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.....During the Ice Age, our mineral wealth changed dramatically as giant ice sheets, called “glaciers,” some more than a mile thick, moved untold trillions of tons of gold bearing material into the Midwest. Slowly they pushed forward from the North, grinding up enormous amounts of rock beneath their incredible weight. Geological evidence suggests that the glaciers advanced and receded at least 20 times, with each new advance forever altering the landscape and leaving behind more gold (see 2.2). Not every glacial advance made it into our state, but they all freed and moved more gold bearing material in our direction. The most recent of these are called the Wisconsin and Illinoian advances.

From chapter 2 - “Origin of Midwest Gold”

.....In Indiana and its neighboring states, the characteristics of a stream will largely determine how well it can form gold deposits. These characteristics are generally not uniform throughout the entire stream. Certain sections can make great gold deposits, while other parts of the same stream may deposit almost no gold. Many factors must come together in a stream to form a good placer gold deposit. A prospector must learn how to locate the best sections in order to find gravel with the highest concentration of gold.

.....Your goal should be to figure out what path the gold has taken in a particular stream. Once you locate that path, you can more easily find deposits and paystreaks. Deposits can occur anywhere that water velocity slowed along this path, including bedrock drop-offs, crevices, sharp inside bends and downstream from any major obstruction. In the Midwest, it is also possible to find an Ice Age deposit (chapter 3) that doesn’t conform to flow patterns of the modern stream at all.

From chapter 7 - “Gold Sampling Technique”

.....Sometimes while dredging, you can see the small pieces of gold in the sides and bottom of your dredge hole, which helps in determining where the best gold is coming from. There may be two or more layers of gold deposited by separate flood events, with relatively barren gravel in between. In many instances, a modern flood doesn’t have enough force to completely strip away an older deposit, so the gold it deposits will be at a higher level in the gravel.

From chapter 4 - “Stream Characteristics”

.....Glacial gravel contains every rock type imaginable all mixed together, making it very difficult to get any ground penetration with a VLF type metal detector. Even the specialty “gold” detectors can lose about 75% of their depth in red ground. When the gravel is wet, the situation is even worse, because moist red ground is so conductive that it can give false signals to a VLF type detector. Mineral rich ground is best searched after a long dry spell, this is when you will achieve greatest depth.

From chapter 9 - “Dredging For Gold”

From chapter 10 - “ Metal Detecting”

.....In the last 20 or so years, many diamond bearing kimberlite formations have been found throughout the region (see 11.1 & 11.2). Undoubtedly, more deposits will be found in the future, as the search is ongoing. Diamond mining has become quite a big business in Canada, the production figure in 2004 alone was 12.6 million carats. This makes Canada one of the top diamond producers in the world. Just imagine how many millions of carats must have been glacially transported into Indiana and the rest of the Midwest!

From chapter 11 - “ Midwest Diamonds”

.....I have conducted test sampling similar to this, but on a very small scale, with impressive results. At an active quarry, I was able to take several dozen samples of the surface (above bedrock) gravel, covering an area of about 20 acres. By keeping careful records, I determined that the various samples contained between 2.2 and 5.8 dwt. of gold per ton. In this same 20-acre area, I found patches of ground several hundred cubic feet in size, that when sampled yielded much higher results, a sample from one patch of “red ground” showed 14.5 dwt. per ton.

From chapter 12 - “ Commercial Possibilities”