ON a bright afternoon, about two dozen people gathered on a bend overlooking the San Gabriel River.
The idyllic sounds of birds and flowing water mixed with the low growl of gas-powered suction dredges. Clusters of men (and one or two women) crouched in the water with vacuum hoses, circular pans and sluice boards. Their goal -- in some cases, their obsession -- was the same.
"The gold looks so good underwater," gushed Coel Schumacher, a 19-year-old junior at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo. "After you've been at it for a while, you start to wonder if it's worth it. Then you find something and you go, 'Yeah.' "
Nearly 160 years after the gold rush that helped populate the West, a hardy band still patiently coaxes treasure from the earth. A mix of permanent residents who live in nearby camps and part-timers who drive up every chance they get, the prospectors have formed their own self-policing, gold-obsessed community.
Thirty miles north of Azusa and deep in the Angeles National Forest, near the Camp Williams trailer park, they chase shared dreams, watch over one another's claims and swap tales of the mother lode just over the next hill.
"I think there's endless amounts of gold up here," said Ron Strand. "We just need a good storm to wash it all out."
Working the river is painstaking stuff -- hours spent crouching or submerged in water to produce a half inch of glittery dust in a vial.
With gold selling for about $650 per ounce on the international market, they're looking for just one healthy score. But judging from several visits, nobody seems to be paying his rent from prospecting.
"I have yet to see anybody get rich out here," said Bernie McGrath, who lives in a trailer at Camp Williams and has been working this stretch of river since 1989. "They're all chasing dreams."
THERE are now just 16 sites that the state classifies as "active gold mines," most of them in Northern California's Gold Country. Camp Williams is not among them. There are several websites on which prospectors share locations where they've found gold -- but, again, Camp Williams isn't mentioned.
Nationwide, the U.S. Geological Survey said that about 260 metric tons of gold were produced in 2006, with a value of $5.1 billion. But only a tiny fraction of that amount, officials said, was from individual prospecting.
Despite a dearth of reports of big finds, prospectors have worked this stretch of the San Gabriel River for decades; it's easily accessible by car and at the limit of where suction dredges can be operated legally.
