Volume 13 , Issue 5

Black Sand & Placer Deposit

Last week we spoke of the Black Sand of Southwest Oklahoma in the Wichita mountains that everyone was trying to get a piece of. This week we found some information that sort of told us what Black Sand was and how it was used in the panning for Gold in the Wichita mountains.

Black Sand -- Black sand is sand that is black in color. One type of black sand is a heavy, glossy, partly magnetic mixture of usually fine sands, found as part of a placer deposit.

Placer environments typically contain black sand, a conspicuous shiny black mixture of iron oxides, mostly magnetite with variable amounts of ilmenite and hematite. Valuable mineral components often occurring with black sands are monazite, rutile, zircon, chromite, wolframite, and cassiterite.

Placer Deposit

In geology, a placer deposit or placer is an accumulation of valuable minerals formed by gravity separation during sedimentary processes. The name is from the Spanish word placer, meaning "alluvial sand". Placer mining is an important source of gold, and was the main technique used in the early years of many gold rushes, including the California Gold Rush. Types of placer deposits include alluvium, eluvium, beach placers, and paleoplacers.   |  View or Add Comments (0 Comments)   |   Receive updates ( subscribers)  |   Unsubscribe

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