If you are ever driving by Yerka, CA on I-5 stop and visit the county building. There are images of the Klamath River being dredged by ever larger dredges. As far as I know it was dredged at least three times from the ocean to almost Klamath Falls. The same happened to the Feather. BTW when the old dredges hit pockets of clay it would remove most/all of the gold from the sluices. A good operator would recognize it and bypass the sluice box until the clay streak was past. However, they dredged at night and it was often hard to tell what the buckets were bringing up in the feeble lights available at the time. Point is that there is still spots of gold, even after a dredge passed over an area, they are just tied up in clay.
Don’t get me started on Todd Hoffman. I can do a lengthy diatribe on what a putz he is. Beet’s is reckless and Parker can become a great miner if he keeps growing - he wants to be like John and John was an infinitely patient man.
It definitely takes a different type of personality to do gold mining for a living. Imagine what kind of people you would run into in 1849 and in the 1898 Klondike.
One thing to think about: We FReepers are always discussing money issues - inflation, investments, the stock market, whether to buy/sell gold and silver, the stability/instability of the US dollar, etc. Have you notice these gold miners work like trojans to recover gold, then when they find it, they can’t wait to exchange it for dollars. Wonder if they keep a stash of gold in reserve?