Utah Red Gold

What’s that you say? You never heard of red gold? Well, let me tell you a story my friends.

Red gold gets it’s reddish color from being mixed with copper. The more copper the redder the gold. Most red gold is man made and used in jewelry however there is at least one spot in Grand County, Utah that has a natural occurring ledge of red gold. This ledge of gold was exceptionally rich and assayed out at an amazing $70,000.00 per ton. Now that’s the kind of prospecting I can get in to!

Back in the 1800’s a man by the name of Jack Wright came across this rich ledge of red gold and dug a little out. He took it to the nearest town and had it assayed and found out it would produce 70 grand per ton. You can imagine the surprise on his face and the disgust later on when he couldn’t find his way back to the ledge.

That’s right, it’s a lost ledge of gold. You wouldn’t be reading about it here if it wasn’t lost would you?

It seems Jack Wright wasn’t much of a prospector. Actually, he wasn’t a prospector at all and made his living as an outlaw, which apparently didn’t serve him too well. After finding the ledge the first time and bringing the samples to town to be assayed he spent about a year in the area searching for the lost ledge of gold. Jack never found the ledge of red gold and “disappeared” during the time he was hunting for it.

This incredibly rich ledge of gold is supposed to be located along the old “Horse Thief Trail” somewhere between Peter’s Point and Old La Sal. The ledge was described as being in a low rock outcropping close to the trail. Other information says this spot is near where an ancient Indian trail from the southwest meets with an old Spanish trail that used to come up from Santa Fe.

For years there were legends of the local Indians bringing in some of the reddish gold to sell. It was said that the gold came from the same area as Jack Wright’s lost ledge of gold and that the Indians said the ledge of gold was exposed every time a hard rain fell in the area. The Indians said their gold came from a low-lying rock outcropping just as described by Jack Wright.

Would that mean this ledge isn’t really lost? If no one has filed a mining claim and mined all of the gold from the ledge then I would say no, it is still lost and it sounds like it would probably be worth searching for.