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| Author | Topic: Michigan Gold! |
| Jorj - Moderator |
posted 12/19/07 8:38 PM
Here is some interesting information from David Baxter in Dewitt MI about Michigan gold deposits and a West Michigan cave! "I just found your web pages and wanted to offer some additional insights on other locations where placer gold has been found in the lower peninsula.I've collected this information during my research for a new book called "Roadside Geology of Michigan" that will be printed and distributed by Mountain Press Publishing from Montana (www.mtnpress.com). You may have come across this state-by-state book series if you've traveled in the western states.One location was documented in newspaper stories from northwestern Otsego county (Gaylord area) and came from a gravel bed in the thick deposits of glacial sand and gravel. Based on the direction this ice came from, it seems likely this gold had a bedrock source in Ontario, east of Lake Superior, possibly around the region of the Hemlo Gold Mines, known as one of the richest gold deposits in Ontario.Another location that I'm more familiar with is the Grand River in Ionia and Kent counties. An Ionia County history book I found at the Library of Michigan said many early settlers found placer gold in the Grand River, but they failed to locate the "upstream source" through a mistake of the "political" naming of our rivers. They tried to follow the placer gold up the Grand towards its headwaters south of Jackson. But they should NOT have turned south when the Grand River did at Lyons & Muir, Michigan.The placer gold likely continues upstream within the bed of the Maple River, which combined with the Grand River below Lyons and Muir, occupies a major glacial meltwater channel that drained Glacial Lake Saginaw. You may recall a mile-wide marsh along US-127 north of Saint Johns, Michigan where the highway crosses the Maple River. This was the major outlet drain from Glacial Lake Saginaw, which covered the entire Saginaw Valley lowlands more than 10,000 years ago.When tracing the lobe of glacial ice from the Saginaw Valley back into Ontario I have found it crossed a region known as the Abitibi Greenstone Belt. This region of ancient Precambrian-aged bedrock has hundreds of commercially productive gold mines, and the erosion of the bedrock by thousands of years of glacial ice would have transported large quantities of tiny gold particles.I've also visited and photographed a natural gypsum cave in western Kent county, which was found accidentally when an underground gypsum mine tunnel opened it. Unfortunately this mine is permanently closed now, and the tunnel allowing access to the cave is flooded (though the cave is well above the current water table)." http://bigprairieprepress.com/ West Michigan Graphic Design Studio |
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