Second gold rush at Reed Mine
By Joyce Lavene
Senior Staff Writer
Reed Gold Mine is known for its large gold nuggets—such as the 17-pound nugget found by John Reed’s son, Conrad, in 1799. That find began the gold rush that eventually changed the country.
By the late 1800s, farmers had given up their crops to prospect for gold. Surface panning in creeks and riverbeds had turned into deep-mining operations. Small towns like Gold Hill popped up to support the search for more and bigger gold nuggets. Mining enterprises, like the Mecklenburg Gold Mining Company, hired as many as 600 people. For a while, the world narrowed down to prospectors and what they needed as an industry and lifestyle built up around the pursuit of gold.
Charlotte suddenly became more than a sleepy village as it evolved into a regional financial center for prospectors to register claims and assay their wealth. It may be hard to believe today, but the largest amount of gold in the state was found in the piedmont counties of Guilford, Randolph, Davidson, Rowan, Montgomery, Stanly, Cabarrus, Mecklenburg, Gaston, and Union. For many years, those counties provided the only native gold for the United States Mint.
It wasn’t until much later that the better known gold rush began in California. Gold was still being mined in N.C. until the Civil War when it completely stopped.
Now a second gold rush is going on in the piedmont area. Mining Companies using new technologies are investing in gold mining. Old mines are being revived, thanks largely to the high price of gold making exploration profitable again. Mines that have been abandoned for more than a hundred years are being opened and gold is being extracted.
The gold rush at Reed Mine is a little different. Despite persistent rumors that the long dormant mine shaft on the property is being sold to gold mining interests, Reed Mine Site Manager, Sharon Robinson, said the rumors are not true.
“We are governed by preservation laws and the state of North Carolina,” she said. “Also, most of the profitable mining done here in the 1800s was close to the surface. The shaft they are talking about is 150 feet down. The crystals further down just don’t contain enough gold.”
Some people may not know, but originally the dirt used for panning at Reed Mine was taken from the Cotton Patch Mine in New London. Now the dirt comes from Little Meadow Creek, the same one Conrad Reed found his large chunk of gold.
“We take the dirt from the creek with a backhoe,” Robinson said. “We created a natural sluice spot and have been digging there. We’ve had a lot of what we call ‘new’ gold coming up. This is gold that has recently broken free of the creek bed. This gold isn’t smooth—it’s still got some edges because it hasn’t been worn down by the water.”
This new gold rush at Reed may be attributed to that new gold. Some of it is coming up in quartz pieces, worth $50 to $75. A lot of it is coming up in big nuggets that have been recently found by gold panners.
A large nugget was found in 1997 but now those nuggets seem to be weekly finds. During this year’s Heritage Days event, a student found a nugget worth about $300. “The spot price for gold was at $1,475 per ounce,” Robinson said. “I offered him $300 out of my own pocket, but he was a smart kid and turned me down. He knew he had found something special.”
Just two weeks before, a French Exchange student found a nugget weighing approximately three grams. Robinson offered for that nugget too, for the museum at the site, but was turned down as well.
Since the start of the gold panning season in March, Robinson said there have been record numbers of panners at the mine. For $2 per pan, visitors search through dirt taken directly from Little Meadow Creek and have a chance to find a fortune. “Anything found in the panning area belongs to the panner, not the state,” Robinson said. “Your $2 ticket is your claim. So, if you did happen to find a 17 pound gold nugget at the bottom of your pan, it would be yours to keep.”
The educational panning area at Reed Mine teaches visitors how to pan for gold in much the same way that the first panners in North Carolina creeks looked for their fortune. Besides panning, the mine site has 1.5 miles of nature trails, a short film, museum, a guided underground tour, a working original 1895 Stamp Mill, and a picnic area. All of it is free.
Reed Gold Mine is part of the Division of State Historic Sites, Office of Archives and History, an agency of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, and site of the First Discovery of Gold in America, 1799. For more information, call 704-721-4653 or visit the web site at www.nchistoricsites.org/reed. You can also find them on Facebook at facebook.com/reedgoldmine.
Other local mines to search for your treasure are Cotton Patch Mine and Mountain Creek Mine in New London.
Sidebar:
Tips for panning from Sharon Robinson
Either look in the bend of the curve in the creek or where you see an obstruction like a tree or a big rock. Check the opposite side with the curent. This makes a natural sluice and gravity will hold some gold there. You have to get to the dirt that is closest to the bedrock because gold sinks. Trust the gravity.
