A California man recently dug a spectacular gold nugget weighing 5.17 ounces in the mother lode region of Mariposa County, California. The gentleman who found it made the discovery of it while using a metal detector to search for gold nuggets in an area previously worked by the 49ers. The prospector valued his incredible chunk of gold at approximately $10,000 due to the beautiful quality of his specimen. The nugget was resting under about a foot of soil and was recovered in late April 2007. Several friends have been working in this area with excellent results and a fair number of valuable finds have been made. Just a few weeks prior to this most recent amazing find, another nugget, over three ounces in weight, was recovered only about 50 feet from where the five-ounce nugget was found. The location is on private property and is not open to the public. Locations containing concentrations of large nuggets like this are known to prospectors as “nugget patches,” and finding them is the goal of prospectors everywhere.

Modern metal detectors are proving to be a great help in recovering large gold nuggets, as prospectors of yore had no tool in their arsenal quite like it. Although it takes special work and skills to find this type of large gold, experienced prospectors in the western US and Australia are having considerable success finding nugget-rich patches missed by 19th century miners of yore. . Recent increases in the price of gold, now sitting at nearly $700 an ounce, have spurred interest by many in taking up the recreational art of gold prospecting, with many still heading to the hills to see what they can find.

Mariposa County is a historic site in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountain range at the southern end of the Mother Lode region of California. The town of Mariposa is a popular tourist attraction, touted as the “gateway to Yosemite Valley.” There are also a number of other popular family-oriented tourist attractions in the area, including the California State Museum of Mining and Minerals. The collection contains mining artifacts, rare specimens of crystalline gold in its many forms, as well as beautiful gem and mineral specimens from California and around the world. This includes the Fricot nugget, a 200-ounce crystalline gold specimen from California, considered one of the most beautiful pieces of natural gold in the world. The city also allows gold mining in Mariposa Creek, which runs through the city.