There’s More Yellow In Indiana Than Just Corn! 

You might not think of Indiana as a gold bering state but just because we don’t have the geology to produce gold naturally doesn’t mean that we aren’t a hot bed location for gold prospecting. Indiana has been blessed with two different sources of gold over the years, the first gold was brought to Indiana from the east coast via the Teays River System and the second was brought here from Canada during the ice age via the glaciers. 

The Teays River System is a great mystery to many but two primary theories of how and where the river flowed have come to the surface over the years. The Teays River’s headwaters we’re located just outside of Blowing Rock, North Carolina and flowed northwesterly through Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois. The River brought us a significant amount of gold that lays between the Fort Wayne Area all the way through Terra Haute within the state of Indiana. The River flowed from the east to the west and deposited gold all along its path. The Teays River Gold is dull in color and is easily distinguishable from the gold that was brought down from Canada during the time when Indiana was being covered by the glaciers.

The Glaciers brought down more than just gold to Indiana, they brought down copper nuggets, silver, platinum, and diamonds from Canada. The glaciers scrapped our northern areas flat while leaving large glacial drifts of material in the southern central regions of the state of Indiana. These deposits left by the glaciers are filled with gold if you know how to recover the very small mesh size gold, most of this gold is between 50 and 100 minus mesh in size but over the years it has been reported that several one ounce nuggets have been found with the state. It’s not uncommon to find pickers in your equipment when doing a cleanup from specific areas of the state. There is gold laying on bedrock wherever the glaciers touched in the state, some areas bedrock is only a few feet deep while other areas are reported to be over 260 feet from the soil surface to bedrock. This gold that was deposited by the glaciers is extremely shinny and bright yellow and is easily identifiable compared to the dull, orange in color of the gold that was deposited by the Teays River.