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California Gold Panning
17712 Harvard Mine Road Jamestown, CA 95327 "Nugget Nick" Prebalick (209) 213-9719 [email protected] |
Hours
Year-round / 9:00am – 4:00pm OPEN 365/ By appointment RAIN OR SHINE ~ WE WILL BE OPEN! Please call or text for same-day booking availability. |
Meet our Gold panning experts!
History of Prebalick Miners
Nugget Nick (on the left), Nate (middle) and Prospector Terry (on the right)
Terry moved to California from Minnesota in 1979 while he was working for a newspaper running a printing press. His love language called him to the gold country. During his lunch breaks he’d wander through downtown Sonora and look at the running creek. One day he saw an old-timer panning in the creek and watched him pull a gold nugget out of the Sonora Creek. Terry was flabbergasted and felt the ‘fever’ starting to rise in him. Having always been interested in geology, mining and had been drawn to walking the creeks, rivers, woods and mountains of our fair county became his life. He studied the history of the gold mine, mineralogy and became a local expert in where to still find good gold. From that day ‘til today, he worked on and around mining, read and explored the nooks and crannies around Tuolumne county, and dedicated his life to prospecting and mining.
Prospector Terry’s son, Nugget Nick grew up going with his dad mining every break, summer and free moment possible with his dad. Mining and the outdoors is where Nugget Nick thrives while teaching adults and kids the history of the gold rush and mineralogy of gold. California’s geology has been his life’s calling. Being outdoors, the sounds of the creek, the frogs, the wind in the leaves, skipping rocks all are part of his soul, and he passes this love on through the tours he provides.
Teaching and sharing prospecting technique and stories runs in the family, and now a third generation is in town. Having watched his dad and grandpa, and grown up around, “Nuggets, Pickers, Flakes and Dust,” has led Nathanial (Nate) to work the claim with his dad. This has allowed Nate to show his passion and train the hundreds of students, eco-tourists, and families that come to California Gold Panning each year.
Prospector Terry’s son, Nugget Nick grew up going with his dad mining every break, summer and free moment possible with his dad. Mining and the outdoors is where Nugget Nick thrives while teaching adults and kids the history of the gold rush and mineralogy of gold. California’s geology has been his life’s calling. Being outdoors, the sounds of the creek, the frogs, the wind in the leaves, skipping rocks all are part of his soul, and he passes this love on through the tours he provides.
Teaching and sharing prospecting technique and stories runs in the family, and now a third generation is in town. Having watched his dad and grandpa, and grown up around, “Nuggets, Pickers, Flakes and Dust,” has led Nathanial (Nate) to work the claim with his dad. This has allowed Nate to show his passion and train the hundreds of students, eco-tourists, and families that come to California Gold Panning each year.
Golden TESTIMONIALS From our miners
This was a fantastic adventure which required no previous experience. The guys and girl, and of course, Tank the pup were all pleasant and helpful and wanted us to find gold. And we did, which was so very exciting. One in our group was celebrating a birthday, and the guys presented her with a card and her own gold panning pan. We will talk about this for a long time!
You will get wet, at least up to your knees, and a large brim hat will keep the sun off your neck. You will get to use a shovel, carry buckets, and learn how to sluice and pan and find gold at the end of the process. Do not hesitate, plan on this adventure soon. 5/5. (Bonnie A) April 2024
Fantastic experience for the whole family. We visited the place as a family of 7 (3 generations) we had a completely fantastic day together with a dedicated Guide, a guide who showed and told everything worth knowing about the area, how to read nature in relation to assessing the chance of gold finds and of course the noble art of gold panning. Our guide was truly dedicated in an immersive way and exceeded all expectations…5 out of 5 deserved stars for a thoroughly fantastic experience and a super fantastic guide 🤩 5/5. (Jacob D) March 2023
Great time, the kids just loved Nate and had a great day in the sunshine. They even left their phone in the car. 5/5. (Jamie L) Jan 2023
What an amazing time. Nick and his wife met me and then James gently helped my kids come out of their shell. Very patient and kind and we panned and sluiced and gold was found. My son can't wait to come back. Do not hesitate to book with them, we can't wait to go back.... service and hospitality like that is rarely found these days. 5/5 (Shawn X -October 2022)
We had a fun time digging for gold and found some! Nate was a great guide and definitely showed us how it’s done. Great for getting the kids off the phones for a few hours. 5/5. (Nathan Lawrence -Sept 2021 )
Had lots of fun as a family. Found some gold flakes. Tip for everyone who does this don’t wear white it will get dirty. Our guide was very friendly and knowledgeable. 5/5. (Jo Sat -August 2021 )
Fun family adventure in a beautiful place by the stream with great professional help from our knowledgeable guide. We learned a lot, struck gold!!!, found some crayfish in the stream and had excellent time! 5/5 (Dominik Behr, 2021)
On Friday, August 2, 2019, my brother, my husband, my mother, and I arrived at the site for “California Gold Panning”. The owners, Nick and his father, were very nice and helpful as my brother, my husband and I learned a lot about the process of digging, sifting, and sluicing. Nick taught me how to pan. Thank you for teaching us! It was a lot of fun! We hope to come back someday! (Diane Jones, 2019)
My family and I went panning and had a blast. If you want the real deal, getting dirty and wet, maybe some blisters on your hands from shoveling material- he's your guy. We found gold today much to my girls delight! Gary took time and coached them each in what to do. It was down home and personal. 5 stars (Tamara McCartney, 2017)
YOur Adventure made easier
CA Gold Panning-in the News
The surprising effect of California’s storms on gold seekers
--Nate Prebalick sifts through sediment while looking for gold. He belongs to the third generation of gold panners in his family business.
Juliana Yamada/The Chronicle
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--Nick Prebalick shows a vial of gold. Prebalick, also known as “Nugget Nick,” is the second generation of gold panners in his family. Juliana Yamada/The Chronicle
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--A sluice box sits in a creek in Jamestown (Tuolumne County).
The device catches gold at the top as the water flows. Juliana Yamada/The Chronicle
January’s storms flushed new sediment down Sierra rivers — and some gold panners are reaping the benefits. Claire Hao Feb. 11, 2023Updated: Feb. 18, 2023 11:04 p.m.
Two yellow specks, each barely half the size of a pinky nail, stood out amid the rest of the river sediment in Terry Prebalick’s green pan.
Gold — about $100 of it, he estimated. By the end of the hour, he had found another $200. It was a sunny day in Jamestown (Tuolumne County), some of the best weather in a while, noted “Nugget” Nick Prebalick, Terry’s son. But the recent bad weather had also been a boon: The January storms had hastened mountain and river erosion, washing more than usual amounts of gold from hard-to-reach crannies under the earth into the Prebalick family’s corner of California.
“The only people who like big floods are gold miners,” family patriarch Terry Prebalick, who has been looking for gold since the 1970s, said with a chuckle.
Ankle-deep in Woods Creek, grandpa, dad and son waded through with the same tools as the original Forty-Niners — many of them plastic instead of tin or iron — scooping dirt into buckets, shoveling sediment over sluice boxes and searching for the precious metal. Nate Prebalick, Nick’s son and Terry’s grandson, lifted his pan, showing off specks of gold that looked like a hearty sprinkling of ground pepper flakes. It was about four to five times the amount he usually finds, Nate said.
The storms did “months of work” for the family, ripping open channels of dirt along the creek that the three would’ve otherwise had to dig, Nick Prebalick said. Nate Prebalick pointed to a crevice that he was excavating. The rust and layers of clay atop the bedrock meant that humans hadn’t touched this bit of earth in a long time, if ever — all the better for his chances of finding gold, Nate said.
Gold is the heaviest material in the river, Nate Prebalick said, about 19 times heavier than water. The Prebalicks use this and gravity to their advantage, gradually sifting lighter material out of the pan until only gold and other heavy sediments are left. The team also shovels dirt into a sluice box to speed up the process: using the natural rush of the creek to sift the lighter material off the top, as gold sinks to the ridges along the bottom.
Finding gold takes a combination of skill, knowledge of geology and the creek bed and just plain luck, Nate Prebalick said.
“Some days you’re eating top lobster, some days you’re eating top ramen,” he said.
To pad their gold-finding income, the family runs California Gold Panning, a business that offers gold panning tours starting at $120. Other outfits in the Sierra Nevada also offer tours, like Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, where gold was discovered by James Marshall in 1848.
Since word of Marshall’s find first spread, the search for gold in California has never really stopped.
Some big mining companies took it up after the initial Forty-Niners with their gold pans, but heavy-duty hydraulic mining — a method of blasting high-pressure water onto a cliff face to wash away chunks of rock in the hopes of finding gold — was banned in the Sierra Nevada in 1884. Interest in panning for gold in rivers dropped until the Great Depression, according to Gold Rush historian Gage McKinney. During the Depression, California sponsored classes to train amateurs on how to make a living panning for gold, with classes taught at the Ferry Building, McKinney said.
Gold mines started closing as the economy shifted to World War II wartime production, and as inflation made gold less profitable in the late 1940s and 1950s, McKinney said.
The Gold Rush means something a little different to every generation of Californians, McKinney said.
“For a long time, it was the story of the pioneers making new homes and making a new industrial state in California,” McKinney said. “More recently, people look back at the Gold Rush as a nightmare. It’s a nightmare of environmental degradation and abuse of indigenous people and exploitation of workers.”
Interest in finding gold continues, despite the myriad environmental and human concerns that have accompanied the search over the years, starting with mercury contamination, the mistreatment of Chinese workers and violence toward and dispossession of Indigenous peoples during the original Gold Rush. Today, approximately 47,000 mines remain abandoned across the state, with concerns of degraded water quality for nearby localities. “It's not possible to say how much gold is still left in California,” Don Drysdale, a spokesperson with the California Department of Conservation, said in an email. “The state’s geology is too complex. However, there is enough gold remaining that commercial mines are actively producing it.”
That includes in Grass Valley, where McKinney and his family live. Nevada-based Rise Gold Corp. is trying to reopen the Idaho-Maryland Mine in Grass Valley, though many residents are opposed, fearing negative environmental impacts. “If you drive around my neighborhood, you see yard signs all over the place that say ‘No mine,’ ” McKinney said. Jarryd Gonzales, a spokesperson for the mining company, said that reopening the mine “has always been about more than creating hundreds of good-paying jobs, increasing fire safety, and boosting the local economy — it is about building an environmentally conscious state-of-the-art mine worthy of its community.” Meanwhile at Woods Creek, most of the California Gold Panning team packed up around mid-afternoon, satisfied with their findings for the day. “The other guys are up here complaining that you got the most amount of gold for the least amount of work,” Terry’s wife ribbed.
Two yellow specks, each barely half the size of a pinky nail, stood out amid the rest of the river sediment in Terry Prebalick’s green pan.
Gold — about $100 of it, he estimated. By the end of the hour, he had found another $200. It was a sunny day in Jamestown (Tuolumne County), some of the best weather in a while, noted “Nugget” Nick Prebalick, Terry’s son. But the recent bad weather had also been a boon: The January storms had hastened mountain and river erosion, washing more than usual amounts of gold from hard-to-reach crannies under the earth into the Prebalick family’s corner of California.
“The only people who like big floods are gold miners,” family patriarch Terry Prebalick, who has been looking for gold since the 1970s, said with a chuckle.
Ankle-deep in Woods Creek, grandpa, dad and son waded through with the same tools as the original Forty-Niners — many of them plastic instead of tin or iron — scooping dirt into buckets, shoveling sediment over sluice boxes and searching for the precious metal. Nate Prebalick, Nick’s son and Terry’s grandson, lifted his pan, showing off specks of gold that looked like a hearty sprinkling of ground pepper flakes. It was about four to five times the amount he usually finds, Nate said.
The storms did “months of work” for the family, ripping open channels of dirt along the creek that the three would’ve otherwise had to dig, Nick Prebalick said. Nate Prebalick pointed to a crevice that he was excavating. The rust and layers of clay atop the bedrock meant that humans hadn’t touched this bit of earth in a long time, if ever — all the better for his chances of finding gold, Nate said.
Gold is the heaviest material in the river, Nate Prebalick said, about 19 times heavier than water. The Prebalicks use this and gravity to their advantage, gradually sifting lighter material out of the pan until only gold and other heavy sediments are left. The team also shovels dirt into a sluice box to speed up the process: using the natural rush of the creek to sift the lighter material off the top, as gold sinks to the ridges along the bottom.
Finding gold takes a combination of skill, knowledge of geology and the creek bed and just plain luck, Nate Prebalick said.
“Some days you’re eating top lobster, some days you’re eating top ramen,” he said.
To pad their gold-finding income, the family runs California Gold Panning, a business that offers gold panning tours starting at $120. Other outfits in the Sierra Nevada also offer tours, like Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, where gold was discovered by James Marshall in 1848.
Since word of Marshall’s find first spread, the search for gold in California has never really stopped.
Some big mining companies took it up after the initial Forty-Niners with their gold pans, but heavy-duty hydraulic mining — a method of blasting high-pressure water onto a cliff face to wash away chunks of rock in the hopes of finding gold — was banned in the Sierra Nevada in 1884. Interest in panning for gold in rivers dropped until the Great Depression, according to Gold Rush historian Gage McKinney. During the Depression, California sponsored classes to train amateurs on how to make a living panning for gold, with classes taught at the Ferry Building, McKinney said.
Gold mines started closing as the economy shifted to World War II wartime production, and as inflation made gold less profitable in the late 1940s and 1950s, McKinney said.
The Gold Rush means something a little different to every generation of Californians, McKinney said.
“For a long time, it was the story of the pioneers making new homes and making a new industrial state in California,” McKinney said. “More recently, people look back at the Gold Rush as a nightmare. It’s a nightmare of environmental degradation and abuse of indigenous people and exploitation of workers.”
Interest in finding gold continues, despite the myriad environmental and human concerns that have accompanied the search over the years, starting with mercury contamination, the mistreatment of Chinese workers and violence toward and dispossession of Indigenous peoples during the original Gold Rush. Today, approximately 47,000 mines remain abandoned across the state, with concerns of degraded water quality for nearby localities. “It's not possible to say how much gold is still left in California,” Don Drysdale, a spokesperson with the California Department of Conservation, said in an email. “The state’s geology is too complex. However, there is enough gold remaining that commercial mines are actively producing it.”
That includes in Grass Valley, where McKinney and his family live. Nevada-based Rise Gold Corp. is trying to reopen the Idaho-Maryland Mine in Grass Valley, though many residents are opposed, fearing negative environmental impacts. “If you drive around my neighborhood, you see yard signs all over the place that say ‘No mine,’ ” McKinney said. Jarryd Gonzales, a spokesperson for the mining company, said that reopening the mine “has always been about more than creating hundreds of good-paying jobs, increasing fire safety, and boosting the local economy — it is about building an environmentally conscious state-of-the-art mine worthy of its community.” Meanwhile at Woods Creek, most of the California Gold Panning team packed up around mid-afternoon, satisfied with their findings for the day. “The other guys are up here complaining that you got the most amount of gold for the least amount of work,” Terry’s wife ribbed.
--James Holman pours water into a gold sluice at California Gold Panning in Jamestown (El Dorado County). Holman is spending his second season at the business, which is family-owned. Juliana Yamada/The Chronicle
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--Chaney Rivera (left), Terry Prebalick and James Holman of California Gold Panning are in position to hunt for gold.
Juliana Yamada/The Chronicle
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More than 150 years later the hunt for gold is still on in NorCal. Winter storms bring a new fever
11:58 AM PST FEB 8, 2023~JASON MARKS
SACRAMENTO, Calif. --The recent heavy rains in the Sacramento Valley created flooding in many of the streams and rivers. It also pushed gold from the mountains down into the valley, leading to a bit of a gold rush. Nestled along the south fork of the American River is a place where the name speaks for itself. Marshall Gold Discovery State Park in Coloma is a spot rich in history. The first nugget was discovered there in 1848. More than 150 years later, that fever is still being felt.
Ed Allen is the park's historian. He said he's "always looking" for gold. At 75 years old, he’s still giving tours to those who want to learn more about the gold rush. He’s amassed a wealth of knowledge when it comes to that precious metal so many continue to try and unearth. “We just had a flood here last month and that brought down gold," Allen said, sitting next to the American River. “People are still looking for gold. We've only found 10-15% of the gold in California."
At Wood's Creek in Jamestown, the hunt is on for that other 85%.
"This is the good stuff, and the best stuff will be in this box at the end of the day," Nick “Nugget” Prebalick said.
His family is leasing a 500-yard claim along the creek where they can search for gold. "I've found quite a few nuggets,” Prebalick said. Every day, Prebalick, his son Nate and his dad Terry are out prospecting. "It's pretty easy to get hooked,” Prebalick said. “This is like the best office ever." The family is using the same equipment used centuries ago. The only difference now is that metal pans have been replaced by plastic. The Prebalicks aren't just looking for pay dirt. They spend days running their business, California Gold Panning, which teaches people like 24-year-old Ashley Hardy how to pan.
"It's kind of a cool experience to do that they were doing back then," Hardy said. "I see a good 10 pieces in there right now."
There is a huge nugget of a difference between when the 49ers first got on the scene and now. The price of gold in 1850 was $20 an ounce. Nowadays one ounce is worth a little more than $1,900.
"After you've been digging all day, you fill up 10-20 buckets and then it all comes down to that pan to see what's in there," Prebalick said. State law doesn't allow miners to use big machinery, so fate is left up to good old-fashioned elbow grease.
"The more earth you move the more gold you'll probably get,” employee James Holman said. “If you don't move any earth, you don't get any gold." A successful day for Holman and the Prebalicks is a pennyweight of gold or 1.5 grams worth about $80. "They didn't get all the gold and we are still on it,” Holman added.
Most of that 85% left is deep under the earth's surface. Allen said it is too expensive to be dug up, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t gold out there. Several years ago, a miner found a six-pound nugget in Butte County.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. --The recent heavy rains in the Sacramento Valley created flooding in many of the streams and rivers. It also pushed gold from the mountains down into the valley, leading to a bit of a gold rush. Nestled along the south fork of the American River is a place where the name speaks for itself. Marshall Gold Discovery State Park in Coloma is a spot rich in history. The first nugget was discovered there in 1848. More than 150 years later, that fever is still being felt.
Ed Allen is the park's historian. He said he's "always looking" for gold. At 75 years old, he’s still giving tours to those who want to learn more about the gold rush. He’s amassed a wealth of knowledge when it comes to that precious metal so many continue to try and unearth. “We just had a flood here last month and that brought down gold," Allen said, sitting next to the American River. “People are still looking for gold. We've only found 10-15% of the gold in California."
At Wood's Creek in Jamestown, the hunt is on for that other 85%.
"This is the good stuff, and the best stuff will be in this box at the end of the day," Nick “Nugget” Prebalick said.
His family is leasing a 500-yard claim along the creek where they can search for gold. "I've found quite a few nuggets,” Prebalick said. Every day, Prebalick, his son Nate and his dad Terry are out prospecting. "It's pretty easy to get hooked,” Prebalick said. “This is like the best office ever." The family is using the same equipment used centuries ago. The only difference now is that metal pans have been replaced by plastic. The Prebalicks aren't just looking for pay dirt. They spend days running their business, California Gold Panning, which teaches people like 24-year-old Ashley Hardy how to pan.
"It's kind of a cool experience to do that they were doing back then," Hardy said. "I see a good 10 pieces in there right now."
There is a huge nugget of a difference between when the 49ers first got on the scene and now. The price of gold in 1850 was $20 an ounce. Nowadays one ounce is worth a little more than $1,900.
"After you've been digging all day, you fill up 10-20 buckets and then it all comes down to that pan to see what's in there," Prebalick said. State law doesn't allow miners to use big machinery, so fate is left up to good old-fashioned elbow grease.
"The more earth you move the more gold you'll probably get,” employee James Holman said. “If you don't move any earth, you don't get any gold." A successful day for Holman and the Prebalicks is a pennyweight of gold or 1.5 grams worth about $80. "They didn't get all the gold and we are still on it,” Holman added.
Most of that 85% left is deep under the earth's surface. Allen said it is too expensive to be dug up, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t gold out there. Several years ago, a miner found a six-pound nugget in Butte County.