at Rye Patch (Majuba) in Nevada. The gold is derived
from a series of small quartz veins which occur in shale in a 2 mile wide belt on a pediment east
of the range front along the Majuba mountains. Many of Nevada's mountain ranges have large
fault zones which parallel the mountain ranges at the edge of the range, where the valley meets
the range. The displacement on that fault probably created the heat source which formed the
veins. This range front fault trends north south and little if any gold is found west of the fault
zone in the mountains themselves. The quartz veins in the mineralized zone are not large and
have not been mined as veins underground, as they are just too small. Most have a strike length
of perhaps 15 to 30 feet.

In some districts, fine gold is all there is - and as a result, there are basically no placers formed.
This is the main reason why some rich hard rock gold districts don’t have much in the way of
associated placers. The most productive gold vein district in Nevada (not including the Carlin
type deposits) was Goldfield. This District was discovered about 1903, and produced nearly five
million ounces of gold, much of it from extremely high grade ores. The smallest veins were
several feet wide, but the largest were more than 30 feet wide and stretched to thousands of feet
in length. In spite of the high grade ores found there, no significant placers were associated with
the Goldfield deposits and all the gold in the veins was very fine grained. The hot fluids
circulated through pre-existing faults which provided large openings for the waters to circulate
quickly through. The Jarbidge District in Elko county, Nevada is another example from Nevada
of a district with good gold veins, but only fine gold and little or no placer. So when planning a
trip to detect around old hard rock mines, be sure to find out, not just if the gold found was "free
gold", but just how coarse the gold from that district was.

In some districts both large and small veins occur. At Randsburg in southern California, rich
veins were mined underground yielding over one million ounces of gold. These veins are located
in and around the town of Randsburg, though a few of the vein deposits trended off to the south
of town. Mineralization in and around two of the largest vein systems (the Yellow Aster and
Baltic) have been mined as an open pit deposit in recent years. The placers, which yield gold
coarser than what was found in the veins, are for the most part located on the pediment north of
town - away from the productive larger veins. The Kofa placers of Yuma County; contain both
larger veins which were mined underground and smaller veins which produced coarse gold.
USGS Bulletin 620 says the following about the coarse gold found in these placers: "It has
evidently been derived from the disintegration of auriferous veins in the metamorphic rocks as it
is much coarser than the gold contained in the North Star and King of Arizona veins". The North
Star and King of Arizona veins were two larger veins which were mined underground. The
Vulture placers of Maricopa County, Arizona also fall into this category. The Arizona Bureau of
mines states in Bulletin 168 that "The origin of the placer gold, in Red Top basin at least, appears
to have been the small quartz veins in that vicinity. The gold of these veins, like that of the
adjacent placers, appears to be coarser than that of the Vulture vein".

The tendency for coarse gold to form in smaller veins is not a hard and fast rule and there are
some large veins which have produced very coarse gold (like the 16 to 1 mine in the Allegheny
District of California). However, big gold in small veins is by far the most common scenario for
the formation of coarse gold. So it is true in general - just allowing for a few exceptions here and
there.

It is a fact that many of the well-known placer districts of the western US have as their source
of gold small veins which contain sparse pockets of coarse gold. This is the main reason why
many rich placer districts have seen little or no hard rock mining, because these small veins were
difficult for old timers to find and work profitably. While this was frustrating to old time miners
hoping for a few larger lode deposits, it presents a big opportunity to the modern prospector
armed with a metal detector. Unlike the old timers, we are able to cover large areas checking for
residual placers quickly and when found, work them efficiently. The hills and slopes above the
gullies and washes in these districts are excellent targets for the detector, as some of these small
veins have formed residual placer deposits which are still sitting on the hill slopes, lying under a
thin veneer of soil and clay - just waiting to be found.