Talk:Placer mining

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[edit] Name

This article says "name derives from the French placer, meaning pleasure", but I have a text which says the word is of Spanish origin. Could someone verify which source is incorrect please? Greenmountainboy

According to Merriam-Webster:

  Pronunciation: 'pla-s&r
  Function: noun
  Etymology: Spanish, from Catalan, submarine plain, from plaza place, from Latin platea broad street -- more at PLACE
  Date: 1848
  an alluvial, marine, or glacial deposit containing particles of valuable mineral and especially of gold

--Maximus Rex 20:31, 9 Dec 2003 (UTC)

In modern french "placer" means "to put". I see no connection with pleasure, but it may still be related to "placer mining" somehow. --FvdP

So I will now change "french" to "spanish". Is it possible that someone mistook placer for plaisir? Greenmountainboy

I'm responsible for the reference to the French. I got it from another article, upon the creation of this one. I've forgotten what this other article was, but I do remember that it indicated the French. In modern Spanish, placer means pleasure. In my limited experience, I don't think I've ever seen it used as a verb (cf. poner), nor am I aware of the geological definition (no surprise there), but I'll check my dictionary when I get access to it (four days from now). --Smack 01:50, 20 Dec 2004 (UTC)

[edit] hydrostatic pressure

This section needs some minor editing. The reference to hydrostatic pressure is not accurate. First, hydrostatic pressure refers to water pressures when the water is not moving and the discussion appears to be referring to moving water to move sediment through a sluice (see figure). Second, Using water is not necessarily the only way in which placer mining is accomplished. My geology dictionary (Glossary of Geology, 4th Ed., 1997, Julia Jackson, Ed.) defines placer as a surface deposit and placer mining as the extraction of these deposits (by inference: regardless of means). That is the way I have always understood the terms.

[edit] Hmmmm....

In California, from 1853 to 1884, "hydraulicking" of placers removed an enormous amount of material from the goldfields, material that was carried downstream and raised the level of the Central Valley by some seven feet in some areas and settled in a huge layer at the bottom of San Francisco Bay.

Interesting; the degree to which San Francisco Bay/Sacramento River estuary was filled in by this would be a useful figure. What's piqued my interest is all that sediment on the bottom of San Francisco Bay; old mining techniques were very low-efficiency and there's a good chance there's a high percentage of gold in that "huge layer at the bottom of San Francisco Bay". Reminds me of Dawson City, Yukon, a bit, where twenty years ago or so old tailings were used to pave the streets of a new subdivision. The tailings turned out to have a higher concentration of gold than material being sluiced on Eldorado and All Gold Creeks, and the entire subdivision and the source for the gravels used wound up being staked and mined. Many old tailings from gold workings have been re-excavated and re-worked, sometimes earning more than the original prospect (not that the original prospectors were always honest about how much they were pulling in). Not that digging up the bottom of San Francisco Bay is a viable option, given latter-day environmental standards, and I'm not a miner; but it's interesting nonetheless.Skookum1 19:11, 13 November 2006 (UTC)