Equipment


 * __Equipment Used__**

The miners of the gold rush used many different ways and equipment for mining the gold. The main tool for a miner was the gold pan. The miners started to use cradles or rockers that were more productive than panning. Eventually miners started work together and they started to build other equipment such as sluice boxes, and flumes. Flumes are long wooden troughs that used gravity to bring the water down to the site of the mine. A sluice box was a long open wooden trough that got narrow and lower at the end ( BC Archives). To pan for gold, a miner would get down at the edge of a water spot and scoop up a pan full of dirt and water. They then tipped their pan over while swirling everything in the pan around, so that the sand, dirt, and water would all spill out. This would leave in the gold and other rocks, which is heavier than the sand. Typically miners could go through about 5 pans in an hour. Some gold miners went as far as digging tunnels into hillsides or digging coyote holes in order to find gold. Sometimes they even used gold magnets or metal boxes were thought to give off electric shocks when gold was near (Saffer). Once they found these spots they would take a pick or a shovel to tunnel into the ground or hillside. Many cave-ins were common as well. Miners tried anything and everything in search of gold (Saffer).