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Area gold mining and ski racing history [4] Gateway Science Museum: Chico: Butte: Multiple: website, part of California State University, Chico, science and natural history Gaumer's Jewelry & Museum: Red Bluff: Tehama: Natural history: website, minerals and mining museum inside the jewelry store Gold Nugget Museum: Paradise: Butte: Open air
John Kautz, proprietor of Ironstone Vineyards, purchased the gold specimen in 1994 for an undisclosed price; its appraised value at the time was $3.5 million. [1] Kautz had the 60 lb troy (22.4 kg) nugget etched with acid to remove most of the quartz; the resulting gold leaf specimen is 44 lbs troy (16.4 kg).
The Paradise depot, (Butte County Railroad, later Southern Pacific), remains at its original location, and is now operated, maintained, and staffed by the Gold Nugget Museum. The up-bound side of the Skyway from Chico, (right around Bruce Rd.), sits on the old right of way, until where the bike trail picks up at Neal Rd. in Paradise.
Exhibits include the crystalline gold Fricot Nugget, weighing 201 troy ounces (6.25 kg), the largest found during the California Gold Rush; a working scale model of a stamp mill over 100 years old, demonstrating the process of extracting gold from quartz rock; and a replica hard rock mine tunnel that allows visitors to better understand California's hard rock mines.
The largest gold nugget found using a metal detector is the Hand of Faith, weighing 875 troy ounces (27.2 kg; 60.0 lb), found in Kingower, Victoria, Australia in 1980. Historic large specimens include the crystalline "Fricot Nugget", weighing 201 troy ounces (6.3 kg; 13.8 lb) – the largest one found during the California Gold Rush.
While it was valued at a quarter of a million dollars, a smaller 7.5-pound nugget called Destiny, which was found in nearby Ballarat, fetched nearly $300,000 at auction in 2014.
On April 12, 1859, at the Willard Claim, a hydraulic mine in the Feather River Canyon northeast of the town, a 54-pound (20 kg) gold nugget was discovered, the largest in the world at the time. Dubbed the " Dogtown Nugget ", it made the town famous.
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