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 The Old West has come to Limerick.
Waltz Golf Farm opened the entertainment complex’s newest attraction, Golfer’s Gulch, last weekend. The gemstone panning attractions offers “miners” of all ages the opportunity to search for real gemstones and fossils from around the world.
Waltz’s manager Georgette Davidheiser explained the owners saw the attraction at an amusement trade show last fall. They thought it would be a good addition to the Limerick facility.
Golfer’s Gulch is a realistic-looking mining sluice, complete with its own water tower and mining shack. Visitors purchase a bag of “mining rough,” then slosh the material through the water running through the sluice, using a “wooden” box with a screen on the bottom, known as a pan.
A “prospector” can pan through a bag of rough in about five to 15 minutes, Davidheiser said, depending on how carefully they want to search. Also, customers can take the rough home and finish it later. A five-gallon bucket of water would work fine at home, she noted.
Waltz’s offers three sizes of bags of rough, a small bag which holds about 4 ounces of gemstones; a regular size bag, containing 6 to 8 ounces of stones, and a large bag with 10 to 11 ounces of treasures, Davidheiser explained. The two larger bags also contain arrowheads and crystal points.
A fourth option is a fossil bag, the same size as the large gemstone bag. It contains 15 or 16 different types of fossils, Davidheiser noted, and may hold more than one fossil of a particular type.
The fossils come from various parts of the world, and the gemstones are from four countries, including South Africa, Madagascar and Peru, Davidheiser said. Each bag of mining rough comes with a pamphlet which identifies the different gemstones and fossils.
Davidheiser explained the attraction was built by Cold River Mining Co. from New Hampshire. The sluice arrived only a few days before Golfer’s Gulch was set to open, she noted, and final work was still being done Friday.
Even with an afternoon thunderstorm, though, the project was completed on time and Golfer’s Gulch opened on schedule Friday evening.
Among the early customers were Jeff and Ashley Eickhoff, Gilbertsville; their daughter, April, 3 ½, and April’s little brother, Evan. April and her dad found “an arrowhead and all kinds of good stuff.”
Ryan Sears, 11, Schwenksville, was searching through a fossil bag and happily proclaimed, “I think this one’s a trilobite.”
The Gardner family, also of Gilbertsville, shared both gemstone and fossil bags. Dad Pete noted, “The kids had a ball.”
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