n C THE FIRST US c
GOLD RUSH r
NORTH CAROLINA
N, 1799 – 1848
By Andrew D. Schmidt
Most Americans have heard of the California Gold Rush of 1849 – 55, and many have heard of the Alaskan Gold Rush of 1896 – 99 as well. However, North America’ s first gold rush— in North Carolina— has been all but forgotten.
Gold rushes have been important occurrences in our nation’ s history. In addition to the financial aspects of finding the“ yellow metal” and its subsequent uses in bullion, coins, industry and jewelry, the rushes stimulated the migration of people to new geographic regions. In each case, the establishment of trade for the local economies in those regions was strengthened as a result.
The three rushes all started under similar circumstances in the way that the gold was discovered— by the finding of“ placer” gold, whereby the heavy yellow metal lies deposited in streams or rivers. Because of the weight, mining pans were used in the most primitive method of sorting the gravel and sand out, leaving flakes( or small nuggets) of gold on the pan’ s bottom. In both California and North Carolina, the finds were accidental.
In the case of the 1849 California Gold Rush, James Marshall, in the employ of Captain John Sutter, found a gold nugget on January 24, 1848 in the spill-way of Sutter’ s saw mill in the South fork of the American River near the town of Coloma. The mass migration that followed gave birth to the growth of Northern California( especially in nearby San Francisco, where between January 1848 and December 1849, the population increased from 1,000 to 25,000). It also hastened the establishment of the state of California, which joined the union in 1850. Approximately 300,000 people migrated to California during the rush.
In the Canadian Yukon, on August 16, 1896, four family members of the American prospector George Carmack found gold along the banks of Rabbit Creek, a tributary of the Klondike River. Although the gold fields were located in the Yukon, the US city of Seattle established itself as the“ Gateway to the Gold Fields.” Some 30,000 – 40,000 prospectors used Seattle as
The Little Meadow Creek that flows through the Reed Mine. It was along this creek that the original gold was found by 12-year-old Conrad Reed in 1799.