When people think of the Gold Rush, they likely think of westward migration and American ambition. But the South’s impact on the era is often understated.
A WFDD listener recently asked about the history of the Gold Rush in North Carolina. For this week’s Carolina Curious, reporter DJ Simmons went digging for the answer.
When 12-year-old Conrad Reed skipped Sunday School in 1799 to fish in a Cabarrus County creek, he nabbed a life-changing catch — a large golden nugget.
It’s the first documented gold find in the United States. But according to Amanda Brantley, site manager at Reed Gold Mine, Conrad and his family didn’t know what they’d stumbled upon.
“He was unaware of what it was. Took it home because it was a big shiny rock, and asked his mom and dad, 'Hey, look at this cool thing I found.' And they're like, ‘Oh, thanks. We've been needing a doorstop,'" she says.
Brantley says Conrad’s father, John, later took the 17-pound nugget to a jeweler. He sold it for $3.50, but the jeweler would turn around and get more than $3,000.
With this new knowledge, Brantley says John formed a partnership with his neighbors and started digging pits on his property.
“They were finding good-sized nuggets of gold for a while, and word got out that, hey, there's gold in North Carolina," she says.
The discovery by Conrad and his father triggered America’s first Gold Rush, decades before the era associated with California.
Gold mining in the state at its peak was second only to farming in the number of North Carolinians it employed. It was an economic engine for places like Gold Hill, which became a boom town by the early 1840s.
Vivian Hopkins is the vice president of the Historic Gold Hill and Mines Foundation Incorporated. She says the local Randolph and Barnhardt mines provided employment and brought an influx of immigrants to the town.
“The gold production from those two mines alone was $7 to $9 million, in that day," Hopkins says. "That's why the area was named the richest, most famous gold mines east of the Mississippi.”
The advent of the Civil War slowed mining operations in North Carolina, but there was a brief revival in the late 1800s. Hopkins says, despite being sometimes overlooked, the era was a pivotal time for the state.
“The gold industry here is, in my opinion, a driving force in the development of North Carolina,” she says.
Hopkins says there are no active gold mining operations in North Carolina today; however, there are historic sites open to visitors.