A gold dry washer pulls gold out of dry dirt using air instead of water. You screen bone-dry gravel into the top of the machine and let it slide down a ramp of riffles while air puffs up from underneath, so the heavy gold drops behind the riffles and the light dirt moves off the end.
That makes a drywasher (you’ll see it spelled both ways) the tool for desert gold. In much of Arizona, Nevada, New Mexico and Southern California there’s gold in the ground and no creek to pan it in. Water still saves gold better than air does, so if you have a creek nearby, stick with a gold pan or sluice box.
How a drywasher works
A drywasher works a lot like a sluice box, with air doing the job of the water. Gold is about 19 times heavier than water, while the sand and rock around it are closer to 2.5 times. When air shakes a thin layer of dirt, the gold sinks and the lighter material floats along on top.
Dirt goes into a hopper at the top, where a screen (often called a grizzly) stops the bigger rocks. What falls through slides down a sloped box with cross riffles and a cloth bottom. Air pulses up through that cloth in short puffs, and gold settles against the riffles while the waste runs out the bottom end. Most of the gold ends up in the top few riffles, and the lower ones usually hold only a few small colors.
There are two main kinds:
- Bellows drywashers push out puffs of air from a bellows under the riffle box. You can run one with a hand crank or a small battery motor. They’re lighter and quieter, and a hand machine handles about half a cubic yard to a cubic yard a day per person.
- Blower drywashers use a motor and fan to move air all the time, and a shaker to keep the box moving. They’re louder and heavier, and a good one runs about three quarters of a cubic yard an hour, so one person shoveling will have trouble keeping up with it.
What you need to dry wash for gold
Besides the drywasher, bring a shovel, a pick, a classifier or screen, a couple of buckets and a tarp for spreading out damp dirt. Add a gold pan and enough water to pan your concentrates at the end of the day, since a machine that runs without water still finishes in a pan. Plenty of drinking water matters even more, along with a dust mask and eye protection. Our guide to gold prospecting equipment covers the rest of the gear.
How to use a drywasher step by step
- Test the spot first. Take a few samples from different places and run or pan them before you set up for the day. A drywasher only saves the gold that’s in the dirt you feed it, so finding good dirt is most of the job.
- Set up downwind. The machine throws off a lot of fine dust. Put it downwind of where you’re digging and working so the dust blows away from you.
- Make sure the dirt is dry. It has to be completely dry and broken up. Even in the desert, dirt from below the surface is often a little damp. If a handful holds together when you squeeze it, spread it on a tarp in the sun for a day or two and try again.
- Screen it. Run it through the grizzly or a classifier to take out anything bigger than about half an inch. Break up any clumps of clay or hard-packed dirt by hand, because gold stays locked inside them and goes right out the end of the machine.
- Set the slope. Follow your machine’s manual if it has a number. Older guides put a riffle box at about 3 to 6 inches of drop per foot, and material should take about 20 seconds to travel from the top to the bottom.
- Tune it with poor dirt. Start with dirt you don’t care about and adjust the air and slope. The riffles should stay about half to three quarters full, and the dirt should look like it’s flowing from one riffle to the next, not packing down solid. If the air is too weak, raise the slope and feed slower. If it’s too strong, lower the slope.
- Feed it slow and steady. Too much dirt at once buries the riffles and gold rides over them. Running air with nothing going in is a problem too, because it can blow out what you’ve caught. Keep the feed even and shut the air off when you stop to rest.
- Clean up often. Every hour or two, or when the riffles start to look heavy and slow, lift out the riffle box and turn it over into a big tub or bucket.
- Pan the concentrates. The final cleanup works best with water. Our guide on how to pan for gold shows how. If you don’t have water with you, run the concentrates through the drywasher a few more times, or bag them and pan them at home.
- Check your waste pile. Some gold always gets past a drywasher. Rerun the tailings after a good cleanup, and if you have a gold metal detector, run it over the pile, because nuggets get thrown out with the rocks that the grizzly stopped.
Where to use a drywasher
Desert gold moved the same way creek gold did, just in sudden floods with long dry spells in between. Look where that fast water slowed down and dropped what it was carrying:
- Where a canyon or wash comes out of the hills and spreads onto the flat
- In dry washes, especially on the inside of bends and in cracks where bedrock shows
- On top of caliche, the hard white layer that acts like a false bedrock in desert soil
- Under boulders sitting on bedrock or caliche
- Along dark streaks of black sand in a wash
- Around old tailings piles, since the old timers’ machines lost gold too
Skip the sand dunes, which rarely hold anything worth running.
Dry weather matters as much as the spot. Hot, dry months give you the driest dirt, and after a storm you may have to wait for the ground to dry out. Keep an eye on the forecast too, because desert washes can flood fast.
Finding drywashing ground on our maps
Placer claims are a good sign of loose gold, and our maps show them by section across each state. As of our November 2026 maps, there were 20,166 active placer claims in Nevada, 10,477 in California, 6,582 in Arizona and 983 in New Mexico. Turn on the active placer layer to see where people are working now, then look for the closed placer layer in the same district. Closed claims mark ground someone once thought was worth staking, and the old mines layer shows you where the old timers dug. The Arizona, Nevada, California and New Mexico maps cover the best-known dry country, and our where to find gold guide goes through each state.
Drywasher rules on public land
BLM’s mining rules list “hand and battery-operated drywashers” as casual use, the lowest level of activity, along with metal detectors and hand tools. Casual use generally doesn’t need a notice or a permit as long as you barely disturb the ground and fill in your holes. The rule doesn’t name gas engines, so call the local BLM field office before you run a gas-powered machine. Land that BLM doesn’t run has its own rules. National parks are off limits, and BLM’s Arizona office warns that Arizona State Trust Land isn’t BLM land and doesn’t allow rockhounding or metal detecting, so check with the state before you dig there.
The biggest rule is the same one that applies to a gold pan: stay off active claims unless you have the owner’s permission. Claims change every week, so copy the code from the box on our map and check that spot in BLM’s records before you dig.
Drywashers to look at
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Amazon links on this page pay us a small commission at no extra cost to you. We chose these by who makes them and what they do, and we haven’t field tested them.
A drywasher costs several hundred dollars or more, so it’s worth asking at a local prospecting shop about used ones first. Amazon carries Royal’s blower machines, from the Royal Explorer up through the Large Royal Gold to the much bigger Royal King. Check how each one is powered before you buy, for the reason in the rules above. Keene and Gold Buddy also make well-known drywashers, including small hand-crank and battery models, and you’ll find those at prospecting shops.
If you’re not sure dry washing is for you, a panning kit costs far less, and it’s the cheaper way to find out if you enjoy prospecting before you spend more.