As the miners struggled to stay one step ahead of the dwindling supply of ore and the ever increasing level of competition, the gold rush became a bust for many and a boon for a few. Long gone were the days when gold could be dug out of crevices in the rocks around creeks and streams. As Peter Blodgett explains:

Once those [diggings] had been exhausted . . . gold hunters then faced a much more demanding prospect. To separate finer specimens of gold from dirt, gravel, and other debris, they had to find ways in which to run earth and water together, relying upon gold's unusual weight to pull the ore to the bottom of any receptacle where it would await discovery.

The prospectors initially resorted to panning, which involved swirling the river-bottom debris around in a flat pan to separate gold particles from sand and small rocks...