GEORGIA GOLD RUSH:
FIRST in THE USA – GEORGIA GOLD RUSH of 1829!
The Georgia gold rush started with placer mining. It is the gold that is found in stream beds and the gravels of the banks, and is the easiest to find. (placer is pronounced like plasser). The other type of mining is lode mining. Lode gold is found in an ore such as quartz, which often runs in veins through other rock masses such as granite, etc. This involves making tunnels, drilling, blasting and crushing the ore that is removed. The placer gold is gold that has been removed from the ore at the surface by erosion over millions of years. Placer gold can be mined with common tools such as a pick and shovel, and removed from the gravel by the simple process of panning. Lode mining obviously takes a lot of expensive equipment and has many inherent dangers. Only after the placer gold became scarce did the lode mining begin.
The first significant gold rush in the USA was the Georgia gold rush. It started in 1829 in Lumpkin County and spread rapidly through the North Georgia mountains, following what is known as the Georgia Gold Belt. One of the first public records of the discovery and ensuing gold rush was a notice published on August 1, 1829 in the Georgia Journal newspaper. The notice showed that the gold rush had spread to Habersham County. It also noted that the people of Georgia were aware of other gold finds in the southern Appalachian Mountains. Mining operations, the majority of which were placer mining, quickly sprang up in Lumpkin, White, Union and Cherokee counties. The mining continued, even though much of the land the gold was on was under the control of the Cherokee Indians. By 1830 there were as many as 4,000 miners working on just the Yahoola Creek in Lumpkin County. In an area from north of Blairsville to the southeast Corner of Cherokee county the miners were producing over 300 ounces of gold per day. There were up to 10,000 miners between the Chastatee and the Etowah Rivers in 1831. Boom towns like Auraria and Dahlonega, which had up to 15,000 miners at the height of the gold rush, grew quickly.
In 1832 Georgia held the Gold Lottery of 1832, which awarded land that had been owned by the Cherokee Indians to the winners of the lottery in 40 acre tracts. In 1838 the United States Congress established t he Dahlonega Mint as a branch of the United States Mint. This not only attested to the amount of gold that was being produced in the Georgia gold rush, but validated the actions of seizing the Cherokee lands taken by Georgia six years earlier. The tensions between the Cherokee Indians and various states, including Georgia, led to the forced migration of the Indians later known as the Trail of Tears. Before they were expelled, some of the Cherokees gained enough gold-mining experience to participate later in the California gold rush which took place in 1849.
By the early 1840’s most of the placer gold that would support commercial operations had played out, and the mining efforts shifted to working the lode deposits. Many of the miners left to join the California gold rush in 1849, but the lode mines in the Georgia Gold Belt continued to produce gold for years. There were as many as 500 mines spread through 37 different counties. The Georgia gold rush produced around 900,000 ounces of gold between 1828 and the mid-20th century, when commercial gold production ceased.
There are publications noting the locations, in Georgia, by county, and the amount of gold produced in each location available. One of those is “THE GREAT AMERICAN GOLD RUSHES” , Volume I in “THE GREAT AMERICAN SERIES” of e-books on gold.