I just finished reading a great book called "A Gold Hunter's Experience". It was written by Chalkley J. Hambleton in 1898.
The book is free and you can find a copy here: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/29335
This is a story about the Colorado Gold Rush at Pike's Peak. Gold was found in the American Rocky Mountains in the 1850s and various claims were being stakes and dug up. First, it was in Sacramento and California in 1849, then various other places.
In this book, the story takes place in 1860. Gold had been found at Pike's Peak a year earlier. You can read about the real event here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pike%27s_Peak_Gold_Rush
Mining was hard work back then, it still is.... Picture from here
The author got together with a few business partners and formed an expedition to go and mine gold. They had a large team and a lot of investors. They were going to build a small mill. Actually, there were nuggets to be found, but most of the gold had to be dug out of the ground and then the ore had to be processed. So the real money was in running a mill and that's what they intended to do.
Unlike just panning for gold, running a mill requires a lot more equipment. Not only do you need the tools of the panner, but you also need the tools of the miners and milling equipment. You need to set up a structure like a sawmill, but instead of cutting trees, you smash rocks. In any case, it's not basic equipment.
Basically, the mill would drive hammers to smash the gold ore into gravel and then dust, then it would be run over a mesh and a blanket. After the most promising dust would be mixed with mercury. Then, the mercury would be boiled away and the gold would be left. Actually, this is how gold is still mined today illegally in the jungles in poor countries. It's dirty and relatively cheap to do compared to a modern operation. However, there are serious environmental side effects. The book never got into that. To be honest, I don't think they cared back then. Thank god things have changed.
Anyway, in the story, they didn't just drive to Pike's Peak, it was the 1860s. There was a train to Denver which is close to Pikes, Peak, but actually, they couldn't even take the train there with the equipment, so they started several hundred miles away and spent most of the summer walking there with wagon trains and a huge team. The smart people just met them in Denver. Then it was 100 or so miles into the mountains for everyone else to find a good place to set up the operation.
By the time they chose a nice place and set up shop, it was almost winter. There was no water so they couldn't run the mill. They decided to just mine gold instead. After a few feet, you don't have to worry about the hard frozen ground, so no worries. They bought some stakes and had a go.
Actually, by the time it was winter most of their workers ran off. They didn't need many workers at that point, so it was no problem. The workers were better off mining richer stakes in hard to reach places where a mill would be impractical or just panning for nuggets. In any case, the situation didn't look good.
The project was a failure overall and it died within a year. But they did move around and learn a lot. I liked the no regrets attitude. If you don't mine for gold you won't find any. Bottom line is they tried.
Here is a Youtube link of someone else reading the book:
I recommend this book, you can learn a lot.
