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North Carolina Gold
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John Miles
Jun 12, 1999, 3:00:00 AM6/12/99
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CHARLOTTE -- The story goes like this: 12-year-old Conrad Reed was shooting
fish with a bow and arrow
one spring day in Cabarrus County. He looked down and found a yellowish,
17-pound rock.
The year was 1799, and that rock found along Little Meadow Creek turned
out to be gold. It was the nation's first documented discovery of gold and
soon touched off the country's first gold rush.
The gold boom that swept across North Carolina and South Carolina
decades before the famous California rush of 1849 will be commemorated this
year in the Tar Heel state with a bicentennial celebration.
The centerpiece will be a Gold Bicentennial Festival on June 19 and 20
at Reed Gold Mine State Historic Site, where that first nugget was found.
The weekend includes the opening of the outdoor historical drama "Come Forth
As Gold."
Gold mines pocked the red clay of the Piedmont of North Carolina, where
the rush was nearly as boisterous as California's. Farmers with picks and
shovels dug up streams and pastures for nuggets and veins. Engineers,
entrepreneurs and miners poured in from overseas.
The dusty village of Charlotte became a boom town honey- combed with
mines. Gold Hill in Rowan County was a rip-roaring mining town in the 1840s
with 15 mines and 27 saloons.
Richard Knapp of the state Division of Archives and History said gold
mining introduced a form of currency into a farming state where in 1815 only
$5 in cash per person circulated. Gold also ushered in the first steam
engines and the concept of working for wages. The state was the nation's top
gold producer for many years.
"It was very important to the Piedmont and Charlotte, the center of
mining activity, up until the 1850s," said Knapp, who is also working on a
book on the state's gold-mining history.
Gold in Charlotte prompted Congress to open a U.S. Mint, where more
than 1.2 million gold coins were struck between 1838 and 1861. The Mint
building is now an art museum, and save for gold-coin collections at the
Mint and the Reed site, little remains of the state's gold-rush days.
All the gold isn't gone. Al Carpenter, the survey's gold specialist,
said the Piedmont probably has undiscovered, hard-to-get deposits. But
that's not enough to tempt mining companies.
G.E. "Pete" Nash started panning for gold at age 10 and worked at his
family's Snider mine in Cabarrus County as a teenager. Now 83, Nash
regularly pans a stream on family-owned property in the county and finds
nuggets and flecks of gold. Now he's looking for a big nugget on the Reed
site for the mine's museum.
"I'm looking for a big chunk," he said. "I believe I'll locate it too."
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fish with a bow and arrow
one spring day in Cabarrus County. He looked down and found a yellowish,
17-pound rock.
The year was 1799, and that rock found along Little Meadow Creek turned
out to be gold. It was the nation's first documented discovery of gold and
soon touched off the country's first gold rush.
The gold boom that swept across North Carolina and South Carolina
decades before the famous California rush of 1849 will be commemorated this
year in the Tar Heel state with a bicentennial celebration.
The centerpiece will be a Gold Bicentennial Festival on June 19 and 20
at Reed Gold Mine State Historic Site, where that first nugget was found.
The weekend includes the opening of the outdoor historical drama "Come Forth
As Gold."
Gold mines pocked the red clay of the Piedmont of North Carolina, where
the rush was nearly as boisterous as California's. Farmers with picks and
shovels dug up streams and pastures for nuggets and veins. Engineers,
entrepreneurs and miners poured in from overseas.
The dusty village of Charlotte became a boom town honey- combed with
mines. Gold Hill in Rowan County was a rip-roaring mining town in the 1840s
with 15 mines and 27 saloons.
Richard Knapp of the state Division of Archives and History said gold
mining introduced a form of currency into a farming state where in 1815 only
$5 in cash per person circulated. Gold also ushered in the first steam
engines and the concept of working for wages. The state was the nation's top
gold producer for many years.
"It was very important to the Piedmont and Charlotte, the center of
mining activity, up until the 1850s," said Knapp, who is also working on a
book on the state's gold-mining history.
Gold in Charlotte prompted Congress to open a U.S. Mint, where more
than 1.2 million gold coins were struck between 1838 and 1861. The Mint
building is now an art museum, and save for gold-coin collections at the
Mint and the Reed site, little remains of the state's gold-rush days.
All the gold isn't gone. Al Carpenter, the survey's gold specialist,
said the Piedmont probably has undiscovered, hard-to-get deposits. But
that's not enough to tempt mining companies.
G.E. "Pete" Nash started panning for gold at age 10 and worked at his
family's Snider mine in Cabarrus County as a teenager. Now 83, Nash
regularly pans a stream on family-owned property in the county and finds
nuggets and flecks of gold. Now he's looking for a big nugget on the Reed
site for the mine's museum.
"I'm looking for a big chunk," he said. "I believe I'll locate it too."
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I found this Article on the web.Something for the gold
fever..............................Little John
country boy
Jun 14, 1999, 3:00:00 AM6/14/99
to
It is also where UNC-Charlotte got its nickname. The 49ers (HWY 49 and
gold).
deer...@hotmail.com
gold).
deer...@hotmail.com
John Miles <mil...@clds.net> wrote in message
news:7ju6fd$slo$1...@news3.infoave.net...
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