Gold Prospecting Maps Strike Gold

Rebecca Bennett

Feb 24, 2022

Searching for lost treasure?

Everyone loves a treasure hunt, and who doesn’t love gold? The newest gold maps in the Avenza Map Store are from Signal Prospecting, owned and operated by Glenn Holbrook. While Glenn loves snow sports, surfing, and skating, he admits he’s kind of obsessed with finding gold.

Glenn was introduced to cartography seven years ago while looking through government databases, in hope of stumbling across any lost or forgotten goldfield maps. “When a prospector isn’t searching for gold, we’re generally searching for old maps!” Glenn says.

Signal Prospecting is focused on making the most comprehensive and accurate gold prospecting maps of Australia’s goldfields. “Considering the first prospecting guides were released close to 150 years ago, and they’ve been updated regularly ever since, we’ve got our work cut out for us” says Glenn.

“Our job is to follow the bread crumbs left from over 300 old maps that we’ve collected to date (and counting), then use every modern cartography trick imaginable to create the modern-day, GPS accurate ‘standard’ which showcases the actual topology of the goldfields that Australia has become famous for.” - Glenn Holbrook

Now how did these super accurate and detailed maps that Glenn created find their way to the Avenza Map Store? “A cartographer working for us recommended it when we were getting closer to the delivery of our paper maps,” Glenn tells us. “Avenza is about the simplest thing I’ve had to learn within cartography and it opens you up to an entire digital marketplace at the same time, so it was a no-brainer to put them in the Map Store.”

As gold prospecting continues to see a surge in popularity, particularly within Australia, Glenn is working hard to ensure his maps are as relevant to prospectors as possible. While gold prospecting maps were originally paper only, having the maps available digitally is a huge asset.

“To me, the biggest advantage of a digital map is the ability to navigate offline. This dramatically reduces the time and effort getting to and from areas that you chose to search for gold.”

Interested in Gold Prospecting?

“We’ll be releasing a lot more maps within Australia (and possibly North America one day too), and the pressure is on as prospecting has become far more mainstream within outdoor leisure recently,” Glenn says.

If you’re into prospecting for gold, check out Signal Prospecting’s maps here in the Map Store!