Diggings, gold workings, alluvial diggings, and alluvial workings all refer to areas where alluvial mining has occurred. It is often marked on maps by dotted areas. This includes surfacing, creek workings, and sinking shafts to reach buried leads. Men typically worked these alluvial areas alone, […]
Category: How to read gold maps
Deep Leads
You may notice leads or deep leads marked on historical goldfields maps. Gold which has broken away from its original location in a reef gets washed away over time by water and gravity, and is eventually deposited into creeks and rivers. Many ancient gold-bearing creeks […]
Quartz Reefs
Quartz reefs are veins of quartz in the ground, sometimes gold-bearing. These can be marked on maps as reef, line of reef, quartz, quartz reef, and auriferous quartz reef. Auriferous means that the reef contains gold – but not all gold bearing reefs are marked […]