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What I Learned at Yukon Dan
by Elena Hoath - grade 5
Here are a few places on Vancouver Island that you can go gold panning China Creek, Leech Town and Zebellos. Did you know that Leech Town is an hour bike ride from Sooke where I live? Fools gold is also called pyrite. If gold isn’t found in dry moss then you shouldn’t keep on looking in that place. Gold is nineteen times heavier then water. The biggest gold nugget found was worth over twenty million dollars. The people sold the nugget Now I’ll tell you how he taught us to pan for goldto a bank and they made it into gold bars. Gold panners in the olden days used a little bag called a poke , when they found gold they buried it often beside a landmark. When you’re gold panning never put your hand in the water because gold floats. If it makes contact with the oil from your hands. When you get a new metal pan for panning, you burn it. That’s called bluing. After that you make sure that it gets really rusty, because gold sticks to rust.
Now I’ll tell you how he taught us to pan for gold. First you get your pan ,then scoop up the pay dirt. Make sure that you have plenty of water in your pan. Once you’ve done that swish the pay dirt up and down and to and fro, till the gold’s at the bottom of the pan. Then you tip the pan on an angle and wash out a few layers and repeat that a few times. When you see the gold, swish the gold around in circular motions. Then you’ll have your gold in front of you.
The next activity he showed us was really cool. We had a magnifying glass ,a pan , a handful of rocks called magnetite , fools gold , garnet and gold. We also used a magnet. The magnetite covered the other minerals.We got our magnet and put it on top of the magnetite. It stuck onto the magnet and we brushed it off onto the other side of the pan, till all the magnetite was on the other side. This uncovered the minerals and we used the magnifying glass to look at the other rocks. They were beautiful. The garnet was scarlet red and the fools gold was silvery and the real gold was shiny gold.
I had a great time at Yukon Dan and I learned a lot. This summer I’m going with my friend to Leech Town to go gold panning .