Our Gold: Natural 21K Placer Gold From the Fortymile River
Every piece starts as gold my family mined on the Fortymile River, so I know exactly where it came from.
Placer gold starts as molten gold deep in the earth. As it cools, it solidifies along with the adjacent rock, often quartz. Over millions of years, the rock breaks down along with the veins of gold. The gold pieces are carried along by the river and since it is heavy, it drops out and settles into the gravel and down to bedrock. These free gold particles in gravel deposits, from big nuggets to pieces as fine as flour, are placer gold. This is what we mine.
In nature gold is never pure. It is pure gold mixed with whatever minerals were molten along with it deep within the earth. For this reason, the gold in each placer deposit is unique and the natural alloy of minerals making it up is unique to each source.
The gold we are mining now, on a tributary of the Fortymile River, is 88.4% pure gold and about 11% pure silver, with just a trace of other minerals. This makes it 21K gold, an excellent natural alloy for jewellery making. I don’t re-alloy the gold I use in my work. The high percentage of gold content gives it its rich gold colour. The natural addition of a small percentage of silver gives it additional hardness. Nature has created a natural alloy which is perfect for use in fine jewellery.
Family-Mined Gold With a Traceable Source
Most of the gold on the market has no history worth speaking of, because it gets bought and melted together with gold from a dozen other places until its origin is lost entirely. By the time a piece of it reaches a jeweller’s bench, nobody can say which country it came out of, let alone which mine.
Ours has never once left the family. We placer mine it ourselves on ground we have worked since the 1970s, and from there I carry it to the bench myself, so it passes through no hands but ours between the river and yours.
What Placer Gold Is and How We Mine It
Gold forms deep in hard rock over millions of years, and as that rock slowly breaks apart the creeks carry the loosened gold downstream until it settles into the gravel and stays put. Those ancient gravel beds are exactly what we mine.
Recovering it is a matter of washing and sorting, nothing more. Water runs the gravel across a sluice, the lighter material floats away, and the heavy gold drops and holds, worked loose by the same water and gravity that carried it there to begin with.
Ethically Sourced Gold, Mined Without Chemicals
Here is where our gold parts ways with most of the world’s, because the majority is torn from hard rock in a process that crushes the ore and strips the gold out of it with cyanide or mercury. Placer mining asks for none of that.
The gold sits already loose in the gravel, so there is nothing toxic to dissolve and nothing to wash into the water afterward. Restoring the mined ground is simply part of the season’s work, and it goes back the way we found it before we are finished.
Why We Work in 21K Natural Gold
Placer gold is never pure in nature, and each source has its own mix of gold and other minerals naturally alloyed together. Ours runs 88.4% pure gold, with the balance mostly silver, which is what makes it 21K. I use it in its natural alloy, the way nature made it.
Most jewellery is 14K or 18K, which is refined gold watered down with copper and nickel to harden it and stretch it further, and that alloying quietly drains the colour. Our 21K keeps the deep, warm tone of natural gold because it never lost it in the first place.
A Chain of Custody From the Fortymile Ground to the Bench
Because the gold never leaves our hands between the river and the bench, I can tell you without hedging that it was mined without chemicals, that the ground was put back, and that no one was exploited to produce it. Most of what the mine recovers is fine dust, which I melt down and use straight with no refinery in between.
So when someone asks where the gold in their ring actually came from, I never have to guess or lean on a supplier’s word for it.
Ethically Sourced Gold From the Fortymile River Area
Most of the world’s gold comes out of hard rock, which means crushing ore and pulling the gold out of it with cyanide or mercury. Placer mining doesn’t work that way, because the gold is already loose in the gravel, so recovering it is a matter of washing and sorting. Water runs over the sluice, the light material washes off, and the gold, being heavy, drops and stays. We have worked in the Fortymile region since the 1970s. We are proud to have a mining operation that does not impact any fish habitat in the river. Restoring the mined land is part of the mining process.
The rest of it is what doesn’t happen. Most gold goes to a refinery, where it is melted together with gold from many other sources and refined into pure gold, losing its origin, so nobody can say where it came from or how it was mined. Most of ours never sees a refinery at all. What the sluice recovers is mainly dust and flakes, which I melt and use straight, and while some goes out and comes back as pure 24K for accents, the bulk of it runs from our gravel to my bench without anyone else touching it. That is the whole chain of custody, and it is why I can tell you nobody was exploited to get this gold and that it was mined with environmental responsibility.