Anyone panned in Missouri?

[Bill843]

I live in the St Louis area, I'd like to go out somewhere and try panning but I know that I won't be able to get any vacation time for several months at least.

Looking around online (and dreaming) I see there's a few sites that mention gold has been found less than a couple hours away from me:
http://www.treasurefish.com/missouri%20buried%20treasures.htm
This looks like the Cedar Creek area:
http://www.fs.fed.us/r9/forests/marktwain/recreation/sites/cedar_creek/
I would only be panning, and the US forest service website says that is allowed.
Has anyone here tried the area?

Considering that all I would do is pan anyway, would it be drastically better to find the time to get down to Kentucky or Tennessee instead? I'm kinda wondering if those areas are worked hard, because online I'm seeing that many of them allow power equipment.
-end-

[goldminer]

Kentucky is a bad move looking for gold. It's one of only two states in which gold has not been found. The other is Hawaii. And the only area in Tennessee that contains gold deposits is a narrow geological area that lies along the southern part of the TN/NC state line.

In Missouri, gold has been recover from watersheds in the counties of Adair (watch for diamonds), Chariton, Linn, Livingston, Macon, Putnam, Randolph, and Schuyler. Gold most often recovered in Missouri is sized fine to flour. Glacial movement from the area that is now called Iowa deposited these colors.

Glacial colors are virtually always scattered vs. concentrated. Check with state & or university geologists to find out where morains are located. These are the areas that mark the most southerly movement that a glacier made before it met warm temperatures that persisted and caused it to melt back towards the north.

Locate waterways that cut through morains. They will have carved colors out of the gold bearing surface material that the glacial brought south and then left behind when it receeded.

Learn how to "read the creek"...identify obstructions in the waterway that would have reduced the velocity of floodwater to a point that would let the colors fall out and deposit. A gravel bar is a good example. One doesn't form haphazardly; rather, it forms when something reduced the velocity of floodwater in that location that let the rocks and gravels then sands fall out and locate there.

Good hunting!

[Bill843]

I have already been warned elsewhere that if you pan for gold in N Missouri, you should do it for fun, 'cause you can do it all day and not fill half a thimble. But it is out there, and there are free places to do it. Though the place I had in mind may be too far south, it is the north-central counties basically.

I wouldn't go until late spring or summer anyway, so I got a while to work on things.
~

[Silver Uno]

Besides crowns and dubloons where in florida has gold been found!! All I ever seen down is sugar sand and limestone.

su