For Costa Mesa Prospecting Teacher, the Chance to Get Outdoors Is the Real Treasure

There’s gold and silver in them thar hills, but don’t count on striking it rich, says Ken Green, who teaches prospecting classes at four Orange County colleges and admits that he has yet to find anything good enough to market.

“Think of prospecting as a hobby and a chance to get outdoors and away from cars and people,” said Green, a former Marine captain and writer of scripts for television. He notes, however, that he hasn’t sold a script yet but, like prospecting, “the hope is there.”

Karalynn J. Hatz, 25, one of his students who found five small gold nuggets on one of her outings, said prospecting “is like buying a lottery ticket. You never know when you might strike it rich.”

But almost as important, she added, “I get a chance to get outdoors and meet people. When I moved here from Chicago, prospecting sounded like the California thing to do.”

When Green prospects, it’s usually in Northern California or Arizona, and it’s usually in the same locale where gold and silver were once successfully mined. He tells his students that 90% of gold in the ground is still unfound.

“Mining companies have their own people out hunting for good mineral deposits,” said Green, a former Anaheim school district teacher who lives in Costa Mesa, “but people can take heart. Many famous discoveries were by accident.”

He recalled a prospecting trip to Placerita Canyon near Newhall where one of his students pulled up an onion plant and found flakes of gold on it, “and although that wasn’t much of a find, it got her heart beating really fast. And sometimes that’s the way it happens.”

In doesn’t take much money to start prospecting, Green said, “because all you really need is a shovel, hammer and a prospector’s pan.” But he noted that some people spend $400 and more for sophisticated equipment. Besides teaching, Green also sells the equipment.

Students in his classes at Orange Coast, Golden West, Saddleback and Rancho Santiago colleges spend Saturday on classroom instruction. Sunday, class members drive to the San Gabriel Mountains to test their knowledge.