In 1866, it was reported the discovery of gold and silver and caused much speculation about the value of mining potential of Minnesota. Vermillion Lake was the scene of much activity, but neither profitable nor paying deposits were located. The losses experienced here cooled the ardor of the most of the would be miners and in a year or two the work practically ceased. In 1870, a vein was discovered in Benton County and considerable work was done, but it closed in a few years.

Auriferous gravel was found in the glacial drift in Fillmore County. Small quantities of gold were found at Jordan and Spring Valley. The locality in which the most gold was found as gravel content was from Rochester to the Wabasha County line on the Zumbro River, Olmsted County. Next in order of importance come Itasca, Saint Louis, Wabasha and Kandiyohi counties. As late as 1893, there was considerable excitement aroused over the discovery of the Delhi mine, Redwood County, but assays indicated the gold content extremely low.

In the early eighties, there was an excitement over a quartz vein near Granite Falls, Yellow Medicine County, and quite a little work was done, notwithstanding never more than a trace of gold was ever found. A belt slates and schists extending from Thomson and Carlton to and beyond Little Falls, contains many quartz veins, and much work was done with little or no returns. The Rainy Lake region lies in the western part of Ontario extending for a distance of approximately two hundred miles north and south, and fifty miles east and west. The region was carefully studied and mapped by the Dominion Geological Survey, in 1885-1887, and extra officially was inferred the presence of gold in Keewatin rocks, which bear gold in the district of the Lake of the Woods. The first discoveries of gold in this region were made late in 1893.