Patented Lode Claim

The Red Wing Mine

U.S.M.S. 6286
El Dorado Co., California
Patented March 31, 1949
13.748 acres
The gold

What comes out of the rock at the Red Wing comes back in three forms: visible gold in the quartz from the working face, fine gold concentrated in the pan after milling, and clean flakes piled up after a high-grade run. Some of these specimens have been in the family since the 1980s. The rest are from the last three years.

When Don's family worked the property in the 1980s they set aside a bucket of table concentrates from the mill. They thought it had gold in it. They could not capture it economically and they left it. Don found the bucket forty years later, ran it through the ball mill in November of 2025, and pulled more than five grams of gold out of seventy-five pounds of saved tailings.

We always knew it had gold in it. That's why it was saved.

From the channel — November 8, 2025
Macro photograph of a continuous band of gold pressed into dark quartz host rock.
A band against dark quartz.
A black gold pan full of fine yellow gold concentrate, dry.
The pan, worked down.
Close-up of mixed gold flakes and silver-grey pan material, wet.
Flakes still in the sand.
A crescent of fine gold concentrate hugging the inside edge of a black gold pan, wet.
A crescent in the wet pan.
A small white quartz specimen with two clear gold inclusions, held between thumb and finger over a dirt path.
A specimen on the path.
A bed of larger gold flakes settled in the bottom of a wet pan.
A bed of coarser flakes.
Extreme macro of gold flakes coating the side of a clear quartz crystal.
Flake along a quartz edge.
A folded, ragged sheet of gold sitting in dark slate matrix.
A sheet in the slate.
Several separate pieces of gold scattered across a dark slate surface.
Scatter on the slate.
Hand-sized piece of iron-stained quartz held against a finger, with bright gold flecks visible across the central and right portions of the specimen.
Visible gold in the quartz.
A heaped pile of clean coarse gold flakes after final cleanup, dry.
The heap after cleanup.
A tiny piece of pale quartz with a few gold inclusions, balanced on a fingertip.
A piece on the fingertip.