He had a very unusual childhood.
At an age when most schoolkids are still learning to tie their shoelaces, Nathaniel Prebalick — AKA Gold Plate Nate — was teaching budding treasure hunters how to pan for gold. As a third-generation prospector, he was raised amid the sparkling streams of California’s Gold Country, in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada, getting to know its watery veins as well as the life lines of his own hands.
While this may sound like a sepia-tinged snapshot from another century, it’s anything but — as I discover when I meet Nate on a grassy riverbank one spring morning. He’s a thoroughly modern gold digger — a smiling twentysomething who uploads his gilded finds to Instagram — and he has a ready explanation for why Tuolumne County in eastern California is, once again, in the grip of a gold rush.
“We’ve had historic rains recently and all the gushing water has brought gold down from the hillside,” Nate says in a honeyed, Californian drawl, zipping his wetsuit up to his neck and wading into the cascading stream with a miner’s shovel in his hand. Nearby, his ponytailed father, who goes by the name of Nugget Nick, swirls a murky pan of sediment, locked into the eternal quest for a eureka moment.
Esta historia es de la edición September 2023 de National Geographic Traveller (UK).
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Esta historia es de la edición September 2023 de National Geographic Traveller (UK).
Comience su prueba gratuita de Magzter GOLD de 7 días para acceder a miles de historias premium seleccionadas y a más de 8500 revistas y periódicos.
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