The earliest gold mining technique was labor intensive and definitely a gamble: wander along streams looking for nuggets or flakes. When gold was found, miners panned the area. Panning involved putting some stream bed mud into a metal pan and carefully swirling the mud and water around . The denser gold flakes sank to the bottom of the pan. Although panning sounds easy, it requires patience and a refined technique to prevent losing the whole pan full to excessive sloshing and swirling. The best time to pan was in the spring during the snow melt. Streams were high, cold and dangerous. Pneumonia, exposure and drowning were common among the miners. Many, in fact most, were not prepared for the weather or the intensive labor.

Cradle rockers and sluice boxes followed quickly on the heals of panning. A cradle rocker was basically a big pan. The miner filled the bottom with mud and water and separated the gold out by manually pushing and pulling ( rocking) the cradle. A sluicebox was a big trough with slats in the bottom set at a slight incline. Dirt was shoveled into the top. Water was run through it and as the dirt washed down through, the gold flakes and nuggets sank to the bottom and were trapped by the slats.

Hard rock mining required drills, black powder, then dynamite with large, expensive equipment and a dependable labor force. Mining rapidly evolved into an industry requiring large sums of money and high risk for investors and miners alike.

Great strides were made in the industry as a whole because of experiences in Nevada. The square-set timbering of deep underground mines prevented cave-ins. Huge stampmills were erected to pound the ore into smaller pieces. The Virginia & Truckee Railroad, the Northern Nevada Railroad, The Tonopah & Las Vegas and a score of smaller lines were all conceived, built and eventually abandoned as the mining industry boomed and busted.

Ironically, water presented a tremendous problem, and water is what eventually closed much of the Comstock. On a visit in 2001, the Best & Belscher Mine is closed only because there is 1600 feet of water in the shafts. If we can figure out how to get rid of that......

There may not be much surface water in the state,  but most mines have had to contend with underground water. Huge pumps were utilized for almost of the deep mines in Nevada. This lead to great advances in steam engine technology and hydraulics.