Prospect/Prospector

The search for gold carried out by individuals (prospectors) looking for surface indications. Both words took on this special meaning after the California gold rush of 1848. It was this gold rush which ushered in the age of the gold prospector who, for the next fifty years, explored for gold throughout the western United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

The concept of the prospector has a rather romantic image, though the life was intolerably hard and persists today among the fifty thousand members of the Gold Prospectors’ Association of America who go out in the hills in an unending search for gold. The true modern successors to the American image are the garimpeiros of Brazil or small miners in the Philippines and Indonesia. See also Gold Rushes, Placer.