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8, JanuaryGold Panning is the process of extracting gold from the soil with the use of a tool that looks like a pan. The pan looks like an upside down lampshade that has been cut off 3/4 of the way to the top. Inside the pan are little ridges that catch the heavier particles in the sand(ie; the gold), to picked out by a miner by hand or tweezers later.
Gold panning has been around for a long time but is mostly known for its iconic role in the American Gold Rush days of the 1800's. This was a miner's first tool in discovering new claims along river and creek beds. If the miner found gold he either kept panning or used greater methods of extracting the gold from then on out.
Many newcomers to gold mining don't want to pan, they want to use things like dredges, sluices, and highbankers. What they don't realize that even after they use these more industrialized tools, eventually they will still need to pan the dirt, if for no other reason than to be more thorough of extracting gold.
A gold pan is an essential tool in the miner and recreational gold hunters tool kit.