We had a go at panning, where you repeatedly wash through river stones and grit, to leave the gold behind in the pan. This only works because the gold is much heavier than the rest and so stays behind in the pan.
We saw the quartz-crushing machine, which reduced the quartz, and the gold therein, to dust. There was then a hazardous process involving both mercury and arsenic, to separate out the gold. Unsurprisingly, miners' life expectancy was short. The people who made the best living were the saloon keepers.
Conditions were pretty basic, for the miners anyway, the nicer buildings being the preserve of the church and the saloon. The barber was a man of many skills: tooth puller, apothecary, and (if that didn't work) undertaker.
Only 88,000 tons of gold have been mined, ever, and only about1% of that was in the form of nuggets. It is believed that there are ten million tons in the oceans, if only someone could find a sensible way of getting at it. But since gold's value depends on its scarcity, it's perhaps best they don't.
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