where to get a small dredge in the denver area

Generally, the creeks feeding into the South Platte carry gold and are controlled by local authorities who DO allow manual prospecting.

Many of these creeks are gold bearing and are virgin dirt due to being too small to have ever attracted commercial attention. This is exciting since there’s been a dramatic increase in available placers for prospectors to explore. As private ranches were converted over to housing developments in recent decades, the waterways went from being unaccessible private property to highly accessible public property. – Most waterways in South metro Denver (north Douglas county, western Arapahoe county and Denver county itself) are owned by parks and rec districts or stormwater management districts who have chosen to allow, or ignore, casual recreational prospecting, treating it as rock hounding. Then you contact the owner to ask permission, or just review their website to confirm rules of use. The assessor website will hopefully (usually) have an interactive map you can use to spot your spot and see who owns it. Instead, once you find a spot you’d like to dig, go to the local county assessor website to find the parcel of land there.

No worries about the BLM, National Forest Service or checking on prior mining claims at the county clerk office. While the tools of prospecting are the same (shovel, pan and sluice, maybe an electric highbanker like the Gold Cube), the process of finding a spot to dig is vastly different. Digging in the city means participating in recreational gold prospecting as a guest of a local government, parks & rec district or similar organization.

Where to get a small dredge in the denver area