A honey hole is a prediction, not a discovery. Club 49 reads public federal records, scores the ground where several independent lines of evidence land in the same place, and hands you the shortlist. Nobody has confirmed a deposit at any of them. Below is every input the model uses, how far each one reaches, and the things it cannot see.
Each row links to the agency that publishes the data. The last column is how many of the 893 holes that input actually applies to, which is the honest version: some of these are rare, and a rare signal counts for more precisely because it is rare.
| Input | What it tells the model | Applies to |
|---|---|---|
| Recorded placer workings | Ground that has produced before, and how much came out of it. | 873 of 893 (98%) |
| Lode and hard-rock records | The source upstream that shed metal into the drainage in the first place. | 504 of 893 (56%) |
| State geologic map | The host rock underfoot, and whether it is one of the favorable ones. | 862 of 893 (97%) |
| Tertiary channel gravels | Buried ancient river courses. The richest ground the model knows how to find. | 47 of 893 (5%) |
| Serpentinite and greenstone belts | Belt rock that gold systems in the West keep turning up alongside. | 19 of 893 (2%) |
| Quaternary faults | Structural control, the plumbing mineralizing fluids traveled through. | 269 of 893 (30%) |
| 3DEP LiDAR terrain | Bench height and distance above the modern stream, measured not guessed. | 675 of 893 (76%) |
| Floodplain width and gradient | Where a river loses its grip and drops the heavy material it was carrying. | 815 of 893 (91%) |
| Stream bend geometry | Inside bends, where the current slows on the short side of the curve. | 854 of 893 (96%) |
| Confluences | Where a second drainage arrives and everything it carried has to settle. | 181 of 893 (20%) |
| Elevation profile | Five points across the site, so the model reads the shape and not one number. | 882 of 893 (99%) |
| HUC12 watershed | The catchment that feeds the site, and everything upstream inside it. | 862 of 893 (97%) |
| Live stream gauges | Current flow, so you know the water before you drive out to stand in it. | 540 of 893 (60%) |
| Burn history | Post-fire seasons move more material downstream than quiet ones do. | 63 of 893 (7%) |
| Surface management agency | Who owns the ground you would be standing on. | 893 of 893 (100%) |
| Mining claims | Whether somebody already holds the mineral rights where you are looking. | 340 of 893 (38%) |
Every hole carries a score and a geology score. The geology score reads the rock, the water and the terrain alone. The overall score also weighs access and claim status. When the two disagree, that gap is the useful part: the ground is promising and the paperwork is not, or the other way around.
The highest score in the set is 70. There is no 100 because the model does not claim certainty it has not earned, and a number that tops out at 100 invites you to read the top of the list as a guarantee.
Surface ownership comes from the federal surface management layer, checked per hole.
| Surface owner | Holes |
|---|---|
| US Forest Service | 261 |
| Private | 251 |
| Undetermined | 190 |
| BLM | 103 |
| State | 41 |
| National Park Service | 14 |
| Bureau of Indian Affairs | 12 |
| Bureau of Reclamation | 8 |
| USACE | 6 |
| LG | 4 |
| Fish and Wildlife | 2 |
| Department of Defense | 1 |
Where the layer had no clear answer, the app says so rather than guessing. That is what the check-before-you-go class below is for.
| Status | Holes |
|---|---|
| Open public ground You may legally prospect here, inside the usual rules. | 241 |
| Claimed An active mining claim covers it. The minerals belong to the holder. | 177 |
| Private land Shown so you know to stay off it, not so you can go. | 389 |
| Check before you go The ownership layer had no clear answer. Confirm it yourself. | 72 |
| Restricted A park, monument or withdrawal where collecting is closed. | 14 |
It cannot tell you there is gold there. It tells you the evidence stacks up and the setting is right. Pan-test first, every single time.
It is not a claim search of record. Claim data is a snapshot of a database that changes weekly, and the only authority is the BLM. Check the claim before you break ground.
It does not know what happened last season. A road washes out, a gate goes up, a parcel trades hands. The records catch up months later.
It is not a substitute for the rules where you are standing. Motorized dredging, camping, and what you may take home vary by state, by forest, and sometimes by creek.
Every hole in the app opens a References and sources panel that links the exact records behind that specific piece of ground. Nothing in the model is a number we ask you to trust. If a hole is wrong, the source that made it wrong is one tap away and you can say so.
Coordinates stay inside the app. Counts, methods and sources are public, locations are not, so a hole cannot be scraped off this page and sold back to you by somebody else.
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