Looking at the Sierra Nevada Mountain's streams and rivers, you can see that there is a lot of moving water coming out of the mountains. Rocks are moved around; rivers are full of moving dirt, sand, gravel and fast-moving water. 

This happens every year and causes the buried gold that is in the river's bed to become loose and moved downstream of the river. When this happens you can see many people, with their little gold pans, working the rivers for gold. The surprising thing is, they find it. 

As an example, several years ago there was a man and his son who had a hidden closet built in his house where he stored his gold in jars. He showed his closet to a person and several days later someone broke into his house and stole jars of gold. They found the gold jar when the person tried to sell the jar with the gold nuggets. And near Jacksonville, which is no more, buried by water, about 10 small cans of gold were buried near one of the houses and is still buried. No one ever found the gold 

If you are ambitious, for several dollars you can buy a gold pan and start looking for gold in one of the small rivers. But first, you must know what you are looking for.

For example, there is fool's gold, which many people have been duped into thinking is real gold. The best place to learn about real gold is to visit a place where they sell gold. 

As an example, if you are close to Jamestown, California, stop in one of the stores that have gold for sale. We did, and he explained, to us what type of pan to use, what to look for, what to throw away and not to throw away. After several hours, we went to a small river in the area and started to look for gold. To our surprise, we found some, a very small nugget that was worth $200. 

Later on, during the year we took several children and our children to areas along Highway 49, The Gold Miner's highway, and stopped at several small rivers and let the children out of the car to look for gold. They thought that they found gold but it was fool's gold. 

Therefore, a good outing would be looking for gold in California. You can look in the river without breaking the law if you stay below the waterline. If you go above the waterline there is a possibility you could be arrested for trespassing.