A New Gold Rush

The yearning to get rich quick never dies. All over California and the Pacific Northwest, abandoned gold mines are being prepared for reopening, and general stores in gold-producing areas are doing big business in over-the-counter sales of picks, shovels, mining pans and how-to pamphlets. One Seattle manufacturer of portable metal-detection devices reports that so far this month sales to amateur and professional gold prospectors have increased 150%. "Literally thousands of people are coming through our office asking directions to the gold fields," says Will Summers, tourist director of California's Amador County. "Sometimes I think I'm back in the 1880s."

Is there really still gold out there?

Yes! The California fields were never played out but simply shut down in 1942 as unnecessary for the war effort. Ordinary American citizens have been required since 1934 to sell all gold to the Federal Government at a pegged price (currently $42.22 per oz.), and postwar mining costs became prohibitive. Since the U.S. Treasury stopped backing the dollar with gold in 1971, however, the price has soared to more than $100. The Senate has passed a bill allowing Americans to sell gold at market prices, and if the House votes to follow suit, it may set off the greatest stampede since the Klondike. Wesley Brewer, chief of the California State mines and geology division, says of the change in fashions: "It used to be that all anyone cared about was earthquakes. Now it's all gold mines."

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