They Seldom Get Rich

Harry Murray smiles beatifically, slosh-ing around a pool in Big Bug Creek, bib overalls soaked to the waist and shoes full of muddy sand. He has reason to smile: on this glorious noon in the Bradshaw Moun-tains he's just found his third gold nugget."

This is like Las Vegas," he chortles, "you never know what'll turn up."

Murray, a member of the Roadrunner Prospectors' Club, is on one of the organi-zation's monthly weekend camp-outs. This day they work two claims the club owns on the Big Bug, a few miles upstream from Mayer, Arizona, and a short way down-stream from the colorful old Poland Junc-tion tunnel. The tunnel saw millions of dollars worth of gold and silver pass through in ore cars back in the heyday of mining in the Bradshaws.

One of the better-equipped gold hun-ters, Murray works one of the deep pools that fill up along the Big Bug during summer rains. Except for rubber waders, he has everything he needs, from tiny vials to hold his nuggets to a floating dredge with a suction hose powered by a small gasoline engine.

Not everybody plunges into gold pros-pecting with a mechanical dredge. A goodly number of Roadrunners content themselves with just the pick, shovel, pan. And, just in case, a small vial or two.

Gold panners seem to fall into styles something like deer hunters. There are the drivers like Murray, who churn up the pools with mechanized equipment; the stalkers, who move slowly from place to place; and the still hunters, who more or less settle in at one location, patiently scooping up sand and water and swirling it in their pans.

Luck plays a big part in the search for gold, but skill and knowledge separate the men from the boys. This is where organizations like the Roadrunners come in. Most hold classes for new members in where to look for gold, (The best places to find stream-borne gold are the inside curve of the waterway, in crevices, in grass and tree roots, and atop bedrock.) how to stake a claim, read maps, test ore, and operate equipment.

About ninety-eight percent of the gold extracted by prospectors comes in the form of dust finer than thirty mesh, (ninety holes per square inch), according to Charlie Brown, manager of the Gold Prospecting Shack in Phoenix.

While the Roadrunner Club doesn't hold classes per se, it does have illustrated lectures from time to time. Brown said, "We have people panning on the stream-older hands, who come around and help people who have trouble with panning. A kind of one-on-one situation."

They Seldom Get Rich BY DENNIS B. FARRELL

Frank and Carol Lynn, operators of A&B Prospecting and Mining Equipment, Inc., in Mesa, do conduct prospecting classes. "But,"said Carol Lynn, "people learn to pan by themselves. No two people pan alike."

Thirteen prospectors' clubs function in Arizona and some, such as the Roadrunner and the Lost Dutchman Mining Association, own claims which members can work. Roadrunner, the largest of the clubs, operates six claims in Maricopa and Yavapai counties. Lost Dutchman, the most expensive to join, bought and restored the entire ghost town of Stanton, west of Wickenburg, and has claims on Antelope Creek besides.

Memberships range from seven dollars in the Arizona Prospectors' Association, Inc., to 5000 dollars for a life membership in the Lost Dutchman. A life membershipin the Roadrunner club is $777.50. Both have budget plans and carry the balance with no interest charges.

The Lost Dutchman group stages gold shows at Christmas and Easter at Stanton, where visitors also get to see a real mining town of the Old West. The Gold Panning Association of America, an organization comparable to the Lost Dutchman, produces an exposition each year in January in Mesa.

Five years ago, when gold jumped to more than $900 per ounce in the world market, interest in gold panning rose to fever pitch. Now leveled off, it remains steady.

"In 1980," said Carol Lynn, "we had so much business we had to order products three months in advance to keep merchandise in stock. At first, they bought us out to the walls."

A&B, like the Gold Prospecting Shack and several other miners' supply firms in Central Arizona, sells everything a prospector needs, from the little twenty-five-cent vials for nuggets to gasoline-powered dredgers and rockers costing upwards of 5000 dollars to mining literature, claims forms, and dozens of books and periodi-cals to tantalize newcomers.

Brown and the Lynns say Arizona is possibly the best state in the West for gold hunters. "You can go into just about any stream up there (in the Bradshaws) and get gold," said Brown. "You can find it from Prescott south to Lake Pleasant on Big Bug Creek and the Agua Fria River and from the Congress-Wickenburg area east to Interstate 17 in the Hassayampa River and all its nearly 100 tributaries."

Frank Lynn said he has never come back empty-handed from prospecting in Arizona.

Apparently nobody in the gold panning associations expects to get rich from their efforts or at least wouldn't admit it-and that is just as well. The U. S. Geological Survey says the odds of a gold hunter making a strike of any significance is "fewer than one in every thousand."