Interesting Facts 

Interesting facts about gold mining in Bashkiria. Where to look for gold in the Urals - a map of gold-bearing rivers Native gold in Bashkiria where to look

One after another several letters with a request to suggest where in the Uchaly famine area in Bashkortostan one can look for gold. I unsubscribed a couple of letters, and then I think I'll draw labels on the map and put them up for review. I do not have time to answer letters. Anyone send a short report on your walks. Silence. Or are you just getting ready? Don't forget to thank your stories.

This is only part of the deposits

Alexandrovskaya
Orlovskoe, upper reaches of the river. Miass
Nepryakhinskaya
Afoninskaya
Grassroots
Red Vein
Murtykty
Tuba Cain
Atangulovskoe
Elizavetinskoe
Yaprykty
Vasilievskoe
Karasul, brook
Gadelsha, northern flank
Ik-Davlyat (Severo-Ilyinskoe)
Daryvdy
Ursuk, scattering
Zarya
Shurale
Kyzyl-Tash placer
MediumLog
Morning
Star
Bakr-Tau
Ryzhova Polyana-Bagryashka
Vorontsovsky Log
Baskunzyak
Tarlau
Muldakaevskoe, river valley Miass
Karashar
Petropavlovskoe
Terraced
Nikolaevskoe
Nadezhdinskaya
Avzyanskaya
Staro-Marininskaya
Miass-Kumach, r.
Khudolazov group

For clarity, I began to map some deposits. I'll continue a little later. Look for something yourself.
Map of gold deposits Bashkortostan.
The development areas are very clearly visible on satellite images. You don't need to think too much.

And consider some kind of deposit. For example, the Tarlau gold placer.
The satellite image shows where the work was carried out and to what extent.

I am a dilettante with a capital letter. I read books by Jack London and many different modern ones. He reinforced what he had read with the work of Yu.A. Bilibin. "Fundamentals of placer geology". So where would I go?

Here are these red circles. I would start at the lowest one in the swamp. What is a swamp? This is stagnant water. Water cannot seep into the depths. This means that there is a waterproof layer. If the water cannot go deep, then gold cannot. It is on this exit into the swamp that testing should be done. It is even possible to drill a couple of meters. I don’t think the raft will be deeper.
Happy search.

At today's press conference at the Bashinform agency, Rasikh Khamitov, head of the subsoil use department in Bashkiria, dispelled hopes for the rapid transformation of the republic into a diamond center of Russia.

There are three or four areas with diamond content in the Beloretsk region, which we are ready to put up for auction, - he said. - But the stones there are small - 0.2 carats. Large ones should be looked for at a depth of 60-100 meters, but the hands of investors have not yet reached them. Nobody wants to wait five years for exploration and other activities.

Actually, this find raises doubts - it is very similar to an alloy, besides it is strange that the ingot was found on arable land. But small nuggets in Bashkiria were found quite often - they were called "cockroaches" because they were the size of a cockroach.

Rasikh Khamitov also said that the first reading of the bill on the legalization of gold mining in old and abandoned mines was passed in the State Duma. Such a proposal was put forward by the Union of Gold Producers in order to arouse interest in forgotten deposits. If the law is passed, then any person will be able to wash and hand over to the state up to two kilograms of gold per year.

Aigul NURGALEEVA Bashkir regional supplement to the newspaper Trud-7.

Yesterday, the city administration held the last meeting of the Council for the Promotion of Small and Medium Business in the "Entrepreneurial Hour" format, headed by the head of the administration Alexei Shmelev.
Administration of Oktyabrsky
27.12.2019 UFA, 27 Dec 2019. / IA "Bashinform", Aliya Galimova /. Residents of Bashkiria will be able to use the services of Sberbank even during the New Year holidays.
Bashinform
27.12.2019 UFA, 27 Dec 2019. / IA "Bashinform" /. In Ufa, they plan to create a Center for Monitoring Hazardous Geological Processes.
Bashinform
27.12.2019

Gold-bearing regions of Russia.

The most promising areas for searching for gold nuggets can be found if you look at the results of gold mining in the Russian Federation in tab1.

The structure of gold production in 2004: - 43.8% was mined from placers, 50.3% from primary deposits, 5.9% of associated gold from complex ores. License for gold mining in 2001. owned 639 enterprises, by 2004 - 558. Large enterprises with production of more than 1 ton / year of gold are 30; their total production covers more than 65.0% of the all-Russian, small, with production of less than 100 kg / year - about 35% or 200 enterprises, the total production of which is 15.0% of the all-Russian production.


URAL GOLD.
Let us dwell in more detail on the Urals and its eastern and western slopes. There are good reasons for this;

  • Climate - a longer average annual warm period. Lack of permafrost in the middle and southern Urals.
  • Geographical location - not far from the European part of Russia. Availability of places for gold mining, developed communications - auto, air and railway.
  • Availability of local infrastructure for supply and accommodation.

The Ural is one of the main and oldest gold mining centers in Russia. Date of official the discovery and beginning of gold mining in the Urals is considered 1745. However, long before that, the tribes and peoples who inhabited it already knew and mined gold. By the beginning of the 20th century, more than 300 mines were in operation and the Urals ranked third in Russia in gold mining, with an average annual volume of about poods. Currently, the main production is in the Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk regions, occupying the 8-11th place in Russia among the gold mining regions. The source of gold is not only the actual gold ore primary or placer deposits, but also gold-bearing complex ore deposits, from which gold is extracted as a by-product. So, in 1992, out of 19 tons of mined in the Urals region, including Bashkiria and the Orenburg region, 12.7 tons (66.9%) of gold falls on complex deposits, 3.7 tons (19.4%) - on placers, and only 2.6 tons (13.7%) - to primary deposits.

Primary deposits.

In the Urals, according to the aggregate geological position, morphological characteristics of ore bodies and technical and economic indicators, they are divided into two geological and industrial types: vein and mineralized zones (vein-disseminated). Vein deposits are represented by quartz veins 0.5–5 m thick (less often up to 10–15 m), containing impregnated sulfides (from 1–2 to 40–50%) and belonging mainly to the easy-enrichment technological type.
The productivity of quartz-vein gold mineralization is mainly associated with the presence of native gold particles in the ores. The latter, as a rule, are enclosed in aggregates of sulfide minerals or are deposited in quartz microcracks. Sulfides, like gold, are unevenly distributed in the veins. Their number can range from 1–2 to 40–50%. The ore bodies in vein-type deposits are, as a rule, the quartz veins themselves, but elevated gold contents (up to 0.5 ppm, rarely up to 3 ppm). The most widespread and early sulfide minerals are pyrite and arsenopyrite.
Native gold, associated with sulfides in vein deposits, has medium and high fineness (Au content in native gold, expressed in fractions from 1000) - more than 850. The main impurity component in it is silver.
On the territory of the Orenburg Urals, there are more than 150 deposits and ore occurrences of gold. Gold reserves are associated with quartz veins in black carbonaceous shales, with placers in the deposits of ravines and rivers, with "iron hats" - the products of weathering of rocks from copper-pyrite deposits.
The Kirovskoe gold deposit is located 3 km from the village of Beloozerny, Kvarkensky district. Development of the deposit is carried out by an open pit, ore processing is carried out by heap leaching. The Aydyrlinskoye gold deposit of the quartz-veining type is located 5 km east of the Aydyrlinsky settlement. The deposit has been worked out from the surface, unworked ore has been preserved at depths of more than 100-120 m.
Blakskoe gold deposit of quartz-veined type is located near the village. Blak on the territory of the Svetlinsky district

Placers.

The main polygenic alluvial deposits are concentrated in the axial part of the Urals at the junction of the Tagilo-Magnitogorsk and East Ural structural-geological zones, near the cities: - Krasnoturinsk, Nizhny Tagil, Nevyansk, Yekaterinburg, Polevskoy, Verkhny Ufaley, Karabash, Miass, Verkhneuralsk and others. as well as on the eastern slope of the Urals and on the Trans-Ural plain around the years. N. Saldy, Rezha, Asbesta, Plast and others. Almost all predicted alluvial gold resources are concentrated here. The placers of the Central Ural zone, along the Pechora, Vishera, Velsu, Ulsu, Vilva, Vizhayu, Mezhevaya Utka rivers, and the upper reaches of the Ufa and Belaya rivers are of lesser importance.
The most promising for gold are the upper reaches of the Suunduk River in the Orenburg Urals. Loose gold deposits are located on the left slope of the Suunduk River from the Bezymyanka River to the Baytuk River. The deposit from the surface has been worked out, deep, watered gold-bearing strata have been preserved. Since 2003 gold mining started from spoon gold placers "Berezitovy Uval" and "Mechetny" in the Yasnensky district of the Orenburg region.
The sources of placer gold are the products of chemical weathering of bedrock ores, including those with a relatively low metal content in them, as well as the crumbling upper parts of gold deposits. The mechanism of gold concentration is the erosion of loose gold-bearing formations of the weathering crust by surface watercourses, accompanied by gravitational differentiation and transfer of eroded material.
The basis of the raw material base for alluvial gold mining are the deposits Krasnooktyabrskoye, Sosvinskoye, Vagranskoye, Chakinskoye, Kamenskoye, Serebryanskoye, Nevyanskoye (Sverdlovsk region), Velsovskoye, Ulsovskoye, Promyslovskoye (Perm region), Miasskoye, Kochkarskoye, Bredinskoye and Gumbeyskoye (Chelyabinsk region).
The base of proven reserves of alluvial deposits is:
a) overestimated previously mined placers of the Middle and Southern Urals along the rivers Salda, Neiva, Pyshma, Miass, etc .;
The predominant genetic type of placers in the Urals is alluvial, less common are spoon (alluvial-deluvial or deluvial-proluvial). Alluvial placers formed with significant transfer of clastic material and gold. These are deposits of river valleys with their terraced, valley and channel morphological types. In alluvium, pebble material and gold are well rounded, characterized by a varied composition of pebbles and distinct layering of sediments. In deluvial placers, clastic material was transferred not far from the primary source; therefore, the roundness of the grains of gold and pebble material is much weaker than in alluvium. Such placers are formed on the slopes of the mountains. Proluvial placers are located at the foot of the mountains when their slopes are washed away by temporary flows of clastic material. The clastic material of the proluvium is poorly rounded and poorly sorted. Gold-bearing placers consist mainly of coarse-grained material - pebbles and boulders, cemented by a clay-sand mass. In quantitative terms, light minerals predominate, primarily quartz, which is the most stable in the processes of physical and chemical weathering. The content of clay minerals is significant.
The sizes of gold-bearing placers are different: in most cases, their length ranges from several hundred meters to 1-3, less often up to 5 km, and only a few of them are traced with breaks for tens and even hundreds of kilometers (rivers Sosva, Tagil, Neiva, Miass). The width of the placers is usually 20–60 m, less often 100–300 m or more. The depth of occurrence of gold-bearing strata is varied: 1–3 m (“podderniki” or “verkhoviks”), most often up to 10 m, in some cases up to 40–60 m. Gold is unevenly distributed in them. As a rule, it is contained in the amount of the first hundreds of milligrams per 1 m3 of sand and is maximally concentrated in well-sorted sandy-pebble sediments, where its contents can reach several grams per 1 m3 of rock. The size of gold particles in placers varies from less than 0.1 mm to nuggets. It is calculated that the average size of the metal in the Middle Urals is 0.60 mm with fluctuations in individual placers from 0.23 to 1.00 mm. In the placers of the Southern Urals, it rises to 0.86 mm (from 0.45 to 2.00 mm), and in the Northern Urals, to 1.11 mm (from 0.35 to 3.85 mm). The average sample in the explored deposits has been calculated, which varies in the range of 780-960. For certain parts of the region, it is: South Ural - 948, Middle Ural - 900, North Ural - 910, Subpolar Ural - 891.


EXAMPLES OF LOSSES IN THE URALS.

1) GOLD OF THE BOLSHESHALDINSKAYA ROSSYP. In 1824 prospecting began in the valley R. Bolshaya Shaldinka. The burst of exploration that began led to the discovery of numerous placers in the area of ​​the village, which received the name Gold Crafts(now the village. Fishery Gornozavodsky district). The first studies of the regularities of placer gold content in the Gornozavodsky region were carried out A.A. Krasnopolsky in 1889, he discovered that the source of clastic gold is numerous small quartz veins penetrating the metamorphic shales. The described placer is interesting in that, along with golden sand, it contained ore-like gold grains and nuggets, which allowed the well-known specialist N.V. Petrovskaya(1973) to draw a conclusion about the proximity of the primary sources and the destruction of the upper rich parts of the ore bodies. Loose deposits are of a different nature. Eluvial-diluvial loams with crushed stone and blocks of underlying rocks occur directly on the bedrock. The color of these deposits changes depending on the color of the underlying rocks. More rare weakly rounded fragments of introduced rocks are also noted. On these sediments, and sometimes on the bedrock, there is a “river” or mature, well-sorted alluvium, called by the prospectors. He is the main productive layer. Above, it is replaced by immature alluvium, represented by less sorted material enriched in clay, sometimes black (marsh) due to plant detritus. Lens and interlayers of black (floodplain) clay are locally recorded, as well as proluvial deposits confined to erosion of both deluvial and alluvial sediments. Almost all deposits are gold-bearing, except for floodplains.

The placer contains minerals that can be attributed to the following associations. Minerals originating from metamorphic rocks predominate: magnetite, ilmenite, rutile, titanite, anatase, brookite, monazite and pyrite. Gold is represented by crystals, dendrite-like formations, irregular grains of varying degrees of roundness, which indicates its entry into the placer for a long period of time. (photo4)

In general, gold is of high-grade and contains only an admixture of silver, which is typical for other manifestations of the Northern Urals.
Currently, this placer is being exploited LLC "Prospector".

2) GOLD OF ROLLS MOSH BOLOT. (Nepryakhinskoe field, South Urals)
The Nepryakhinskoye gold deposit, 10 km north of the Chebarkul station of the Chelyabinsk region, unites a group of gold-bearing quartz and sulfide-quartz veins and mineralized zones accompanied by placers. The deposit has been known since the beginning of the 19th century and was repeatedly developed until 1960. Of the primary minerals of ores in different veins, quartz, carbonate, pyrite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, and galena are indicated. The formation of gold placers is associated with the erosion of the weathering crust and oxidation zones of the deposits, reaching a depth of 50–60 m.
In the oxidation zone, the content of gold is 1–10 ppm, silver - from 0.2 to 10–13 ppm, in some samples up to 50–100 ppm. Eluvial placer "Moss bog" is located 700-800 m southeast of the village. Nepryakhino (Fig. 1). Until 1917, 250 kg of gold was mined from the placer with an average grade of 2.3 g / m3. Later work was carried out in 1939–40. and were curtailed due to severe watering of the site and lack of electricity. In 2000, exploration and pilot industrial mining of placer gold was carried out by Ingul LLC, Chebarkul. In the western part of the bog, with traces of old work, exploratory wells 5–7 m deep were drilled and a small hydraulics quarry (200 x 150 m) was laid. A placer 200–250 m wide was traced in the SE at 700 m. In undisturbed areas, a layer of peat (0.5–0.7 m) overlays on the clay of the weathering crust, 2–3 m thick.

Rice. 1. Geological scheme of the area of ​​the "Moss bog" placer

1 - shale sericite-chlorite, quartz-
sericite, graphite-quartz;
2 - shale chlorite, quartz-chlorite;
3 - serpentinites;
4 - talc-carbonate rocks;
5 - talc shale;
6 - gold veins and zones;
7 - gold placer "Moss swamp"
8 - the contour of the swamp;
9 - area with. Nepryakhino


According to the results of the work, it was noted that the complete absence of rounded gold, gold was often found in intergrowths with vein quartz. For the most part "Gray" schlichs were dominated by quartz or rock fragments (up to 60–92% of the volume); v "Blacks" concentrate heavy fraction content of more than 50%. "Gray" concentrates besides quartz, feldspars are the most common. Gold concentrates characterized by the predominance of large gold (average,% by weight): about 30% - nuggets (more than 4 mm); 51.5% - gold fraction –4 + 1 mm; 10% - gold fraction –1 + 0.5 mm; 8.6% - fine gold of the fraction –0.5 mm, where only 0.2% falls on the fraction of –0.25 mm.
The largest nugget weighing 94 g was about 7 cm long and barrel-shaped with protrusions. (see photo 5).
A typical concentrate of placer gold from a hydraulic cut typically includes 3 small nuggets (5–12 mm), 80 gold grains (2–4 mm) and about 400 fine grains. Gold nuggets of bright yellow color have a complex shape with a lumpy-pitted surface and voids from dissolution of host minerals, ingrowths of translucent quartz and sometimes pyrite. There are nuggets similar in shape to crystals with smoothed tops and edges.
The nuggets are practically not rounded and are aggregates of grains from the former sulfide-carbonate-quartz veins of Zolotina, fractions +1 mm and –1 + 0.5 mm, characterized by various shapes, usually flattened and weakly rounded. Among gold grains and smaller grains of gold, the share of lighter (yellow) gold is about 5% of the volume.
Pieces of veined gold-quartz aggregates are aggregates of gold grains 0.1–2 mm with intergrowths of whitish and colorless fine-grained quartz (0.5–3 mm). Grains of gold are bright yellow, complex shapes.

Gold of the eluvial placer "Moss bog" is concentrated during the formation of the weathering crust during the destruction of low-sulfide gold-carbonate-quartz veins; This is indicated by the predominance of large gold and nuggets with quartz ingrowths and pyrite inclusions. The dominant host rocks are metasomatic schists with small amounts of fine gold.


METHODS OF INDUSTRIAL DEVELOPMENT OF LOSSES AND LOSS OF GOLD.

The technology used by the prospectors is traditional and has not changed much since the days of Odysseus (see photo above). The only difference is the use of bulldozers, water jets, and the use of metal nets and textured rubber mats instead of sheepskin (golden fleece).
The mining at the described placers is carried out with the help of industrial instruments. Prompribor is a simple installation for gold recovery. Often made from an old body from a KRAZ dump truck, it is covered with a roar from above (an iron sheet with 80 mm holes). And on the sides, steel sheets are installed so that gold does not scatter on the sides. A long iron box (sluice), 5-10 meters long, is attached to the bottom of the "body", the bottom of which is lined with metal nets and special rubber mats. The rock is fed to the roar by a bulldozer, then it is washed out with a jet of water from a water jet. Everything that passes through the holes of the screen goes to the sluice, the rest of the rock - galya, is washed off into the dump, and then it contains nuggets. From the roar, the rock together with the water passes through the sluice, leaving gold particles on the rubber mat. The breed that passed through the gateway is called Ephel. They often also contain floating fine, thin platy gold or gold grains in intergrowths with quartz and clay.
It turns out that the effel of industrial devices ( ephel - washed rock from which gold is extracted) may also contain coarse gold and nuggets. Their losses are associated with gold-quartz aggregates and clay pellets. The fact is that with a significant amount of quartz, the specific gravity of a nugget, and even more so of gold, decreases. For this reason, gold with quartz goes into ephel.
For example, it is quite possible that 10 g of gold are placed as a vein in a quartz pebble 5 cm in size. The mass of such a pebble without gold would be about 150 g. Adding 10 g of gold to this mass gives an increase in mass by less than 10%. Obviously, when enriching at the sluice, such a gold-quartz aggregate will easily slide down and wash away through the sluice. By analogy, with poor disintegration of the sands of the rock, with a significant content of clay and loams in it, gold particles in clay aggregates are washed off from the locks more often into a pebble and less often into an effelike dump. When shooting gold from locks, coarse material, including quartz pebbles, is usually thrown into the tailings. At the same time, it is unlikely that every quartz pebble is carefully viewed by tenants. How much gold, hidden in quartz, because of this, goes to the dump is unknown. In the recent past, an outdated technology was used that practically does not catch gold with a class of less than 0.5 mm and nuggets larger than 80 mm: according to the Russian Academy of Sciences, when using traditional methods of mining placer metal, gold was extracted with losses from 15% to 40% of the total production, and gold less than 0.25 mm was not recovered at all. It is clear that it is impossible to extract all the metal, but, according to preliminary estimates, only at technogenic deposits in Russia is it possible to produce 5–7 tons of gold annually with minimal operating costs, and to organize small businesses.

Equipment for small-scale gold mining.

One of the possible ways is the method of work, with the extraction of gold at small sites using autonomous mini equipment. In places where there are no voluminous reserves of sand for large artels, you can always find small enriched areas for selective processing.
Small in volume, but enriched areas, containing tens and hundreds of kg of gold, in our rivers and placers are more than enough. They are not of interest for large-scale mining, but for 1-2 people, at minimal cost, they can provide a satisfactory income. Here we can recall the domestic experience - the mining of kosovaya gold by small teams was carried out in the Zeysky district of the Amur region on a large scale before the revolution and in the 30s. On the Zeya River in 1914, 819 kg were mined along the shoals and spits of the rivers; in total, more than a ton of kosovy gold was mined in trays per year in the Zeya region. The method of "golden" seasonal, freelance work in the mines was widely practiced in Eastern Siberia and the Far East by the owners of license areas. In 1913. this method was mined in the mines, which amounted to 30% of the total gold production of 1601 poods. Nobody knows how many were reclaimed by "predators". ( "Predators" - the name of private miners who washed gold in new areas they discovered, with the help of improvised means, without detailed exploration of placers and organization of work, arose in the Far East.)

Development of small areas can be organized using modern technologies and equipment;

  • Minidrag - washing of productive sands along shallows and streams of rivers.
  • Mini-locks with concentrating concentrators on manual trays or concentrators - repeated flushing of ephels on man-made placers.
  • Metal detectors - selective search for nuggets on man-made pebble dumps and rafts of waste placers, as well as at the outcrops of primary deposits (veins, nests, etc.)

Minidragi - completely autonomous installations for sand feeding, washing and gold recovery. They are mounted on a pontoon on which an engine, a pump, a slurry hydraulic elevator, a flushing sluice with mats are installed. Mini-drags have a capacity of 1.5 m3 of sand per hour, their weight is from 60 kg. The capacity is usually limited by the power of the pump for sucking the sand into the receiving hopper. They carry out selective washing of sands, a fraction of sand less than 5 cm gets into the pump inlet. The mini-drag ejector pump can suck in material from a depth of up to 3 m. Gasoline consumption from 0.8 l / h, cost from 2.5 thousand dollars. They are used in channel and cross-bed placers or heavily watered areas.
Mini gateways- devices for washing and gravity recovery of gold. On a collapsible frame, mounted; - hydraulic screen disintegrator, receiving hopper, washing sluice. The bottom of the airlock is laid out with fleecy rugs and metal stencils. The tilt angle is adjustable up to 12 degrees. The water pump, driven by the engine, provides water supply from a source with a range of up to 20 m using flexible hoses. Gasoline consumption from 0.8 l / h. Mini-locks have a capacity of about 1.5 m3 of sand per hour, weight from 25 kg. They are used to wash sands with a size of pebble inclusions up to 100mm. They are used in dry areas near the water (no further than 20m). The productivity is usually limited by the manual feeding of the sand into the receiving hopper. Cost from 2 thousand dollars.
- an electronic device designed specifically for gold prospectors to search for native gold. They started looking for nuggets with metal detectors in Australia. This is where the "Electronic Gold Rush" started in '82, when the largest nugget "Hand of Fate" weighing 27 kg was found with the help of a metal detector.
able to selectively detect gold particles in mineralized gold sands. The metal detector is able to detect the smallest nugget of gold measuring about 5x4x2 mm, provided that it is up to 20 cm from the surface. The metal detector determines the place where the nugget is located with an audible and visual signal. The devices have a function to ignore signals from soil minerals and other metals. In cases where technogenic metals are not found in the rocks, the device perfectly captures nuggets weighing 100 mg or more. Nuggets weighing from 100 mg to 1 g. are found at a depth of up to 10 cm, weighing more than 1 g. - at a depth of up to 30 cm. The detection limit in the ground is gold grains weighing 100 mg.

Areas for small-scale gold mining with a metal detector.

To select an area and a search site, you need to find out whether nuggets weighing more than 50-100 grams have ever been found in this area. If no one has found nuggets more than 50 g in this area, then you should not go looking for them. Most likely, they simply do not exist in your chosen area. Nuggets are most easily obtained from geologists who have worked in your area for a long time or from old timers. It is useful to talk with local geologists, visit the library of the territorial geological fund, see there reports on exploration work and sieve analyzes of gold. If you have access to geological information, you can make a more reliable forecast and more accurately choose a place to search for nuggets.
If, as a result, you find out where nuggets weighing more than 50-100 g were found in the targeted area, then this is already good, useful information. This means you also have a chance to find nuggets. Usually nugget placers form nodes, which include several placer deposits. The presence of large nuggets indicates that the place is "nugget". It means that here, most likely, there are several placers with large gold. As a rule, they have been worked out, but all the nuggets have not been extracted during mining. Some of the nuggets remained, since the quality of mining the placers was low.

  • The "good" area should have a high median gold size (preferably more than 4-5 mm).
  • If the median size of gold in the placer is less than 1 mm, it is futile to search for nuggets.
  • With a median gold size of 1-2 mm, you can look for nuggets, but you should not expect a good result here. In general, the higher the fineness, the better.

(The median size is the size of the sieve through which 50% of the gold mass is sieved).
After you have learned that gold is large and nuggets are found, you must decide exactly where you will look. There are several options for work:

  • search in man-made placers (see examples above)
  • search in new areas: - whole placers and in bedrock.

Search in technogenic placers the occupation is calm, relatively reliable, you can definitely find gold here, but large production is unlikely here. If you're lucky, you can find a nugget weighing several hundred grams, but very large nuggets are rare.
Search in new areas - whole placers and in bedrock more risky. There is no guarantee here, be sure to find a nugget. But here you can find a "nugget nest", which contains several kilograms, and maybe tens of kilograms of gold. In addition, there are a lot of objects to search for. There are countless small, unexplored streams in gold-bearing areas. The search for nuggets in the bedding outcrops may be of interest only in rare cases when there is reliable information about the location of the vein and the large gold contained in the ore.

Search for gold nuggets in technogenic placers.

In the surface layer (up to 20 cm), which can be examined with a simple and relatively cheap metal detector, there are more nuggets than on an open surface, and even more in a layer 50 cm thick. The best modern metal detectors provide a depth of detection for very large nuggets of up to 0.5 m. In man-made placers, the most preferred areas of development are located closer to the upper reaches of rivers. This is due to the fact that nuggets are poorly carried by streams and remain closer to the upper reaches of a stream or river. For example, the best nugget placers of the river are located in its upper reaches (no more than 2-2.5 km from the sources). The lower part of the river (3-5 km from the mouth) is characterized by relatively fine metal. You can search for nuggets here, but they will most likely only be in certain places. These are places where nuggets were brought in from the sides of the valley, at the expense of local indigenous sources, or from small tributaries. It is quite difficult to find such places. Therefore, the simplest, at first, is to abandon large valleys and look for nuggets in placers located no more than 2 km from the sources.
It is better to choose objects with a high linear reserve from such placers, that is, the richer the site, the better. It is also possible to find nuggets on the "poor" placers, but most likely there will be fewer of them than on the "rich" ones.
When analyzing possible objects of work, it is necessary to take into account the availability of the raft for inspection. Nuggets are almost always confined to the lower part of the reservoir and to the depressions of the bedrock. The bedrock remains on the surface after the placer has been mined. Such places of outcropping of bedrocks to the surface for the search for nuggets are the most favorable. It is best to look for nuggets immediately after industrial sand excavation. The flesh was most fully opened at this time. In it, nuggets can almost always remain in depressions and cracks in the raft. Search efficiency will be maximized here. The strength of the raft, the presence of powerful earth-moving equipment at the enterprise, and the years of working out play a role. Even after cleaning the landfill with heavy equipment, untouched depressions remain. A soft raft, if the enterprise has powerful bulldozers, can be worked out so deep that no nuggets are left on it. A solid raft is more promising for work. Not everyone has a powerful bulldozer and not everyone is ready to "tear" it on solid bedrocks. Therefore, it is more likely to find raft depressions with nuggets of gold on solid bedrock.
After considering the combination of different conditions, you will find an object worth going to. It is characterized by a high grain size of previously mined gold, located in the upper part of the valley, after mining at landfills, an exposed raft remained. The flesh is durable. The placer was worked out for a long time, when there were still few powerful bulldozers, and they turned a blind eye to the loss of gold. If you have such an object, then the nuggets are in your pocket. However, such ideal objects are rare. Reclamation was carried out on many placers - the raft was filled up. The waste landfill is often littered with washing tailings. Then there is no longer any guarantee that the nuggets will be found without fail.
If the placer raft is closed, then the search for nuggets can be carried out along the dumps of washed sand. There may also be nuggets here. On placers with large gold nuggets fall into the dump, especially often when using scrubbers and dredging barrels with perforations less than 20-30 mm. According to geologists, at some of the mines in the Urals, out of 200 nuggets for which there are passports indicating their location, 80 nuggets (40%) were raised in pebble dumps of split mining in the 50s. This indicates that testing of pebble dumps using metal detectors can be quite effective.
Nuggets, in quartz, are quite common. According to some reports, the overwhelming majority of gold nuggets from placers are aggregates of gold with quartz. The presence of gold-quartz aggregates is noted in almost any detailed exploration report. For some placers, the share of such gold reaches 10-20%. In this case, in fact, there may be more. Exploration underestimates the proportion of gold with quartz, as it uses gravitational enrichment devices, on which it is captured only partially. However, the search in man-made dumps is much more difficult than on the rafts of waste landfills. There is a lot of metal debris in the dumps that interferes with work. The best in terms of cleanliness are dredging dumps of placers, worked out once.
Mostly large nuggets (tens and hundreds of grams) can be found in dredging heaps. However, such nuggets are rare, so you cannot immediately hope for success. You may have to work patiently before the first nugget is found. According to experience, in dredging dumps, one nugget is on average for 600-1000 cubic meters of rock. When working with a metal detector, you can listen to 50 cubic meters per hour. Hence, a good nugget can be found in a day's work.

Search on whole placers and in bedrock.

In general, there are three types of rich placers near the streams, which are not explored, they are not issued licenses, and they are not of interest to operating mines and artisanal artels. it brush, channel and skew placers... They are characterized by an uneven, nested distribution of gold, with reserves of tens and hundreds of grams of gold. These placers are a coveted mining target for individual prospectors and small brigades. Brush and channel placers are typical for mountainous regions, especially for the upper streams near watersheds. Kosovo placers can be found in mountains and on flat rivers, often very far from gold-bearing areas.
TO brush placers with metal concentrations in cracks in bedrock, in places where streams cut into bedrocks. They are found on drops, waterfalls, in the zone of the cutting front, where the erosional activity of rivers for one reason or another slows down. The main transverse ridges, which can be composed of dikes and quartz veins, are very promising.
TO channel placers the productive alluvium of the channel, not covered by empty sandy-pebble deposits, should be attributed. They are characterized by the accumulation of gold in the raft (bedrock) and their partial dispersion in the supra-raft rocks. Small nests, lenses, jets, rapidly wedging out ribbons, etc. are characteristic. Channel placers are usually located next to brush placers in those parts of the valleys where channel incisions occur. (CHANNEL SPRINGS - placers occurring in the river channel and located in the area of ​​the water flow; occur in the initial stage of formation or the stage of transformation of the valley placer. previously formed valley and terrace placers; can be restored after mining. Gold, platinum, diamonds, etc. are of industrial importance.)
TO oblique placers include gold-bearing deposits of near-riverbanks. Contains gold of small and medium fractions. In the valleys of mountain streams, spit placers are usually composed of coarse detrital material, in the foothill part of those rivers where the speed of streams decreases, they are gravel-sandy sediments, and in the valleys of lowland rivers they are always represented by sands with an admixture of clay or silty material.
Kosovo placers sometimes appear tens of kilometers from primary sources. In many river systems, spit placers are separated from other floodplain alluvial placers. But often both are spatially combined. There is an uneven distribution of metal in them, both in the lateral and in the vertical directions. Oblique gold placers are usually characterized by low concentrations of metal, represented mainly by its fine fractions. Within the limits of river spits and shallows, it is necessary to find enriched areas in the form of lenses, which may be in places where the channel bends, behind boulders, fallen trees and similar obstacles. (KOSOVIE SPRAYS - alluvial placers of long-range transport and redeposition, occurring on sandy-pebble, sandy riverbank shoals (“spits”) and alluvial islands, containing small particles of useful minerals most mobile in the alluvial environment. ) layers and lenses enriched with useful oils, alternating with interlayers of “empty” deposits.1m, more often amounts to several decimeters. Easily recycled by water flow and can be displaced downstream during floods; able to recover after working out. Useful components of oblique placers are gold (native), diamond, platinum (native). Industrial value is not great, but they serve as a reliable indicator of the presence in the valleys of other types of placers and their primary sources)

We start from the stream.
In gold-bearing areas, small mountain streams are a good place to search for nuggets. Gold gets into them from the slopes. Light rock is carried away by water, and gold, due to its high density, sags through sand and pebbles, accumulates and forms gold deposits. It is better to choose small streams for inspection, up to 10-15 kilometers. It can also be the upper reaches of larger rivers. The nuggets are inactive and cannot be transported by the river for a long distance. Usually, the farther from the source, the finer the gold. Small streams are especially interesting because they can be found in rich areas of small size - "nests". The nests contain not only nuggets, but also golden sand. Nests with several pounds of gold are known from history. To search for small nuggets of gold in streams, you need to use metal detectors at maximum sensitivity. The appearance of a nugget carries useful information, so it is advisable to measure, photograph and accurately describe the place of discovery for each nugget. This can be useful in the future for finding a nest or root vein.
Under the sand and pebbles in any stream there are solid (bedrock) rocks. Geologists often call them "raft". Gold, sagging through loose rocks, reaches the raft. It cannot go down further and accumulates here. The nuggets on the raft are the largest. There is also gold above the raft, but the higher, the finer. In 1.5-2 meters from the raft, nuggets are rare. Nuggets are not found on an open surface.
When searching for nuggets with a metal detector, the problem is that the raft is usually located at a depth of 2-5, and sometimes even 50 m. No device can reach nuggets at such a depth. You have to choose places where the raft comes close to the surface. Such places along the banks of mountain rivers are quite often found in the form of bedrock outcrops. Their surface was once the bottom of a stream. Later, the stream washed out another new channel, and the old bottom remained on the surface. Perspective places in the form of outcrops of rocks - rocks, are the easiest to find visually, but they are not found in all streams. If there are no visible outcrops, you need to explore the creek, hoping for good luck. If the surface of the rock is cracked, gold, if any, is left in it. The metal detector will find it. The entire surface of the rocks and the areas adjacent to the rocks must be scanned very carefully with the device.
It is also advisable to survey the accessible surface next to the channel, 10-20 meters above the water. These can be preserved areas of ancient river valleys (terraces), and their surface could once have been the bottom. It is interesting to explore the underwater part of the channel, there may also be nuggets. You can search with a metal detector under water, however, it is very difficult to pull out a nugget from under the water.

Gold's companion is quartz.
A preliminary estimate of the brook for gold is possible by additional indicators. If there is a quartz pebble in the stream, then the stream is more promising for the presence of gold. The presence of quartz in the stream is a good sign. The fact is that gold comes from a primary source - a quartz vein. Quartz is destroyed, gold is released from it and washed down the slope into the stream. Quartz also falls into the stream and is easy to see. Quartz is a white or light gray rock. With a little experience it is easy to see it. The main difference between quartz and other rocks is that it has a high hardness and scratches glass. You can take any shard of the bottle and drag the fragment of rock over it. If there is a scratch, then the fragment is quartz.
A more accurate criterion for the selection of promising streams is flushing the rock with a trough or schlich sampling. Sand washing should be carried out 200-500 m above the mouth. If at least one piece of gold (a sign) is caught in the tray, it is a good sign. It is likely that there may be nuggets in the stream. But if there is no gold in the tray, then the stream cannot be considered hopeless. The tray "catches" small gold, and in the nugget part of the stream, the content of fine gold is small, up to 1g per 1m3, and it may not get into the sample of the tray. In nugget places, you can rinse 10 trays and all without gold. But if gold gets into the tray, then the stream should be examined first of all and very carefully.


CONCLUSION.

Small-scale gold mining is becoming more common today. Those wishing to mine gold enter into an agreement with the license holder and work on his site, on man-made dumps. The work is carried out in small teams, in other cases by individual prospectors, sometimes they are washing gold by families.
The development of small-scale gold mining is artificially constrained by legislative restrictions: individuals are allowed to mine gold only within the existing mining allotments and only from technogenic deposits.
Man-made dumps have a number of advantages - they require lower costs for organization and re-development, and also present lower initial requirements for the technical training of personnel.
The researches carried out by specialists give grounds to assume that the predicted resources of gold in dumps on the territory of the Oymyakonsky ulus of Yakutia alone amount to more than 70 tons. In some fields, during mining, the number of nuggets was twice as high as during exploration, which suggests a significant presence in pebble dumps. A preliminary analysis of the documentation of 400 deposits in the Indigirka river basin with a total gold production of more than 450 tons showed the prospects of secondary processing of 130 deposits, which produced more than 360 tons.
The prospect of searching on old dumps has the following advantages :
– capital and operational costs for metal extraction are significantly reduced;
- no stripping work is required;
- the location of the sites is reliably known;
- the ability to use mobile and inexpensive mini equipment;
- lower requirements for the technical training of personnel;
- relatively well-developed infrastructure and road network at the work sites;
- the cost of performing appraisal works is significantly lower than standard exploration methods.
The decisive factors that provide a long-term prospect for prospecting for nuggets are huge reserves of gale-ephelial dumps, relatively low investments at the initial stage, high profitability during mining, ample opportunities for investing in new technologies for gold mining.

Gold of the Urals - this concept appeared around 1735, when Erofei Markov, a schismatic from the Shartash village, discovered several grains of yellow metal and took them to a master jeweler. This was the beginning of the history of gold mining in the Urals. Today it is still considered a promising region, on the territory of which there are a number of large deposits of the precious metal.

History

The Ural ridge and the presence of a noble element on it worried Ivan III. After his marriage, the tsar began to actively study the books that his wife Sophia brought from Byzantium. In the books, Ivan read the story of Herodotus about the Riphean mountains. Ivan III was interested not only in the wealth described in the books by scientists, but also in the seizure of new lands.

Despite all efforts, it was not possible to find metal in the mountains. All the gold that was discovered during the reign of the tsar was enough for one coin, which Ivan III presented to his daughter.

Gold mining in the Urals

Since the precious metal and its presence raised the status of the country and its prestige, Ivan the Terrible was next to look for, but his efforts did not bring anything either.

However, gold was still found in the Urals, but it was not nuggets or even sand. Searchers found jewelry by secretly excavating old burials. To stop a series of barbarian adventures, Peter I took drastic measures. The emperor issued a decree that the vandals should be executed.

When in 1745 Erofei Markov brought grains of gold, everyone was convinced that there was gold in the Urals. The arriving experts studied the soil for a long time, trying to find at least a few more grains of Au, but nothing came of it. Then people suspected the schismatic of interfering with the search for precious metals, and decided to punish him in a special way, according to the adopted decree of Peter.

It never came to execution, because one of the scientists still found Au in the water. Taking a sample, it was possible to determine the presence in the liquid of not only a number of metals of non-noble origin, but also a small amount of gold.

A few years later, a mine was dug at the site of the discovery of the precious metal, this decision became fateful, as one of the largest in the Urals, Berezovskoye, was discovered.

The prospectors quickly became convinced that there is precious metal in the Ural lands. In the bowels of the earth, a whole bar of Au was discovered, which weighed almost 16 kg. The nugget was immediately presented to the king, as a gift, and he considered it a sign of a successful government. Prospector Nikifor Syutkin discovered a nugget weighing about 36 kg in 1842. It is considered one of the largest nuggets found on the territory of our country, for its shape the nugget was given the name "Big Triangle".

Nikifor Syutkin handed over the precious metal and received a remuneration in the amount of a salary for a whole year, and the prospector was also awarded an order. He celebrated his award vigorously and, as a result, received several lashes as punishment.

Today in the Urals there are about 40 large deposits that operate in various parts of the region. Sverdlovsk and Chelyabinsk are the richest in gold; Au is also found near Lake Chebarkul.

Ural today

The gold of the Urals was described by Herodotus, Lomonosov made an assumption about where the element could be found and how to look for it. Why are the Urals and the territories adjacent to the region rich in Au? There are logical explanations for this:

  1. There is no permafrost.
  2. The climatic conditions are favorable.
  3. Availability of accessible places for the extraction of natural resources.

Climate conditions and other factors have influenced the region's lands and made them some of the richest. According to experts, about 15% of all gold in our country is located in the Urals.

Au can be mined in several ways:

  • work in mines;
  • flushing water;
  • search for precious metals on dumps.

The mining of metal by the mine method is one of the most difficult and dangerous. But in this way, exploring the land step by step, it turns out to find the largest amount of gold.

Wanting to find the metal, the prospectors wash the water of the rivers in the hope of finding another nugget. This is hard work that requires diligence and patience. Au, as before, is washed with a sluice, and other devices are also used.

On the dumps, they work with a metal detector. The development takes places where a noble element has already been discovered earlier. Exploring deposits that have already been in development, it is unlikely that a large amount of precious metal will be found, but there are exceptions to any rule.

Today, several large companies operate in the Urals, which are engaged in the exploration of new deposits, the development of already discovered deposits and the operation of those deposits that have been recognized as economically profitable. Prospectors can search for Au independently from companies, but they must be licensed. Therefore, people often sign a contract with those persons who have such permission. In this case, workers are transported to the mining site and supplied with equipment.

Gold mining in the region does not even think to stop. Despite the fact that gold has been mined in the Urals for several centuries, the production volumes remain at the same level. The rich lands of the Urals attract not only miners, but also investors who are willingly engaged in the exploration of new deposits.

During the times of the USSR, placer deposits were mainly in development, and primary ones were considered unpromising. The reason was that the development of primary deposits required financial investments. Today, primary deposits are being developed, progress does not stand still, and what was previously considered unprofitable, today brings good profit.

If we talk about specific places where you can find precious metals, then such a map does not exist. Geologists say that it is possible throughout the Urals. But before starting the search procedures, you should familiarize yourself with the archival documents and draw up a plan.


Gold-sulfide-quartz vein

For many years it was carried out on the territory of the Urals, there is no doubt that there is precious metal in the region. But not only the Urals and its lands are rich in Au. There are several regions in Russia that are considered promising. The gold mining industry is actively developing; Despite the fact that the reserves of the precious metal are constantly decreasing, Au mining is only gaining momentum. Since gold is a guarantee of a stable economy, a sign of the country's well-being and prosperity.

Gold of Bashkiria

It has been relatively recent to mine Au on the territory. The extraction of precious metals is carried out in conjunction with the extraction of ore. In addition, diamonds are mined in the region. There are four large deposits of precious metals, which are located in the territory of Bashkiria. Somehow the deposits were put up for auction, resulting in a scandal. The sale of gold-rich lands was canceled, and they still remained at the disposal of the regional authorities.

On the territory of Bashkiria they find:

  1. Diamonds with a minimum size of 0.2 carats.
  2. Gold, silver and copper.

Au is present throughout the entire region, but the metal is mined by the mine method, since gold "hides" deep underground, at a depth of 100 meters.

Today, exploration is underway in the region, many large companies willingly take the discovered deposits into development and are engaged in their successful exploitation. Bashkiria attracts miners from Canada, the USA and other countries.

Last year, in the region, from various deposits, it was possible to extract about 7.5 tons of precious metals.

Regions of Bashkiria rich in Au:

  1. Baikal.
  2. Belgorodsky.
  3. Uchalinsky.

A nugget weighing about 5 kg, which was found in the Uchalinsky region, was named "Irendyk Bear". placed in one of the museums of Bashkiria, where it is still kept. Anyone can touch the nugget and look at it.

But not so long ago, private metal mining was legalized in the region. Prospectors rushed for gold, wanting to find a vein in the rich lands. But such a search will not bring good luck to everyone. The reason is that the dumps and other places where the precious metal is mined have already been checked by local residents for the presence of Au.

The first mention of the gold-bearing places in Bashkiria appeared in 1670. It was reported that the Tatars and Bashkirs brought from the lands gold and silver, which were mined in the mountains.

The last wave of the gold rush was observed in the Urals and Bashkiria at the beginning of the 20th century. They managed to find the "Golden Valley", which stretched from Miass to Mindyak. On the territory of the valley, there were placer and primary deposits, as well as copper and Au deposits of the type that were found on Lake Baikal.

Placers of gold in the region

There are placer and primary deposits in the region. If it speaks of the first type, then we can distinguish several places that are richest in placer deposits. These areas include:

  1. Southern.
  2. Northern.
  3. Circumpolar.

The southern and northern regions are rich not only in precious metals, but also in quartz. Quartz is one of the satellites of the precious metal. In the layers of this mineral, you can find streaks of gold.

The deposits of the circumpolar region are poorly studied while they are being developed. Despite this, the territory is considered promising, its study is still going on. Geologists suggest that many placer deposits can be found in this part of the region.

Large nuggets found in the Urals:

  • 1842, "Big Triangle" weighing 32.04 kg;
  • large and small Tyelginskie, discovered in 1935, the total weight of the nuggets exceeded 23 kg;
  • in 1935 "Rabbit Ears" were also discovered, the weight of this nugget was just over 3 kg.

The "Big Triangle" is considered the champion among nuggets; it was not possible to find a larger piece of gold on the territory of our country. Large nuggets were found on the territory of Magadan, Yakutia, Irkutsk and Krasnoyarsk Territory. In ancient times, it was considered perfectly acceptable to appropriate a nugget. Since a piece of gold has been compared to God's gift and blessing. Mostly nuggets were found in the process of industrial mining of precious metals, but there were also occasional finds.

In the 19th century, mainly in the second half of it, money was paid for what was found, while a person who managed to carry a nugget with him was not considered a thief. He could take the precious metal to the store and get its full value. This situation suited both the workers of the mine and their employers. Maybe for this reason, there are not many registered cases of nugget detection in Russia?

However, not everyone would have managed to sneak in a piece of gold weighing almost 33 kg. This is how the Big Triangle saw the light of day and became one of the largest nuggets in the world.

Despite the fact that there is still enough gold in the Urals, the region is experiencing certain problems. The industry is constantly developing, but new territories need to be explored. This leads to the need for additional investment in the industry. Companies willingly take up the exploration of new lands, but the search for deposits does not always bring success. It takes geologists an average of one year.

Today Russia is not included in the top 5 leading countries in the extraction of precious metals, but our country is considered one of the most promising. There is precious metal in the Urals, Bashkiria, Irkutsk, Yakutia, Magadan, Siberia and the Far East. Back at the beginning of the 5th century, Russia was considered one of the leaders in terms of the amount of precious metal reserves, despite the fact that Au could not be found for many years.

It cannot be said that the territory of the Urals has been fully explored, all the hidden corners have been explored. Prospectors and geologists find the element where it was not previously found. In addition, fields that were closed for one reason or another are taken into development. Hence the conclusion: there is gold in the Urals, you just need to be able to look for it.

From the materials of various researchers (Jessen, 1948) it follows that the first gold mining arose in the South Urals, apparently at the end of the second millennium BC. and finally froze in the 16-17 centuries A.D., i.e. just 100-200 years before the emergence of the Russian gold industry. Available sources do not allow us to answer the question of whether it existed continuously for almost three millennia, or whether it arose and lasted only during certain historical periods.

We do not yet know direct traces of ancient gold mining on the territory of the Republic of Bashkortostan, information about the finds related to this has not been sufficiently reflected in the literature. The little that can be pointed out now boils down to the following.

At the Sultanovsky mine on the river. Sultanke - the right tributary of the river. Bol. Kizil (Baymaksky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan), the miners discovered traces of ancient mining of gold-bearing quartz veins using stone tools. Pieces of crushed quartz were found here, and traces of scraping gold were found on the veins exposed by horse mining.

Academician Lepekhin, who traveled around the Urals in 1770, notes the "Peipsi mine" 4 km from the Kananikolsky plant along the Kurtly river (Zilairsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan). He writes: "Our Chud mine seemed to us proof of the fact that the ancient inhabitants of the country sowed and hunted high metals."

Another ancient "mine" was discovered by Lepekhin not far from the previous one. “... Before reaching Sakmara, 20 miles away, at the Shirly river we ran into a protruding ridge of the mountain, and 5 miles from this place on the slope, which the Bashkirians could not name, there was an old mine, where signs of copper in quartz and with gold were in the rabble. "

In the footsteps of more ancient developments, the Kiryabinsky copper mines were founded in 1749, and the Voznesensky copper mines in the Uchalinsky region at the beginning of the 19th century.

Ancient work on alluvial gold can be judged indirectly, based on the following facts.

N.I. Kuraev (1937) indicates that during the pre-revolutionary development of placers along the river. Miass (Orlovo-Nadezhdinskoe and Vasilievskoe swamps) near the village. Ilchigulova (Uchalinsky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan) found copper axes. Gold mining dates back to no later than 5-3 centuries BC. BC, when the later copper and bronze axes were used in the Urals.

At the aforementioned Sultanovskoye mine, while mining placer gold in gold-bearing "sands", copper and bronze tools were found: an eye ax, a chisel and two pieces of an earthen vessel. These items date back to 1000 BC.

A copper or bronze dagger and the same sickle were found at the Tanalyk mine of the Goryaevs (Baimaksky district of the Republic of Bashkortostan), which dates this find to the beginning of the last millennium BC.

Archaeological finds from this and later times are also found on the territory of the Chelyabinsk and Orenburg regions adjacent to the Republic of Bashkortostan. Based on the above information, we can presumably talk about the emergence of ancient gold mining in the South Urals as early as the copper-bronze age (finds at the Ioanno-Baptist and Sultanovskoye mines, on the Yusha river) and its continuation in the 8-12 centuries A.D. (a find near the town of Troitsk). Later, from century to century, there were rumors that there was gold in the depths of the Stone Belt. However, it was only at the turn of the 17th and 18th centuries that the history of the mining Urals began.

The discovery of industrial gold in the Urals was favored by many circumstances, including the decrees of Peter I, who took great care to discover gold in Russia and start mining it. In the very first years, when all power was concentrated in his hands, Peter I began to stubbornly seek the search for gold ore. On September 1, 1697, the order was given to the Tobolsk governor, Prince Cherkassk. Gold ore was named first according to the order: "... there will be someone according to what investigation according to whose answer, where he knows gold or silver and copper ores and mica, or will find it in the future, they would inform about it ...".

The call to search for gold in Russia is even more clearly formulated in the Petrovsky legalization of November 2, 1700: "to replenish gold and silver in his great sovereign Muscovy, in Moscow and in the cities to find gold and silver, copper and other ores ..." ...

These and other state acts of Peter I and his successors on the development of the mining business led to the discovery of gold in the Urals, Altai, Karelia and Transbaikalia almost simultaneously.

The Urals is the only region of Russia in the 18th century in which, based on the discovery of Erofei Markov in 1745, gold mining began to be created and successfully developed as an independent industry. At that time, only in the Urals there were special organizations in charge of gold mining, such as the Yekaterinburg gold mining expedition, the Berezovsky, Pyshminsky and Uktussky gold industries.

For 70 years (1745-1814), ore was the only source of gold production, and all gold mining in Russia during this period was concentrated in the Urals. The next most important circumstance confirming the primacy of the Urals as the birthplace of the gold industry is the discovery of Russian alluvial gold.

In 1814, the Ural foreman L.I. Brusnitsin for the first time in the modern history of Russia discovered alluvial gold in the Miass region and began its industrial production.

All of Brusnitsyn's childhood passed with a tray in his hands, he was a skilled, experienced washer, and the experience gained was very useful to him. Having become a foreman (mining foreman) and being tasked with testing the dumps for the development of gold-quartz veins in order to assess the possibility of their re-processing, he himself began to wash the samples and at the same time broke the usual scheme: he did not take samples to the factory, but significantly reduced their weight and simplified processing. , limited it to flushing on a tray in a river flowing near the dumps. And it became obvious that many small samples more quickly and reliably characterize the distribution of gold in the dump than rare large samples. Rich sites were identified quickly and reliably. Brusnitsyn began to feed the factory with his own ore, and increased metal production. All this earned the approval of his superiors, but it was a significant event only on the scale of the factory. Having finished studying the dumps, Brusnitsyn still spent more time by the river than at the factory. Now he washed samples on a tray not from ore dumps, but from what lay below - from river sand and pebble deposits. This was contrary to the production instructions of that time, but soon it was not Brusnitsyn's strange actions that were surprised, but the fact that gold sparkled in his tray!

This is how the first gold placer in the modern history of Russia (and generally in the northern countries) was discovered. On the basis of Brusnitsyn's initiative, a new direction of gold mining was created in a short time - the extraction of gold from the "sands". By 1823, gold-bearing placers were discovered in more than two hundred places, including in Bashkiria, and placer gold mining was successfully developing in a vast area from Denezhkin Kamen in the north to the southern Ural steppes. The business, started in the Urals, was then picked up in Altai, in Western and Eastern Siberia, in the Far East.

The gold (and mining in general) industry and the search business of Bashkiria, which is inextricably linked with it, have come a long way from handicraft works with their primitive equipment to modern technology, from small "master's" and artisanal developments to large mining enterprises and artisanal artels. At the dawn of its formation, mining was carried out mainly from gold-bearing ores of the oxidation zone of gold-sulfide, copper-pyrite and gold-quartz deposits.

The development of oxidized gold-bearing ores has been known since the middle of the 18th century. To provide ore to the Preobrazhensky copper-smelting plant (Zilair settlement), prospecting and exploration work was carried out in the Bashkir Trans-Urals. In 1749 Tanalykskoe was discovered, in 1750 - Uvaryazhskoe gold-copper pyrite deposits.

During the development of these deposits, and then of North Yuluk and Yulaly, butars were used to extract free gold. The upper horizons of the deposits were developed, as a rule, to the level of groundwater. The destroyed outcrops of gold-bearing "iron hats" and quartz veins, represented by a clay mass with the inclusion of ore and quartz material, were washed on butars and cradles, and the ore material and quartz were crushed in an ore mortar or thrown into a dump. The extraction of gold in this case reached 30-35%.

With the discovery of placer deposits in the first third of the 19th century, mining of ore gold practically ceases, since its extraction from placers was more profitable and less labor-intensive.

The first discoveries and the beginning of the development of gold placers in Bashkiria date back to the early 30s of the 19th century. At this time, in the Uchalinsky region, rich placers were discovered near the village. Muldakaevo on the river. Miass. In 1835, placers were discovered along the Uy and Shartymka rivers. Since 1837, the Sultanovskaya placer has been known in the Baymak region. In subsequent years, in addition to the discovery of placers in the basins of the Miass, Uy, Ural and Tanalyk rivers, discoveries followed in the Zilair and Beloretsk (basins of the Belaya and Bol. Avzyan rivers) regions. By the early 1900s, more than three hundred placers were already known, including all the largest ones.

Despite the use of ineffective and unproductive industrial instruments in the development of placers, the work was carried out very intensively. As a rule, only rich areas with an average “sand” content of at least 4-6 g / m 3 were developed. In the Uchalinsky region in the 19th century, the average annual production was about 400 kg of gold, and in the period 1875-1885. she reached 800 kg. In other regions of Bashkiria, the scale of gold mining was much lower.

In the 1900s, gold mining passed into the hands of joint stock companies. In connection with the consolidation of capital, the technical equipment of the mines has improved and their productivity has increased. The level of gold mining reached its maximum by the end of the first - the beginning of the second decade. According to incomplete data for the pre-revolutionary period, 35 tons of placer gold were mined on the territory of the republic (Kuznetsov, 1936), moreover, more than 70% of the production falls on the Uchalinsky region. Along with gold, prospecting, exploration and extraction of copper, platinoids, chromites, manganese and iron ores, and jasper were carried out. In 1907-1918. A powerful impetus to the development of the mining industry and the search for new deposits was given by the formation of the Anglo-Russian Tanalyk-Baymakskaya company, which was later transformed into the South Ural Mining Joint-Stock Company (SUGAO). In a short time, with the involvement of local miners, the company explored a vast territory in the south of Bashkiria and in the adjacent parts of the Orenburg region, discovered and developed many deposits that are still of industrial importance (Sibayskoye, Bakr-Tau, Uvaryazh, Tubinskoye, Semenovskoye, Yulaly, Bakr-Uzyak, Dergamysh, Kul-Yurt-Tau, etc.). A bright trace in the history of prospecting and mining in Bashkiria was left by the founder of the South UGAO Leslie Urquart, the chief geologist of the company, a member of the London Mineralogical Society Kingsbury, the director of the South UGAO A.F. Kabanov.

In the development of prospecting for deposits in Bashkiria, the contribution of the pre-revolutionary industrialists Rameevs, Goryaevs, geologists N.K. Vysotsky, A.P. Karpinsky, N.P. Barbota de Marni, E.G. Goyer and others.