81-year-old who vanished while gold panning found dead 2 days later, California cops say

An 81-year-old man’s body was found days after he was last seen going gold panning, a sheriff’s office in California said.

Zed Edison III of Medford, Oregon, was found dead at the bottom of a 300-foot embankment around 3 p.m. Wednesday, June 1, just south of Applegate Lake, Oregon, the Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office said. Siskiyou County, California, is located about an hour from Medford.

Edison was last seen around 2:30 p.m. on May 30 on U.S. Forest Service Road 1050, the sheriff’s office said.

He left to go gold panning on his 2003 Arctic Cat ATV, deputies said. But he never returned home.

After being missing for two days, rescuers found him and his ATV at the bottom of an embankment near the road he was last seen on, deputies said.

A GoFundMe page described Edison as an “an adventurer but also an amazing grandpa dad uncle and friend.”

Helena Wegner

McClatchy DC

Helena Wegner is a McClatchy National Real-Time Reporter covering the state of Washington and the western region. She’s a journalism graduate from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. She’s based in Phoenix.