MovieChat Forums > Pale Rider (1985) Discussion > Spiders Rock?

Spiders Rock?

posted 11 years ago by DeepFriedJello
4 replies | jump to latest

The big thing with gold all through it. What would that be worth?
First thing to do when you go to town is find the assayer.
Spider could have used the rock to buy off Stockdale and the deputies. Supposedly they are for sale to highest bidder. He could have hired them to kill LaHood. I'm not even sure if it's possible for a rock that size to be 50% gold.
First rule is not to get sh*tfaced while carrying around a priceless rock, with evil gunmen about.

[–] MissTexasMcCoy 11 years ago

I hear what you mean about the idea of the prospectors paying Stockdale to defeat LaHood for them. Even though Clint Eastwood says in the story that Stockdale & his deputies are for sale to the highest bidder, in my opinion the implication is that they are inherently evil men, seeing as how they are more willing to be bought off for personal vendettas rather than upholding the laws they were supposedly sworn to protect.

I'm not sure what it would be worth, but it is definitely possible to have a rock that size with a considerable gold component. They don't show the rock up close for long in the film, but most likely quartz would have been the other main mineral component of the ore, as it is quite common to find these two things together in nature. I've heard mention of this movie as being particularly renowned for its historical accuracy and attention to detail depicted in the parts of the story involving hydraulic mining, so it's most likely Eastwood knew of quartz/gold ore when he was making the film, and Spider's rock isn't just an exaggeration for a good story.

In the gold rush days the driving force was the value of the gold, so it's likely the gold would have been extracted from the rock. Nowdays quartz interlaced with gold is appreciated for it's natural beauty, and jewelry is made from cabochons of the stone without removing the gold. I live in a gold-rush era town in California, there are several shops that sell this type of stone/jewelry. I linked a website below with examples of this, in case you or anyone else is curious what the stone I'm speaking of looks like.

http://www.whitebuffalotruckee.com/goldquartz.aspx

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[–] DeepFriedJello 11 years ago

Thanks Tex. That's really pretty jewelry.

[–] Traianus 9 years ago

but it is definitely possible to have a rock that size with a considerable gold component.

Depends on what you mean by considerable. I guarantee that if even 40 percent of that rock was solid gold, no one - certainly not Conway - would be holding it with one hand the way he was.

Tin panning in itself was never a very effective way of mining, especially not by the 1870s or 1880s (the time period of which the film is set). It's most effective early in a "rush," which was 1849, early 1850s in California. This is because that's when whatever loose nuggets of gold are actually available in the creeks and streams to be picked up. After that gets taken, the more likely it is that any gold that's going to get found is in traces or flecks in hard rock (such as quartz). Which would be a good bet as to what was going on with Conway's "nugget." So it wasn't really a huge nugget - it would've been a rock with traces of gold in it.

Increasingly as mining progressed into the 1870s and 1880s, the more industrial the process to extract it became, and not just with the hydraulic mining. To get the gold in the hard rock, they didn't really extract it so much as they beat the hell out of the rock (usually with industrial press systems) until it shattered and the flecks of gold could be gotten. This is why tin panning became less and less effective. You simply couldn't get to the gold that way, no matter how good or lucky you were.

[–] MissTexasMcCoy 9 years ago

"Considerable" is a subjective amount, I guess. Taking into consideration how difficult placer (pan) mining is, we are to presume that the protagonist miners in this story are fairly poor. Hence it probably wouldn't have taken a heck of a lot of gold embedded in a big piece of ore rock like that to impress them. I live in a historic gold-rush era town in northern California, where there are several jewelry stores that make and sell things made from quartz/gold ore, and also have raw material on display. I don't know what an average gold percentage would be but just judging by looks 40% would be unusually high. To me it usually looks like much more quartz than gold. The movie doesn't really let us see Spider's rock up close for that long to get a good look at it.

And yes very true, I agree that the rock would likely be much heavier than they made it look in the movie, and not easy to hold in just one hand, especially considering that Spider seems to be somewhat small in stature.

And yes I do know they would smash up the ore rock (with a stamp mill most likely) to get out any gold embedded within it. I'm not sure why I used the word "extract" in my prior post... I guess I was just getting tired and thinking I'd typed enough words without elaborating more. Haha.

Many years ago I visited New York and toured the Statue of Liberty. Inside there are plaques on the wall along the staircase, representing every state, with a sample of a mineral/rock from the state mounted on the plaque. We were told that the one from California was quartz/gold ore, but the Park Service had to remove the rock from the plaque for safekeeping because people standing in line waiting inside the statue would pick at it trying to get the gold out.

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