The first gold from the Golden State was alluvial, found in rivers and streams and free of the rocky matrix that had once held it. Larger pieces were called nuggets. Smaller ones were called dust. It was this type of river-born metal that gave us one of our most indelible images of the West: a fortune-seeker by a stream, swirling sand and water in a simple pan, looking for the glint of wealth and a golden dream.
Our nugget weighs about a tenth of an ounce. Its deep yellow color suggests the purity of the metal it contains-about 90 percent.