Georgia Gold Rush facts for kids
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| Date | 1828 - early 1840s |
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| Location | Georgia, United States |
| Also known as | Great Intrusion |
| Participants | prospectors |
| Outcome | Gold became difficult to find by the early 1840s causing the Georgia Gold Rush to come to an end and experienced miners would later go west to seek their fortune in the 1848 California Gold Rush |
The Georgia Gold Rush was a big event in the United States. It was the second major gold rush in the country. It was also the first gold rush to happen in the state of Georgia. This rush was even bigger than the one before it in North Carolina.
The Georgia Gold Rush began in 1829. It started in an area that is now called Lumpkin County. This was close to the town of Dahlonega. Soon, the search for gold spread across the North Georgia mountains. Miners followed what is known as the Georgia Gold Belt.
By the early 1840s, finding gold became much harder. Many miners from Georgia decided to move west. They went to the Sierra Nevada mountains in 1848. This move helped start the famous California Gold Rush.
For a long time, even before the gold rush, there were stories about gold in Georgia. Since the 1500s, American Indians in Georgia told European explorers about gold. They said small amounts of gold came from the mountains. Some old stories suggest Spanish or French people might have mined gold in North Georgia between 1560 and 1690. But these stories are mostly based on rumors.
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Early Gold Discoveries in the Carolinas
Long before the Georgia Gold Rush, people knew about gold in the region. In 1540, a famous explorer named Hernando de Soto led a trip. He met a young Native American who showed them how his people found and worked with gold. A former Cherokee chief, Ozley Bird Saunook, said his people knew about gold in the area back in the 1500s.
In 1799, gold was found in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. A boy named Conrad Reed found a large, shiny stone. It weighed 17 pounds! He found it in Little Meadow Creek on his father's farm. Three years later, the stone was identified as gold.
By 1804, this discovery led to the Carolina Gold Rush. Miners used a method called placer mining. This means they looked for gold in streams and rivers. Later, a miner found a rich gold vein in quartz rock. This gold area stretched north into Virginia and south into South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.
When Was Gold First Found in Georgia?
No one is completely sure who found gold first in Georgia. There are many different stories about the original discovery in 1828:
- Some stories say Frank Logan or his slave found gold in White County, Georgia, in Dukes Creek.
- Another story from White County says John Witherood found a three-ounce gold nugget in Dukes Creek.
- A different story says Jesse Hogan, a miner from North Carolina, found gold near Dahlonega, Georgia, at Ward's Creek.
- Thomas Bowen supposedly found gold in the roots of a tree that had fallen in a storm along Duke's Creek.
- Benjamin Parks claimed he found gold on his birthday in 1828. He was walking along a deer path. He and his business partner later leased the land to mine for gold.
However, there are no official papers from that time to prove any of these stories are true.
The Great Georgia Gold Rush Begins
No matter who found the first gold in 1828, the gold rush truly began in 1829. It started in Lumpkin County and quickly spread. One of the first public reports was on August 1, 1829. A newspaper called the Georgia Journal shared this news:
"GOLD.—A gentleman of the first respectability in Habersham county, writes us thus under date of 22d July: 'Two gold mines have just been discovered in this county, and preparations are making to bring these hidden treasures of the earth to use.' So it appears that what we long anticipated has come to pass at last, namely, that the gold region of North and South Carolina, would be found to extend into Georgia."
Another newspaper, the Macon Telegraph, reported that in the winter of 1829 and 1830, many people rushed to the area. They came from Georgia and other states to find the valuable gold.
Gold was also found in Carroll County, Georgia, in 1830. Much of the land where gold was found belonged to the Cherokee people. But mining quickly started in Lumpkin, White, Union, and Cherokee counties. This period was sometimes called the "Great Intrusion."
At the start of the rush, most miners used placer mining. By 1830, one newspaper estimated that 4,000 miners were working on Yahoola Creek alone. More than 300 ounces (about 8.5 kilograms) of gold were being found each day. This gold came from an area stretching from north of Blairsville to the southeast part of Cherokee County. The Philadelphia Mint, which makes coins, received $212,000 worth of gold from Georgia in 1830.
Other estimates said that in 1831, there were 6,000 to 10,000 miners. They were working between the Chestatee River and the Etowah River. New towns, called boomtowns, quickly appeared. These included Auraria and Dahlonega. Dahlonega was said to have supported 15,000 miners when the gold rush was at its busiest.
During this time, many prospectors and settlers moved into the area. This caused problems and increased tension with the Cherokee people. Soon, gold mines appeared in most counties in the North Georgia mountains. This included Georgia's northeasternmost county, Rabun.
Impact on the Cherokee Nation
The growing tensions between the Cherokee and various states, including Georgia, led to a sad event. This was the forced migration of Native Americans, later known as the Trail of Tears. In 1830, President Andrew Jackson approved the Indian Removal Act. This law allowed the government to take over gold mining areas and other lands.
The Cherokee Nation tried to use the federal court system. They wanted to avoid being forced off their traditional lands. The Supreme Court first sided with Georgia in 1831 in the case of Cherokee Nation v. Georgia. But the next year, in Worcester v. Georgia, the Court changed its decision. It recognized the Cherokee as a sovereign nation, meaning they had their own rights to their land. Despite this, President Jackson continued with the removal of the remaining Cherokee from the North Georgia gold fields.
The Philadelphia Mint received over half a million dollars in gold from Georgia in 1832. The state of Georgia then held the Gold Lottery of 1832. They gave away land that had belonged to the Cherokee to the winners. These land plots were 40 acres (16 hectares) each. Between 1830 and 1837, the Philadelphia Mint received $1,098,900 in gold from Georgia.
In 1838, the Dahlonega Mint was built by Congress. It was a branch of the United States Mint. This showed how much gold Georgia was producing. Building the Dahlonega Mint seemed to support Georgia's actions in taking the Cherokee lands earlier.
Mining Methods and Decline
Besides panning for gold, miners also started to dig for gold in rock. This meant working with "lode deposits," or gold-bearing quartz veins. They dug shafts and tunnels, usually three to seven feet wide. These tunnels needed wooden supports because the rock could crack and collapse. Most mines were not very deep, usually less than thirty feet. This was because they stayed above the water level. The deepest mine was the Loud Mine in White County, which went down 130 feet.
Large machines called stamp mills appeared in 1833. These machines crushed the gold ore into fine sand. Then, miners could pan the sand or use mercury to separate the gold. Besides the Calhoun Mine, other important gold mines included the Sixes, Logan, Elrod, Battle Branch, Pigeon Roost, Turkey Hill, Free Jim, Holt, Loud, Cleveland, Gordon, Horshaw, Lumsden, and Richardson mines.
However, by the 1840s, gold mining in Georgia started to slow down a lot. It became harder and harder to find gold.
What Happened After the Gold Rush?
When news of the California Gold Rush spread, many miners from Georgia moved west. They hoped to find more gold there. The person who tested gold at the Dahlonega Mint, M. F. Stephenson, tried to convince them to stay. He stood on the courthouse steps in Dahlonega and told a crowd of miners, "Why go to California? In that ridge lies more gold than man ever dreamt of. There's millions in it."
Even though many miners left, the mines in the Georgia Gold Belt kept producing gold for many years. New mining methods like hydraulic mining (using powerful water jets) and blast mining (using explosives) brought new interest in the 1850s. There were about 500 mines in 37 different counties. The American Civil War stopped most mining operations. But some continued after the war. Several mines were even reopened in the 1930s during the Great Depression.
It is thought that Georgia produced about 870,000 troy ounces (about 24,000 kilograms) of gold. This was between 1828 and the mid-1900s, when large-scale gold mining stopped.
Before they were forced to leave, the Cherokee people learned a lot about gold mining. This experience helped them later. They took part in the California Gold Rush in 1849 and the Colorado Gold Rush in 1859. Cherokee gold miners even named the town of Cherokee, California. They also named other places in California's gold-mining region.
Experienced gold miners from Georgia also played a big part in starting gold mining in Colorado. In 1850, two Georgia miners, Lewis and Samuel Ralston, along with some Cherokee, saw gold near where Denver is today. They were on their way to California. They returned east in 1857 without getting rich. But they remembered the gold east of the Rocky Mountains.
In 1858, William Greeneberry Russell led a group of Cherokee and Georgia gold miners back to Colorado. They started placer mining along the South Platte River in what is now Denver. Three Georgians from Auraria, W. Green, Levi J., and J. Oliver Russell, founded Auraria, Colorado. They named it after the gold-mining town in Georgia. Auraria later joined with Denver in 1860, but the area is still called Auraria. The town of Golden, Colorado, is named after a Georgia miner named Thomas L. Golden. Another Georgia miner, John H. Gregory, found the first gold in rock (lode gold) in Colorado in 1859.
In 1864, four prospectors known as "the Georgians" found one of the first gold placer sites in Montana. This was at Last Chance Gulch. This site later became the state capital of Helena.
Images for kids
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Prospectors during the Georgia Gold Rush.
See also
In Spanish: Fiebre del oro de Georgia para niños
