COEUR d'ALENE - The gold chain around Bob Weaver's neck reveals just a glimmer of the longtime miner's dream.

"This is the biggest nugget I found in 40 years of mining," Weaver said Sunday afternoon, lifting the chain to reveal a penny-sized, half-ounce gold nugget. "I said to myself, 'I want to find the big nugget I've been looking for all my life.'"

Weaver, of Bayview, was one of many gold miners and prospecting enthusiasts who participated in the 16th annual Northwest Gold Prospectors Association Gold and Treasure Show at the Kootenai County Fairgrounds through the weekend. He has been mining for gold and searching for treasure for 60 years, mostly in California and the Northwest.

He eventually did find the big one, bigger than the half-ounce piece, but it wasn't in his usual prospecting grounds.

"I couldn't find it up here all these years, I had to go to Alaska to get it," he said, describing how he finally found a 3-and-a-half ounce chunk of gold in Ganes Creek. He didn't have the big nugget handy at the show Sunday, but he knowledgeably described the rush of gold mining so a person could almost feel the gold in his or her palm and see it sparkle in the sunlight.

"It's almost like gambling," he said. "Every pan, you hope to see that glimmer of gold in the bottom. Every pan, 'Oh, no, next pan,' so that carries you along."

The Gold and Treasure Show took place in the Jacklin Building an the Kootenai County Fairgrounds, where local and regional enthusiasts gave gold panning and sluicing demonstrations or exhibited some of the treasures found on their adventures. - coins, rings, buttons, even antique guns. Vendors sold prospecting equipment, jewelry made from gems or they sold their own unique creations, such as Paul Baumgart's hand-crafted miniature Old West buildings that look like they've been taken directly from ghost towns. Baumgart said the details are drawn from old Western films because when he watches them he studies the buildings.

"I've been doing this for years and years," said Baumgart, of Hayden. "I built a town that took me 18 years and I had 8,000 hours in it. It was out of all old-growth, dark chocolate cedar. It was for indoors and I had 91 buildings and structures. I finally sold it about a year and a half ago."

Jacob Doty, 10, of Athol, wandered around the structures, impressed by the tiny saloons, outhouses and mercantiles.

"I thought they were really cool and they probably took a long time," Jacob said. He said he thoroughly enjoyed his first experience panning for gold while visiting the show with his dad, and now he wants to inspect the creek that flows by his house.

"You never know what the next shovelful is going to bring you up," said Gold and Treasure Show chairman Bob Lowe of Coeur d'Alene. Lowe is also the founder of the Northwest Gold Prospectors Association and owns the recreational gold panning and small-scale mining location of Eagle City Park, which is between Prichard and the historic town of Murray. He said prospecting is a great social hobby and is interesting and beneficial for children.

"It's a good outdoor (activity)," he said. "You get the kids out of the malls, off the TVs, off the games ... when the kids get out there, they just have a great time."

Info: www.icehouse.net/blowe/nwgold.html or www.facebook.com/nwgpa