Panning was one of the first ways gold-seekers used to find gold. All that was needed was a round, flat-bottomed pan with slanted sides. A prospector would fill a pan with dirt from a river bed, swirl the water around, and hope that the heavy gold nuggets would be found at the bottom of the pan. This sounded simple, but it turned out to be very hard work! Imagine stooping in icy water all day long. Gold-seekers ended up with aching backs, sore knees, numb feet, and not very much gold.

Since panning was such slow, hard work, the 49ers (the nickname of miners who migrated to California in 1849) invented an easier way to get gold--the cradle or rocker. It was called this because it looked very much like a baby’s cradle. Usually it took at least two people to operate a cradle. One person piled dirt and water into the top of the rocker while the other “rocked” the cradle back and forth. As the water washed over the dirt, the heaviest pieces were caught in the bottom of the cradle, which had bars of wood along the bottom.