Willow Creek is a tiny little stream, but it attracts a big crowd when another gold rush hits South Pass City every July.
For two days, Gold Rush Days fills the town with re-enactors, as busy as pioneers once were in 1867, when a real gold rush brought upward of 10,000 people to South Pass City, Atlantic City, Miners Delight, and the surrounding area at the southern base of Wyoming’s Wind River Mountains.
Just as the promise of wealth sparked the gold rush of the 1860s, the lure of panning for gold is still strong today.
Among those filling up the streets last weekend was Platte Bridge Co., which brought 20 people to portray the cavalry, as well as the civilians of that era.
Nic Skalicky, who leads the group, explained that the cavalry would have been patrolling the region at the time, keeping people safe not just from Indians, but also from each other, chasing down would-be robbers and villains whenever necessary.
The Pony Express also comes to demonstrate mail runs out of South Pass City, and blacksmith Charles Prior and his daughter, Samantha, demonstrate what would have been one of the town’s most important professions.
In the background, the sound of “The Entertainer” spills out of a saloon — the same saloon where local legends say that Butch Cassidy once sat, tossing gold coins out into the street for children to race after.
Bottles of ice-cold sarsparilla move by twos and threes over the bar inside — and sometimes even by the dozen — particularly by late afternoon, when the sun is beating everyone down with heat.
Everyone, that is, except the gold panners, who are standing with both feet in a chilly little stream. That does a good job of sucking the heat of the day right out of human bones.
Some of the panners take their shoes off first, but many just wade right in, shoes and all, clutching a pan of literal pay dirt.
The pans only cost $1, and they’re handed over with a huge smile by volunteers, many of whom are part of an organization called Friends of South Pass City.
Friends of South Pass City help put on Gold Rush Days every year to raise money that helps preserve this historic site and all of its rich history.
They’ve helped fund restorations of buildings as well as other projects with bake sales, book sales and root beer sales. It’s all fun with a purpose, and it happens year after year.
Timidity Doesn’t Work
The old timers panning for gold at South Pass City are easy to spot. They know just what to do with their pans of pay dirt.
They’re not nervous at all. They just plunge the whole thing under the water, then start shaking the mud in their pan back and forth vigorously, as if it’s some kind of handheld washing machine.
Newcomers are also easy to spot.
They’re too timid with their pans of dirt. That risks losing the precious gold specks they’re after to the water by failing to properly stratify the mud before they try to wash the useless, tan mud away.
“Don’t worry about splashing it out,” Larry Rohde advised as he demonstrated a technique he called stratification. “You’re not going to lose your gold.”
The vigorous shaking is necessary to get all of the cement-like sludge on the bottom moving, he explained. That has to get good and agitated.
That way, the lighter materials will shift to the top — the sandy tan solids Rohde calls “the blondes” — and the heavier black sand and gold will shift to the bottom.
Only once Rohde feels that all the heavy stuff is on bottom does he finally stop shaking the pan side to side and switch to front and back.
“You have to tilt it down more,” Rohde advised, demonstrating with his own pan, tilting it down at what felt like an alarmingly steep angle into the river.
Let Your Pans Rust
Rohde was one of several members of Wyoming Prospectors Association, and he’s at South Pass City every year to help newcomers learn to pan for gold, as well as encouraging them to check out the prospecting club.
“If you go to one of their meetings, they will show you everything you need to know about panning or high banking or river sluicing,” he said. “Everyone helps each other out. It’s like a family.”
Rohde has been panning for gold a long time.
He bought his first gold pan in South Pass City 50 years ago, a metal pan with no ridges. It was tricky to manage. And, like many beginners, he started out keeping the pan smooth and shiny, not allowing it to rust.
“That’s a mistake,” he said. “The rust actually helps keep the black sand and gold in the pan.”
Not long after realizing that, he found an even better pan with large ridges. He calls it the “Gold Trap.” It’s his favorite now, even though he still has that first pan he bought in South Pass City.
Rohde has other tools he uses to find gold in Wyoming. An old-fashioned, hand-turned cream separator, for example.
“It’s perfect,” he said. “You scoop the dirt into it and shake it. Anything smaller than a quarter inch falls through, and then the big rocks, you can throw them out. It speeds things up a little bit.”
Rohde has been rock- and gold-hunting all over Wyoming, starting from the time he was a small child with his parents. Among the first finds he remembers was a piece of Sweetwater agate near Jeffrey City.
Later as an adult, he took his own daughter all over Wyoming panning for gold and looking for things like jade and petrified wood.
But it wasn’t all about finding gold or semi-precious stones. It was about the scenery, too, as well as being outdoors and having adventures with family and friends making memories.
Like the time they were driving along Interstate 80.
His daughter, Leahh, had fallen asleep, but as soon as Rohde could see mountains off in the distance, he nudged her awake, knowing she’d want to see them.
“To this day, that’s one of her fondest memories,” he said. “Me waking her up so she could see the mountains.”
Patience And Recklessness Are What Works
Panning for gold the first time feels like a curious blend of rigid patience mixed in with a generous swirl of unflinching recklessness. Focused attention is required at all times to know which to apply when.
“As soon as you see the black sand, then you have to stop and restratify,” Rohde said. “Otherwise, you could lose some of your gold.”
Toward the end of the process, Rohde stopped using the ridged side of his pan. The ridges were trapping some of the larger blonde grains that he wanted to eliminate.
“I wouldn’t advise that for beginners,” he added. “It’d be easy to lose your gold at this point.”
In the hands of the skilled, though, Rohde’s ridge-free technique was fast, eliminating all the unwanted material with just a few flicks of the wrist, leaving a pure, thick slurry of glittery black sand. The good stuff.
Rohde carefully swirled the pan around, spreading the slurry out a little at a time.
“There, you see?” he said, smiling. “Gold! Here, here, here and here, here and here.”
Six little gold flecks glint in the sun.
But so, too, do the black sand and garnets. That made it easier to see the gold specks in the shadows rather than in the light. True gold keeps its luster, even in the shadows.
Gingerly, each tiny speck of gold was lifted from the pan with a dry finger, then placed carefully on top of a vial completely full of water.
The gold instantly disappears once picked up on the finger and can’t be seen at all. But have faith. It will stick to a dry finger with no problem, only turning loose once it hits the water in the vial.
From there, the gold slowly sinks to the bottom.
Once all the gold and garnets are lifted out, the vial is closed up tightly.
A black piece of tape on one side of the vial makes it easier to see the newly found gold in the bottle, while the water acts as a little magnifying glass, making the grains appear slightly larger than they really are.
Other Tricks Of The Trade
Rohde doesn’t bother picking up gold flecks with his finger anymore. He has what he calls a “snuffer bottle” to suck up the gold flecks, along with the surrounding black sand.
“There might be even smaller pieces of gold that you can’t see,” he said.
In fact, not all of the “black sand” is necessarily hematite or magnetite, he added. Sometimes it’s oxidized gold.
“It’s still gold inside,” he said. “So, you don’t want to throw it away. A 3-pound coffee can full of that stuff might be worth a couple thousand.”
One way to get rid of the oxide coating that hidden gold is to heat it up in a bone ash cup in a furnace.
“The gold forms a little button in the bottom,” he said. “And the oxides are absorbed by the cup.”
Once cooled, the button is easily removed, which will contain metals like gold, silver, platinum or nickel.
“The gold around here is like 85% pure gold,” he said. “There’s 15% probably that’s silver.”
Those were enough secrets to tell for one day, Rohde joked.
“I can’t tell you all my secrets in one day,” he said, shrugging.
Those who want to learn more secrets will just have to show up for next Gold Rush Days, when Rohde will be no doubt be there with his fellow Wyoming Prospector Association members, helping a new group of gold rushers learn how to pan for it the old-fashioned way.
Renée Jean can be reached at renee@cowboystatedaily.com.