Already, a series of lowhead dams recently were modified along the creek in order to create a whitewater sports area, and the cliffs in Veterans Park were given a face-lift to allow rock climbing.
But gold panning?
“Gold panning will be one of those things that will be really looked at,” McDorman said.
With gold fetching high prices — $1,600 for an ounce — it also could put a little extra money into people’s pockets, said Springfield jeweler David Garrett, whose 2008 find of gold in nearby Beaver Creek prompted him to approach the chamber with the idea.
Just don’t expect to strike it rich.
“This is definitely not the 1850s,” Garrett cautioned. “The point is, you can go out and have fun with your family.”
Not everyone, however, is ready to let gold-seekers jump claims up and down Buck Creek.
“It’s not something we’re terribly excited about,” said Peter Noonan, president of the Springfield Conservancy District, which controls the waterway.
While Ohio never had anything remotely close to the gold rushes that put California and the Yukon on the map, gold actually does exist in the state’s streams, including Buck Creek.
Most gold in North America is in the form of dust and fine grains, although Garrett said he once found a nugget the size of a fingertip.
“The first thing you’ll think is, ‘Boy, a jeweler made this one up,’ ” Garrett joked.
He always suspected gold existed in the creek that runs through his 12-acre Bird Road property. Several summers ago, he decided to try his hand at panning.
“The first pan we put in,” he explained, “within two minutes, we pulled out little flecks of gold.”
He immediately thought of the recreational and tourism opportunities.
“People pay good money just to pan,” Garrett said.
Almost instantly, McDorman caught gold fever as well.
“I actually took my family out and panned with him on Beaver Creek,” McDorman said. “Within about two hours, David found about a half-ounce of gold. I found some flecks of gold.
“We began to see it from a visitor’s standpoint.”
However, the only portions of land along Buck Creek that can be legally accessed belong to the conservancy district.
“We think it could have some ecological issues with the stream,” Noonan said.
McDorman sees it as a complement to the whitewater area in Snyder Park.
“It’s about getting people on this wonderful asset we have that runs through the entire community,” McDorman said. “It’s an incredible experience to just sit there or stand there and play in the creek.”
Around the time of Garrett’s original find, the conservancy district briefly discussed whether to allow prospecting.
“We didn’t feel it was appropriate or beneficial to the stream,” Noonan said.
Hobby miners in Ohio are allowed to use small suction dredges that work by vacuuming sediment from the bottom of a stream, said Bud Kaczor, a State Farm agent by day in Cuyahoga County who oversees four claims in the state belonging to the Gold Prospectors Association of America.
California has a moratorium on suction dredging until June 2016 after it was alleged the practice disturbs the spawning beds of trout and salmon, and even kicks up buried mercury in streams left by forty-niners during the original gold rush.
Panning for gold, however, isn’t in question.
Locally, the conservancy district hasn’t officially nixed the idea, in part because no one has brought forward a plan.
“There may be a way to do it,” Noonan said. “But it would have to be monitored in some way.”
Garrett has been undeterred, even after a front-page story four years ago in the Springfield News-Sun panned his original find.
In that 2008 story, a Wittenberg University geologist feared the environmental impact of panning, even for fun.
“It can be done properly,” Garrett said. “I don’t believe you should go digging in the bank with a backhoe.”
The geologist also dismissed Garrett’s find as “not economically significant.”
But that’s not the point of hobby mining, according to Kaczor, of the prospectors association.
“It’s like golfing or fishing,” said Kaczor, adding that people have come from almost every state to pan at the association’s claims in Ohio.
“I don’t think I’ve talked to anybody about panning for gold,” he added, “that didn’t say, ‘I’ve always wanted to try that.’ ”
Contact this reporter at amcginn@coxohio.com.
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