The yearning to get rich quick never dies. All over California and the Pacific Northwest, abandoned gold mines are being prepared for reopening, and general stores in gold-producing areas are doing big business in over-the-counter sales of picks, shovels, mining pans and how-to pamphlets. One Seattle manufacturer of portable metal-detection devices reports that so far this month sales to amateur and professional gold prospectors have increased 150%. "Literally thousands of people are coming through our office asking directions to the gold fields," says Will Summers, tourist director of California's Amador County. "Sometimes I think I'm back in the 1880s."
Is there really...