Desert Gold Diggers

This page will feature the history of the local gold areas such as Greaterville, Arivaca, Oracle, etc. as well as mining or other related articles.

On Line References

Some of the files below are available in more than one format. The choices are given as links after the article title. For those unfamiliar with PDF files see PDF Information at the bottom of this page. All PDF files below require Adobe Acrobat Reader Version 3.0 or higher to view.

Greaterville Area

• "A Brief History of Mining Operations in the Greaterville Area", by Gordon Harnack PDF (34KB) | HTML (20KB)
• "Notes on the placer deposits of Greaterville, Ariz.", by J. M. Hill - from the United States Geological Survey, Bulletin 430-A, Advance Chapter from Contributions to Economic Geology, 1909, Part I. - Metals and Nonmetals, except fuels; Gold and Silver; and printed in 1910. Reproduced here by Ray Knights.

Arivaca Area

Oracle Area

Other References

The following were reprinted in the DGD Gazette and contain interesting information. They are not online at the present time due to copyright restrictions.

• "Placer Gold at Greaterville, Arizona", by Edgar B. Heylmun, PhD., The International California Mining Journal, Vol. 53, No. 4, December 1983, pp. 3-4. Reprinted in the January 2002 DGD Gazette.
• "Oro Blanco Mining District, Arizona", by Edgar B. Heylmun, PhD., The International California Mining Journal, Vol. 67, No. 9, May 1998, pp. 7-10. Reprinted in the December 2001 DGD Gazette.
• "Gold at Arivaca, Arizona", by Edgar B. Heylmun, PhD., The International California Mining Journal, Vol. 54, No. 9, May 1985, pp. 72-74. Reprinted in the April 2001 DGD Gazette.
• "Placer Gold Near Oracle, Arizona", by Edgar B. Heylmun, PhD., The International California Mining Journal, Vol. 53, No. 5, January 1984, pp. 6-7, 66-67. Reprinted in the May 2001 DGD Gazette.
• "Dos Cabezas Dry Placers, Arizona", by Edgar B. Heylmun, PhD., The International California Mining Journal, Vol. 56, No. 4, December 1986, pp. 11-12. Reprinted in the January 2001 DGD Gazette.

Interesting Articles

• Emeralds in the Desert by a club member tells of a cache of emeralds found in Southern Arizona.
• Walking Out by Gordon Harnack and Doug McDow should be required reading for anyone who ventures out into the back country. This first appeared in the December 2006 issue of the Desert Gold Diggers' Gazette.
• Gold fingerin' by Anthony Broadman. An article about the Desert Gold Diggers that appeared in the Arizona Daily Star, Accent section on Saturday 15 February 2003. Nice picture of Roger Timm's nugget. Reprinted by permission of the Arizona Daily Star.
• A Big Day by Bob Boor is an interesting account of a successful day spent nugget shooting. This first appeared in the Desert Gold Diggers' Gazette in 1998.

General Information

• "Glossary of Terms Used in Lode & Placer Mining", by Gordon Harnack PDF (46KB) | HTML (25KB)
  (HTML file last updated on 28 August 2003, PDF file on 23 May 2001)

PDF Information

The PDF links refer to files with a .PDF extension which require a viewer in order to be viewed or printed. Adobe's Portable Document Format (PDF) allows for the distribution of files independent of platform and preserves the look of documents, including fonts, graphics, etc.. Click the Adobe "Get Acrobat" link to download the Acrobat Reader free of charge. Follow the instructions on that page for installation and configuration of the Acrobat Reader.

You may have Adobe Acrobat already installed and not know it since many installation CDs include manuals and other files in PDF format and automatically install Adobe's Acrobat Reader. Try opening the PDF file before assuming you need to download the Acrobat Reader.

PDF files can also be downloaded for later viewing by saving the file to disk. In Netscape Navigator, right click on the PDF link, select "Save Link As..." and choose the desired location for the file. Of course you can also select "File" and "Save As..." from the main menu to save an HTML file but this does not save any associated images whereas PDF files are self-contained.

If you simply want to view a PDF file as an HTML web page, Adobe has an online conversion program at Adobe Online conversion tools. You fill in the form and select the "Convert" button. However this is not a perfect conversion and can be a bit messy, as can be seen by comparing the above PDF files with their conversions.

Please send any comments and suggestions on these pages to the DGD Webmaster

Home Page

This page was last updated on 19 February 2010.