How to Track Down that Elusive Creek, Mine, or Other Feature You've Been Hearing About

“I heard there's coarse gold in [insert name of] creek, but I don't know exactly where it is.”

Have you ever heard anything like this? If you've been in the gold prospecting field for any length of time, you likely have.

Nowadays, instead of poring over numerous maps hoping to get lucky by spotting the name of the creek in question, we have a handy website called Latitude Longitude Search.

Latitude Longitude Search (or Lat-Long for short) lists more than two million geographical locations in the United States. All you need to do a search is the name of the feature you're looking for and the state in which it lies. Hopefully, you know at least this much.

As an example, suppose I'm looking for a stream named “Gold Creek” in Washington. At the top of the site's home page, I type the name into the “Find places named” box, select the state (and optionally the county and/or feature type), and click the “Lat-Long Search” button. I'm presented with eighteen results:

Should I decide to check out the listing in Chelan County, I click on the appropriate blue link in the table. That brings up a page showing the elevation, latitude, and longitude of the location plus its position on two maps: a wide-area map showing the creek's location in the state and a larger, zoomable map showing its location relative to nearby features.

If I want to see more detail, I can switch the larger map to satellite imagery and zoom in on the location.

Hopefully, Lat-Long will help you track down some of the elusive places you've been wanting to investigate.

Questions? Please post them in the comments.