Club 49 Prospecting BETA v2.3

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Club 49 Prospecting

Free, members-only gold maps for California

872 honey holes LiDAR terrain Mining claims Crews & chat Deep analysis Historical maps

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What this app is

A free prospecting and adventure map for the American West, ten states from California to Colorado, gold country and silver country both, from the Klamath and Trinity ranges and the Mother Lode across the Comstock and the Great Basin to the Rockies, the Cascades and the desert Southwest. It is built entirely from official public data, nothing invented: the full USGS Mineral Resources Data System (20,000+ gold sites, 28,000+ mineral occurrences), our own honey-hole model built on USGS 3DEP LiDAR terrain, geology, fault lines and burn history, the live BLM mining-claim index, public county tax-auction land, the NBMG Nevada mining districts, plus CAL FIRE and NWS hazards, USGS stream gauges, and community science from iNaturalist. Every layer names its source. Data pulled July 25, 2026.

Beyond the gold

The same map carries the whole adventure: waterfalls, hot springs, swimming holes and wild caves; ghost towns, haunted places and sourced lost-mine legends; famous gem and collector-stone localities from Virgin Valley black opal to California's benitoite, several of them public fee-dig; live storm alerts and radar, active wildfires, the CDFW wolf tracker; a photo Rock ID that cross-checks the mapped geology; Car Mode with a follow-me GPS companion; and cinematic 3D flyovers of the West's natural wonders. Free for members, always.

Finding your way around

There are four ways into everything, and each feature lives in exactly one of them.

The header: the region menu (CA · Gold now, more states as they ship), then Layers, the Table, and this Guide. Whichever surface is open shows a gold underline on its button.

On the map, four floating controls: the green Club button holds everything social with plain labels (club chat, the finds board, discussions, the job board, crews, your find journal, direct messages, and invites); the AI button reads the ground in view; the brown Map tools button holds everything visual (3D flyover, the Image Lab, dark mode, sharing your exact view, the daily brief, and text size); and the locate button shows where you stand and lists the nearest ground.

The Layers panel: the live gold ticker with Today’s brief beside it (gold, rivers, weather and your challenge, with a plain verdict on whether today is a dig day), then one-tap views, then every layer with its own switch. Anything a view turns on, you can turn off by hand in the list below it.

Your hub (the membership button, top right): your rank and credits, your season tally, the leaderboard, notifications, expeditions, challenges, add-ons, and your data controls.

Keyboard, on a computer: press L for Layers, T for the Table, G for this Guide, D for dark mode, and Escape backs out of anything. Reading comfort: text size (Normal, Large, Largest) lives under Map tools; the map itself always stays pixel-exact.

The honey-hole model (v6)

The model walks every mapped stream, keeps points in proven placer ground, and scores each 0 to 100 by cross-referencing the established gold-geology criteria (USGS placer deposit models) against real datasets: 19% placer-working density within 2.5 km; 8% recorded production size; 7% producing lode mines within 3 km; 8% gold-favorable host rock (greenstone belts, ultramafics, metasediments); 6% structural control, mapped faults within 800 m; 7% catchment size, the total upstream drainage area (NHDPlus), because more gold-bearing country above a point delivers more gold to it; 8% post-2014 burn-scar recharge; 5% floodplain width; 6% slope-break (canyon-exit dump zones); 7% low local gradient (deposition zones); 5% bend sharpness; 5% stream confluences; 4% the 200 to 1,100 m foothill band; 5% ancient Tertiary-channel indicators. Each target is enriched with watershed, drainage area, land owner, live claim status, nearest live stream gauge, host rock (serpentinite flagged), fault count, and two LiDAR-read measurements. That's the full source-to-placer chain: favorable rock and faults (source) × a large catchment to gather it × low-gradient traps (collection). A high score is a research lead, not a guarantee; always confirm a site with a pan before committing to it.

Ancient floodplains & terraces (read from LiDAR)

Using the USGS 3DEP elevation data, the model runs a cross-valley transect at each target and reads two things off the terrain: floodplain width, how far the flat, near-creek-elevation valley bottom extends, i.e. the ancient/active flood-deposit belt where flood gold spreads and drops (a broad floodplain ≥120 m is called out in the popup); and the bench / terrace scan, the first flat shoulder 8 m+ above the creek, which is a stranded paleo-channel holding old, often-untouched gravels. Turn on the two LiDAR layers (hillshade + slope) to see these benches and abandoned channels with your own eyes, then use the popup numbers to know how far up and which way to climb.

Where gold comes from (lode → placer)

Placer gold doesn't form in the creek, it erodes into it. The original gold crystallized in quartz veins (lode/hardrock) when hot mineral fluids rose along faults and shear zones through favorable rock (greenstone, serpentinite, metasediments). Over millions of years those veins weather and shed gold downhill; water sorts it by weight and concentrates it in the stream, that's your placer. So the chain is: favorable rock + fault → quartz vein outcrop (lode) → erosion → placer in the drainage below.

The app now shows both ends of that chain as separate, toggleable types under “Documented gold sites”: red = lode/hardrock mines (the SOURCE) and amber = placer workings (where it collected). To find fresh ground: pick a red lode site, look uphill for its quartz vein outcrop (often iron-stained/rusty “gossan” rock, white quartz float on the surface), and work the first drainage below it, especially where that drainage hits a flat, bend, or bedrock. The honey-hole model already rewards reaches that have lode sources within 3 km and sit on favorable host rock, which is exactly this source-to-placer logic scored automatically. To read the outcrop itself, turn on bedrock geology (favorable belts) plus the LiDAR hillshade (to spot the ridges, cuts and benches) and zoom in with Satellite for surface color/quartz.

Mineral commodities (gold pathfinders)

Gold rarely travels alone. The Mineral commodities layer plots 153,475 non-gold mineral occurrences from the USGS database, and the most useful ones for a gold hunter are chromite (green, chromium ore that marks serpentinite/ultramafic belts, exactly the Klamath gold host) and mercury/cinnabar (red, the classic companion of California lode and placer gold). Silver and copper often run in the same quartz-sulfide veins as gold. So a cluster of chromite + mercury + a fault is a strong “gold belt” signature even where no gold is recorded yet. Toggle each commodity on/off; tap any dot for what it is and why it matters.

Geophysics, finding concealed sources

The surface only shows part of the story; geophysics sees under the cover. The aeromagnetic overlay (NOAA EMAG2) maps magnetic anomalies, serpentinite bodies and mafic intrusions read as magnetic highs, while some altered/mineralized zones read as lows; the boundaries (gradients) often follow the deep faults that channeled gold fluids. The isostatic gravity overlay (USGS) maps buried density, gravity highs = dense mafic/ultramafic rock, lows = granitic intrusions or basins; the steep edges mark concealed structural boundaries and contacts. Where a magnetic or gravity gradient lines up with mapped faults, lode mines, and chromite/mercury, you're reading a buried source zone, the kind of ground that fed the placers downstream. These are regional-scale, interpretive layers (coarse resolution), use them to spot belts and trends, then confirm with the geology, structure, and a pan.

Bedrock geology & seismicity

Host rock matters more than most prospectors realize. The region's gold rode up in quartz veins through specific rock belts, greenstone/metavolcanics, serpentinite/ultramafics, and metasediments (slate, argillite, chert). The bedrock geology overlay (USGS State Geologic Map) shades those units, and every honey hole's popup names its host rock and flags whether it sits in a gold-favorable belt, an 8% factor in the score. The earthquake layer (USGS, M3.5+ since 1980) traces today's active faults and shear zones; those same structures are what fractured the rock and channelled the gold-bearing fluids. Where dense seismicity and mapped faults sit near lode mines, you're looking at vein-source country feeding the placers downstream. (Seismicity is context, not a direct score input, the gold signal is the host rock and fault proximity, which the model already weighs.)

The data table

The Data table button (top bar) opens every site, honey holes, scout mines, and placer workings, in one sortable, filterable grid. Click any column header to sort; filter by minimum score, maximum distance from your address, unclaimed-only, gold-favorable-rock-only, burn-recharged-only, or a name/stream search. Tap a row to fly there on the map, or hit CSV to export exactly what you've filtered for a spreadsheet or to share.

Scout layer, high-yield, pre-WW2 & war-stopped

Amber stars: the only 32 gold sites in the region with recorded Large/Medium production. Hammers: 186 workings whose first dated activity precedes 1941, green if USGS still carries them as “Producer”, gray if abandoned. Dark-red hammers are the war-stopped class: last recorded activity 1930 to 1942, never restarted, in October 1942 the War Production Board's Order L-208 shut every US gold mine, and many owners (some of whom died overseas) never came back; pay gravel was often left in place. Every site shows live claim status. Famous lode mines are often patented private land the federal claim index can't see, verify parcel ownership. Never enter old adits or shafts.

Reading the ground

Placer gold drops where water slows: inside bends, gravel-bar tails, behind boulders, bedrock cracks, canyon exits, and confluences, always dig to bedrock or false-bedrock clay. Use the topographic basemap and the two LiDAR layers (1-m bare earth): hydraulic pit scars, dredge-tailing corduroy, stranded terrace benches and abandoned meanders all jump out of the hillshade; benches show as flat green ribbons on the slope map. Burn scars recharge the creeks below them for several winters; flood zones mark flood-gold ground; faults mark vein country that feeds placers downhill. Check each honey hole's live gauge link before driving out, work reaches as flows drop after the spring melt.

Finding old mining features with LiDAR

The layers below are the same public datasets professionals use to identify historic workings from the surface. Used together, they allow you to locate dredges, ditches, hydraulic pits and cabin sites by eye:

1) LiDAR bare-earth hillshade = see through the trees. Bare-earth LiDAR strips the vegetation away, so under forest canopy you see the ground itself. Turn it on (2.5× exaggerated) and zoom in: look for shapes nature doesn't make, scalloped hydraulic-mine pit walls, ditches & flumes contouring the slope, corduroy dredge-tailing rows, terraced platforms, raised road grades, and rectangular cabin/headframe foundations. These jump right out, exactly how people relocate lost diggings.

2) Historical topo maps = what used to be there. The Historical topo overlay shows USGS quads back ~100+ years. A mine, mill, ditch, or cabin drawn on a 1900s map that is gone from today's satellite is a prime spot, flip between historical topo and Satellite at the same place to find them.

The method: scan the LiDAR hillshade for unnatural shapes → check the same spot on historical topo (was a mine there?) → confirm on Satellite → drop a waypoint and go look. The Inspect targets layer pre-marks documented dredges, hydraulic pits and drift mines to start you off.

Reading the riverbed and shallow bedrock

The most productive ground is where bedrock lies shallow or is exposed, which places the pay layer within reach. The Exposed bedrock layer maps every documented rapid, falls, and rock outcrop. Rapids form where bedrock crosses the channel, so each one concentrates gold in the bedrock cracks, crevices and potholes beneath shallow water. China Rapids on the Sacramento is a clear example, a bedrock rib that spans the river. Work the cracks and the slack water immediately below each rib.

Three ways to read below the surface:

1) Read the bottom optically. In clear, low water (late summer to fall, after flows drop), the river bottom is visible from above: gravel bars, exposed bedrock, and deep pools (which read darker). Switch the basemap to Satellite and zoom to its deepest level (z22). At China Rapids you can trace the bedrock ribs and the slack water behind them where gold settles. Results are best on imagery captured at low flow.

2) Read the dry ground in fine detail. The LiDAR hillshade is now a 2.5×-exaggerated multidirectional render, the crispest setting, so terraces, paleochannels, hydraulic pits and dredge tailings stand out sharply. The new 2-ft contour lines layer adds exact micro-relief: tight, bunched contours = a bench edge or bedrock rib; wide-spaced = a flat where gold settles. Stack the elevation tint under the hillshade for colored relief.

3) Read the water level. Each honey hole's live USGS gauge tells you the depth/flow right now, the lower it is, the more bottom you can see and reach. China Rapids sits below the Bend Bridge gauge on the Sacramento.

Claims & the law (read this before you dig)

Green-hatched ground holds someone's active claim, and prospecting there without permission is claim-jumping. Before you put a pan or a shovel in the dirt anywhere, you owe it to yourself to know which of three buckets the ground falls in: open and unclaimed federal land (you may be fine for casual panning), claimed or private land (you need the owner or claimant's permission), or withdrawn or protected land (off limits to mining entirely). The layers on this map answer all three, but the law below is what governs what you are actually allowed to do.

Buying gold ground: land and mineral rights, the playbook

There are three honest roads to owning ground you can legally work. A patented mining claim is full private property, usually including the minerals: these trade on the open market and sometimes in the club Marketplace. County tax auctions (the “Land for sale” layer) sell tax-defaulted parcels for the taxes owed, sometimes for a few thousand dollars, but the deed conveys ONLY the interest the county held. An unpatented mining claim is not land ownership at all: it is the exclusive right to the locatable minerals on open federal ground, held by filings and yearly fees.

The trap to respect: split estate. In much of the West the surface and the minerals under it were separated generations ago. Land patented under the Stock-Raising Homestead Act of 1916, for example, reserved the minerals to the United States, so someone else can hold a mining claim under a ranch. Before money moves, you must learn which estates the seller actually owns.

The research chain, in order: 1) the county assessor record for the APN (what is taxed, to whom); 2) the county recorder chain of title (deeds, reservations, easements); 3) the federal land patent at BLM GLO Records (the original grant out of the United States, and what it reserved); 4) active claims on or around the parcel at BLM MLRS; 5) zoning and any SMARA implications if you intend to mine rather than pan. Every tax-auction popup on the map carries these links pre-aimed at that parcel’s county.

Plain words about risk: tax-auction lists change weekly and owners can redeem right up to the sale; buy-side surprises (liens, access landlocks, severed minerals) are on the buyer; and none of this section is legal advice. For real money, a title company and a minerals-literate attorney are cheap insurance. The map gets you to the shortlist; the courthouse closes the deal.

Reading rocks: a prospector’s classification primer

Every rock on Earth is one of three families, and each family tells a different gold story. Igneous rock cooled from melt: granite and granodiorite are the deep-cooked batholith that drove gold-bearing fluids into the surrounding rock, while basalt and andesite are the young lava lids of the Cascades (great for caves, poor for gold). Sedimentary rock is debris that settled: modern river gravel is where placer gold hides today, and the cemented Tertiary gravels up on the ridges are the ancient riverbeds the hydraulic miners chased. Metamorphic rock has been cooked and squeezed: this is gold country’s home team, the slates, phyllites and greenstones of the Sierra foothills and Klamaths that host the quartz veins.

The rocks a gold prospector should know on sight: serpentinite (waxy, blue-green to black, often sheared; California’s state rock and the signature of the gold-carrying fault belts), greenstone (dull dark green altered lava, host of many lode districts), slate/phyllite (flat splitting, sheeny; the country rock of the Mother Lode), vein quartz (white to gray, heavy, look for rusty honeycomb boxwork where sulfides weathered out, that rust is the tell), granodiorite (salt-and-pepper crystals, the batholith itself), and limestone/marble (fizzes with vinegar, cave-maker). If your creek gravel runs serpentinite, greenstone and rusty quartz, you are in the game.

Sixty-second field tests, in the order pros run them: streak on unglazed porcelain (real gold streaks gold, pyrite streaks greenish-black); scratch, a knife blade separates soft from hard, glass separates harder still; magnet, magnetite jumps, black sands cling; vinegar fizz marks carbonate; and heft, gold is astonishingly heavy for its size, twice pyrite. The Rock ID tool (Map tools → Rock ID) reads a photo against the mapped geologic unit where you found the stone, then tells you which of these tests would settle it; the tests always outrank the photo.

Dredging in California: the straight answer

Motorized suction dredging is currently prohibited statewide, and there are NO open seasonal dredge windows anywhere in California right now. Three laws stack up to that result: Fish & Game Code §5653 requires a CDFW suction-dredge permit, the 2009 moratorium (SB 670) suspended those permits, and SB 637 (2015) added a State Water Board permit (Water Code §13172.5) for which no program has ever been established. The old river-by-river season tables from before 2009 are dead letters until the state reopens permitting. If that ever happens, this section and every honey-hole popup will carry the per-river windows the day they exist; until then, any “dredge season” you hear about for California is out of date.

What IS generally legal today: gold panning, and non-motorized sluicing, as casual use on open BLM and National Forest ground, with hand tools, no significant stream-bank disturbance, and respect for closures. Extra restrictions apply inside Wild & Scenic corridors (that layer is on the map), state parks, refuges, and on any active claim without the claimant’s permission.

The be-legal checklist before any water work: 1) land status (ownership layer + posted signs), 2) claim status (claims layer, verify at BLM MLRS), 3) special designations (Wild & Scenic, parks, refuges), 4) method (hand tools yes, motors no), 5) the current rules straight from the state: CDFW suction dredge page →.

The laws that actually apply (federal and California)

Federal: gold is a “locatable” mineral under the General Mining Law of 1872, the law that lets a citizen locate and hold a claim on open federal land. How you may disturb the surface is set by BLM 43 CFR 3809 (BLM land) and USFS 36 CFR 228A (National Forest). Minerals split three ways and the rules differ: locatable (gold, silver, most metals, you stake a claim), leasable (oil, gas, geothermal, you lease), and salable (sand, gravel, you buy a permit).

California adds its own layer on top of the federal rules:

• SMARA, the Surface Mining and Reclamation Act (Public Resources Code 2710 and following), requires a reclamation plan and financial assurance for surface mining beyond the limited exemptions, and a state Mine ID from the Office of Mine Reclamation.
• CDFW Lake or Streambed Alteration Agreement (Fish & Game Code 1602), required for any work that alters the bed, bank or channel of a river, stream or lake.
• Regional Water Quality Control Board, an NPDES permit and/or a 401 water-quality certification if you discharge to or disturb waters.
• Suction dredge prohibition (Fish & Game Code 5653), no state dredge permits are being issued, so motorized in-stream dredging is off the table.
• County rules, a use permit and CEQA review for anything past hand work, set locally.

How to stake a claim, step by step

This is the recreational-to-small-miner path for staking open federal ground. Walk it in order and do not skip the filings, a claim that is not recorded on time is no claim at all.

1. Confirm the ground is open. Turn on Mining claims (active) and Public vs private land, and check it is not inside a Protected area (park, wilderness, Wild & Scenic corridor) or otherwise withdrawn from mineral entry. Cross-check the exact spot on mlrs.blm.gov.
2. Pick your claim type. Placer for stream and alluvial gold, up to 20 acres per person (an association of up to eight people can hold 160 acres). Lode for gold in a vein in place, up to 1,500 by 600 feet.
3. Locate it on the ground. Set monuments at the corners and post a location notice with your name, the date, the claim type, and the legal description (township, range and section aliquot parts, the same survey grid the Survey grid layer draws).
4. Record with the county. File the location notice or certificate with the county recorder where the claim sits, within California's deadline (90 days of location), with the county recording fee.
5. File with the BLM within 90 days. Submit the location to the BLM with the location fee, the processing fee, and the first maintenance fee (or claim the Small Miner Waiver if you hold ten or fewer claims nationwide). You get a serial number, the same case number you see when you tap a claim on this map.
6. Maintain it every year. The annual maintenance fee (roughly $200 per claim) is due by September 1, or you file the small-miner waiver and perform and record the required assessment work. Miss it and the claim goes null and void, it drops to the inactive layer here and the ground is open to re-stake.

Fees change, the figures above are recent ballparks, not a quote. Confirm current amounts on the BLM fee schedule before you file.

Going industrial, the full permitting path

If you mean to work a claim at scale, the law sorts operations into three tiers by how much you disturb the surface, and the jump from hobby to industry is mostly a permitting and bonding exercise. The Active mine operations layer on this map plots the real BLM Plans of Operations, so you can see what permitted, industrial-scale mining actually looks like on the ground near you.

1. Casual use. Pan, hand sluice, metal detect. No notice, no permit, no surface disturbance to speak of.
2. Notice (43 CFR 3809) / USFS Notice of Intent. Small mechanized operations disturbing up to 5 acres on BLM land. You file a notice, post a reclamation bond, and the agency has a short review window.
3. Plan of Operations (43 CFR 3809 / 36 CFR 228). Required for anything beyond casual use on Forest land, or more than 5 acres or significant disturbance on BLM land. This is the real permit, and it triggers everything below.
4. NEPA review. The National Environmental Policy Act requires an Environmental Assessment, or a full Environmental Impact Statement for large projects, with public comment. This is usually the longest step, measured in months to years.
5. California SMARA. A reclamation plan plus financial assurance, approved by the lead agency (usually the county) and reviewed by the state Department of Conservation, plus your Mine ID from the Office of Mine Reclamation.
6. Water and wildlife. A CDFW 1602 Streambed Alteration Agreement, a Regional Water Board NPDES permit and 401 certification, and, if you touch waters of the United States, a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Section 404 permit.
7. County and air. A conditional use or surface-mining permit with CEQA review from the county, and an air-quality permit from the local Air District.
8. Worker safety. Register the mine with MSHA (the Mine Safety and Health Administration) and complete the required MSHA training before any crew works the site.
9. Bond and reclaim. Post the financial assurance, reclaim disturbed ground as you go, and you get the bond back only after the land is regraded and revegetated to the approved standard.

Official law & filing links

• BLM mining claims and filing, mlrs.blm.gov and the BLM locatable minerals program
• BLM surface management rule, 43 CFR 3809; Forest Service rule, 36 CFR 228
• California SMARA / Office of Mine Reclamation, conservation.ca.gov/dmr
• CDFW Lake & Streambed Alteration (1602), wildlife.ca.gov/Conservation/LSA
• CDFW suction dredge information, wildlife.ca.gov suction dredge
• State & Regional Water Boards, waterboards.ca.gov
• Mine safety (MSHA), msha.gov

Old maps, lost places & legends

Under Old maps through history you can fade a whole era of USGS historical topo over today's ground, the earliest editions reach back to the survey era of the 1880s and 1890s for the country that was mapped then. Old maps are where the gold history hides: the cabins, stamp mills, ditches, wagon roads, post offices and whole townsites that the Forest Service and USGS quietly dropped from the modern sheets are still drawn on the old ones. Slide an old era over the satellite or LiDAR and the vanished country comes back.

Lost & removed places plots that disappearance as points. It pulls the USGS gazetteer's historical features, the official record of places that no longer exist on the landscape, ghost towns, abandoned crossings, post offices and settlements that were taken off current maps. Tap one for its name, what it was, and its county. These are real federal records (the USGS National Map geonames historical layers), but the old coordinates can be rough, so treat each pin as “somewhere right around here” and confirm it against a historical topo era.

Lost-mine & treasure legends is the fun one, and it is clearly marked as folklore. Each gold star is a documented Gold Rush legend, Stoddard's lost Gold Lake, the Lost Cement Mine, the cached gold at Tragedy Spring, the Gold Bluffs beach mania, the lost cabins of the Trinity Alps, placed at the region in the story. These are not mapped deposits and the pins are approximate. They are here for the history and the fun of it, never as a dig target, always verify land, claims and the law before you act on anything near one.

Active mine operations (in the Land & access group) is the other end of the timeline: the live BLM Plans of Operations, the real permitted, industrial-scale mines working federal ground right now, with their commodity, acreage and status. It pairs with the “Going industrial” steps above so you can see what a fully permitted operation actually looks like on the map near you.

Gold Rush & historic maps (now live). The Gold Rush & historic maps picker drops a real georeferenced 1800s map straight onto the modern terrain, so you can read the old mining districts, ditches, camps and townsites against today's ground and the LiDAR. There are more than 90 maps grouped by region in the picker, from the Klamath and Trinity down through the northern mines and the Mother Lode to Mariposa. These are public-domain maps from the David Rumsey Map Collection, georeferenced through the free Allmaps tile service, and each one links back to its source page.

Three ways to compare. Once a map is up, switch between Fade (the opacity slider), Swipe (drag a divider so it is old map on one side, today's satellite or LiDAR on the other), and Spyglass (a lens that reveals the old map only under your cursor). Swipe and spyglass are the fastest way to pin an old ditch, hydraulic pit, mill or vanished camp onto exact modern ground.

Scan this view for more. The 20 are a starting set. Tap Scan this view for more historic maps and the app searches the whole georeferenced archive for maps covering wherever you are looking, checks each one actually draws, and adds them to the picker. That is how you reach the deeper material, the old mining-district, county and geologic maps that show where the ground was really worked, anywhere in the gold country.

Property lines & not trespassing

Two layers answer “whose land is this?” without you setting foot on it. Public vs private land shades every parcel a public agency manages, BLM, National Forest (USFS), state, etc., color-coded, with the agency named when you tap it. Anything NOT shaded is private, treat it as no-go without permission. This is the real anti-trespassing tool: casual panning is generally fine on the shaded public land (where it's not claimed or withdrawn), and never okay on the blank/private ground. Property lines draws the actual county parcel boundaries when you zoom in, so you can see exactly where one ownership ends and the next begins.

About owner names: the counties deliberately keep owner names out of their free public map data for privacy, that database is what paid apps like onX and Landgrid license. So instead of a name on the map, each parcel popup gives you its APN/address and a one-tap “look up owner” link to the county assessor (free), where the name is public record. If you want owner names rendered directly on the map, onX Hunt or a Landgrid subscription is the only way to get that legally.

Score = geology and the law, together

A spot can be geologically perfect and still be a spot you are not allowed to touch. So every honey-hole score now folds in the law of the land, not just the ground. Each hole is read against its surface owner and live BLM claim status, then sorted into one of five access classes, and the score is nudged so the ground you can actually work floats to the top:

• Workable, open public land (BLM or Forest Service) with no claim on it. These get a small boost. Casual hand panning is generally legal here, but confirm at the spot that it is not inside a wilderness or Wild & Scenic corridor.
• Permission needed, either inside an active claim (the minerals are taken) or on private or unverified ground. The geology is still shown, the access is gated.
• Off-limits, federal project land (Bureau of Reclamation or Army Corps), where mineral entry is effectively closed. These are pushed down and ringed in red so you do not plan a trip around them.

Each hole's popup shows its access badge and the plain-English reason, the displayed score alongside the raw geology score (so nothing is hidden), and a know the law link straight to the legal section. Turn on “Workable now” only under the honey-hole layer to hide everything but open, legally pannable public land, the fastest way to plan a trip you can actually take. As always, the on-the-ground Protected areas and Wild & Scenic layers are the final word at your exact spot.

Plan my dig day takes that a step further. Tap it (under the honey-hole layer) and it pulls live river flow from the USGS gauges right now, ranks the holes you can legally work by how close they are to you, and tells you which rivers are running low (the window, when the most bedrock is exposed and reachable) versus running high. It names a pick of the day and can hand the top five straight to Google Maps for directions. Set your address up top first so it can sort by distance and build the route.

Valley-flat honey holes

Most honey holes sit on mountain and foothill stream bends, but gold piles up in one other place: where the big Sierra rivers leave the foothills and spill onto the valley flats. That is the ground the old bucket-line dredges chewed through for decades, the Yuba, Feather, Bear, American and Mokelumne dredge fields. A separate pass reads the full USGS record for placer, dredge and hydraulic workings on the valley side, clusters the densest ground, confirms with live USGS elevation that it is genuinely low and flat (flat gradient means the gold settles and stays instead of washing on), and checks owner and claim status. Those holes carry a VALLEY FLAT tag and a “why here” line in their popup. One honest note: much of the best valley dredge ground is privately held by aggregate companies, so most of these come up “permission needed,” which is exactly why the access scoring matters.

The map gets truer the more the club uses it

The model is a starting point, the club is the proof. Every time a member logs a public dig in the journal, that hole earns a club ground-truth line and, once it has real finds, a green check on its pin. Turn on Club proven only under the honey-hole layer to see just the ground members have actually pulled gold from, or open Proven ground for the leaderboard of what the club is producing, ranked by the gold logged, all anonymous, no names and no exact spots. This is the whole point of a members map: the more we all log, the better it gets for everyone, and it is free because the club is what makes it work.

Best window to work it. Open any hole's Claim-ready brief and, for spots with a gauge, it reads years of USGS records to tell you the months this river runs lowest and clearest, when the most bedrock is exposed and reachable. Pair that with Plan my dig day, which checks the flow right now, and you know both the season and the day.

How accurate is this, and how I check it

The honey holes are research leads, not proven ground. Every score is built only from named public datasets, the same ones a state geologist would reach for: the USGS Mineral Resources Data System for old placer and lode workings, USGS 3DEP LiDAR for the terrain reads, the state geologic map for host rock, the USGS fault database for structure, and NHDPlus for the drainage. Tap any honey hole and open References & sources in its popup to see the exact data that put it on the map, and the model weights are listed in full under The honey-hole model above, nothing here is a black box. What the model cannot do is promise gold is in the dirt today, ground gets worked, water moves it, and a record from the 1930s is still just a record. A high score means the geology and the history line up, not that you will fill a vial. Confirm every spot with a pan before you commit a day to it, and as members log real digs the club ground truth line on each hole shows what the group has actually pulled there, so the map gets truer the more it is used.

Claim outlines are the official federal record, read as a footprint, not a survey. The claim shapes come straight from the live BLM Mining Law Records System (mlrs.blm.gov), the same index the BLM keeps. Two honest limits: a claim is recorded by its legal land description (township, range and section aliquot parts), so the outline you see is the footprint of that described ground, not a surveyed stake-to-stake boundary, and the real corners on the hill can sit a little inside or outside the box. There is also a recording lag, a claim staked or dropped this month may not show for weeks. Treat the layer as “almost certainly claimed” or “almost certainly open,” and for anything close to a line, check the claim number on mlrs.blm.gov before you dig.

Ownership comes from county and federal records, and county accuracy varies. The public-versus-private shading is from the federal surface-management and protected-area datasets (BLM, USFS, NPS, state). The parcel lines are each county assessor's own GIS, and how tightly they match the ground depends on the county, some are survey-grade and some are loose by tens of feet. Two more things worth knowing: surface and mineral rights can belong to different people, so public surface does not always mean open minerals, and a blank, unshaded parcel is private until you confirm otherwise. When it matters, the parcel popup links straight to the county assessor so you can read the official record yourself.

Caves & cave terrain

The Cave terrain layer shades the geology where caves form: purple = limestone/marble (dissolves into classic caverns and sinkholes), teal = volcanic rock (forms lava-tube caves, this region has vast lava-tube fields). It also drops pins on famous public caves you can actually visit: Lake Shasta Caverns, Subway Cave, Pluto's Cave, Samwel Cave, and Lava Beds National Monument (700+ tubes). One honest limit: the exact locations of wild caves are withheld by federal law (the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988), so no public dataset maps cave entrances, this layer shows the terrain where caves occur, plus the developed caves that are already public. For gold, carbonate cave terrain often coincides with the contact zones that host quartz veins. Note that the exact locations of wild caves are withheld by federal law (the Federal Cave Resources Protection Act of 1988); this layer shows the terrain in which caves occur, together with the developed caves already open to the public.

Trails, claims status & finding the closest access

The Trails layer draws the official US Forest Service trail network color-coded by who's allowed: solid red = motorized (4WD, ATV, dirt bike), purple = mountain bike, dashed green = foot & horse. Tap any trail for its name, exact allowed uses, surface, and a reminder to check seasonal closures and the local Motor Vehicle Use Map (MVUM) before riding, it's how you find the legal way in to a remote honey hole.

The Mining claims layer now has a dropdown: active only (green, currently held, need permission), inactive only (gray, lapsed/closed claims, ground that may be open to re-stake), or both. Cross-reading a high honey-hole score against inactive claims is a strong tell: someone proved the ground worth claiming, then let it go, possibly open now.

Type your address or town in the box at the top of the panel and hit Set. A home marker drops, and the list switches to “closest access to my address”, every honey hole, scout site and placer working sorted by straight-line distance from you, nearest first, each tappable to fly there. Switch the list dropdown back to “honey holes by score” any time; distances also show inline on the scored list while an address is set.

Sharing & field use

Share anything with one link. Every honey hole, mine, cave, legend, expedition and challenge has a Share button; the link flies your friend straight to that spot on the map, and if they join through it you earn the +5 referral credits automatically. Every pin also links to Google Maps and Google Earth. The Google Earth file button exports every pin with GPS in organized folders; the GPX button loads the targets into a Garmin, onX or Gaia for offline field use.

In the field: the locate button shows your live position and opens Near me now, the nearest holes, mines, caves and legends with distance and compass bearing, one tap each. Your GPS position is used on your device only and is never sent to our servers. Press-and-hold the map to drop a waypoint with copyable GPS.

Nevada silver expansion (in development)

The next regional release covers Nevada silver and gold country, Carlin-trend style geology, Walker Lane faults, and the classic Comstock Lode belt. Pick NV · Silver from the region menu in the header to scout the region now; modeled honey holes and silver-pathfinder layers ship in the next data release.

Terms, privacy & legal

Club 49 is a free research tool built from U.S. government public data. Map basemaps use USGS/USDA public-domain tiles only. Honey-hole scores are modeled predictions, not guarantees. Always verify land ownership, claim status, and local regulations before you dig.

Read our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Questions: [email protected]

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