Satisfy Your Gold Fever at Gold Bug Park in Placerville, California

With the price of gold hovering around $1,400 an ounce these days, many recreational gold prospectors are turning their hobby into a serious business. After all, at that price, it doesn't take long to cover the cost of your gold prospecting equipment and make a profit! If you're not one to buy a gold mine, do some dredging, sluicing, or wading in a cold stream hoping for a flash in your pan, then visit Gold Bug Park in Placerville, California instead. Touring the Gold Bug Mine and Joshua Hendy Stamp Mill inside the park might be a better way to satisfy your "gold fever" - or at least get a good history lesson.

Although modern day gold miners use many of the same principles as the California 49ers in days of yore (but with better equipment, thankfully) hard rock mining has pretty much remained the same. Touring the Gold Bug Mine shows exactly how mining companies dug drifts to follow the veins of gold into the sides of hills. The 352-foot Gold Bug drift now has wood flooring and lights to make it easy for a self-guided walk through history. When you buy your ticket, you'll be given a hard hat and a hand-held audio device. As you make your way through the mine, the voice of an old-timer tells the story of the Gold Bug Mine in specific, and the Gold Rush in general.

William Craddock and John Dench started the Hattie Mine (now called the Gold Bug) in 1888. It was named Hattie for Craddock's eldest daughter. The mine is safe and well ventilated now, but it is believed that no more than 2-3 men worked this mine at a time, and after a day's work it would take 24 hours for the air to exchange so the men could start to work again. No records were kept, so unfortunately no one knows exactly how much gold was removed, but eventually it stopped producing. John McKay took over the mine in 1926 and found a more prominent gold vein that made money. To help remove the ore, McKay laid tracks for ore cars. The ore was then taken outside and run through a crusher to extract the gold.

A short walk from the Gold Bug Mine is the Joshua Hendy Stamp Mill. In addition to a working scale model of the stamp mill, the Cornwall Mineral Collection with specimens from all over the world is on display. Built around the turn of the century as a community crusher for miners in the area, each stamp on the mill weighs approximately 1000 pounds. It was so loud it could be heard in the town of Placerville a mile away!

During World War II, the mines throughout the Mother Lode were considered a non-essential industry and were closed. Gold Bug Park is now owned and operated by the City of Placerville- the only municipality in the state of California to own a gold mine. If you've never toured an underground gold mine before, this is your chance to learn about the entire gold extraction process from mining to milling. And who knows, you might just get bitten by the Gold Bug while you're there!