[article published 28 Jan 1970, Henderson Daily Dispatch]
[transcribed to HTML and posted to the WWW in its entirety by S.H. Bolick--for research use only]

It started in 1799 with the discovery of a large nugget on the Cabarrus County farm of John Reed, a former Hessian soldier. For three years the hunk was used as a door stop.

Finally, a jeweler recognized it as a 17-pound gold nugget.

Within a short time several other nuggets, weighing up to 28 pounds each, were found on the Reed farm. After exhausting the surface gold, Reed and his new partners, James Love and Martin Pfifer, opened a vein mine in 1831. By 1849, it is estimated that more than $10 million in gold had been taken from the Reed property alone.

Meanwhile, gold was discovered in Anson, Burke, Mecklenburg, Montgomery, Rutherford, and other counties. A Tarborough newspaper in 1828 claimed that North Carolina had become known as the "golden state from the great lumps of precious metal found there."

Professor Fletcher M. Green of the University of North Carolina, writing about the forgotten industry, pointed out that prior to 1829, all the gold mined in the United States and coined at the Philadelphia Mint was taken from North Carolina.

The discovery of gold brought to North Carolina outside capitalists and laborers. Green wrote, "Gold finding became the all absorbing topic of the day; capitalists invested in mines, and the gold region expanded daily."

Thousands of foreigners -- Welsh, Cornish, Germans, Austrians, Poles, and others -- flocked to North Carolina. Farmers began inspecting the stones in their fields; slaves were purchased by local landowners and put to work looking for gold; and large landowners from the east -- particularly Granville, Halifax, and Warren counties -- moved westward, greatly increasing the number of men and women engaged in gold finding. At one time at least 30,000 persons were engaged in gold mining in the state. A branch mint was built in Charlotte in 1837 and the Bechtler family operated a private mint in Rutherford County from 1831 until 1857.

The early industry was largely restricted to "placer" minting. Dr. E.W. Phifer, Jr., a Morganton surgeon who is an accomplished historian, has described this as the type of mining that "required nothing more than pick, shovel, a stream or water, and a pan -- or at most a rocker -- with which to separate the heavy particles containing gold and lighter sand, gravel and debris."

As the surface gold gave out, vein mining was started; this began as ditching but gradually deepened into shafts and tunnels. Large financial investments became necessary for heavy equipment required at the deeper mines.

Now when one rides past the pleasant but sleepy community on U.S. 52 between Albemarle and Salisbury, he has little reason to be reminded of Gold Hill's former wealth and fame. If the passerby wants a fascinating tour, however, he might catch E.G. Isenhour between his mail delivery trips, for Isenhour is a walking atlas of the Gold Hill area. Earlier this month, he led the writer, three members of the Archives and History staff, Salisbury Post writer Jim Brawley, and several others on a tour of old mines.

Only a few hundred yards off the highway we found the remains of tremendous mining operations where more than 3,000 persons were employed in 1856. We were awed by evidence of 600-foot mine shafts, of towers and buildings, the air, of huge piles of sifted earth, of long-extinct railroad spurs, and of foundations of the once famous structures of Gold Hill -- a three-story hotel, several mining company headquarters, busy stores, doctors' offices, blacksmith and leatherworkers' shops, and at least one tavern. There once were fifteen mines in the Gold Hill community; the Gold Hill Mining Co. alone was capitalized at a million dollars in 1842, and the town became one of the most prosperous in the Piedmont.

Following the discovery of gold in California in 1849, the industry gradually declined in North Carolina. Some of the mines -- for instance, the Union Mine at Gold Hill -- later yielded copper, and several operated into the 20th Century. When more concentrated copper deposits were located elsewhere, even this industry died out. And one by one the historic buildings, mostly of wood construction, burned or deteriorated. Only last year the most vivid reminder of the boom town days -- the office building of the Gold Hill Mining Co. -- burned, taking with it the life of a caretaker. The huge safe, which once must have protected thousands of dollars in securities, sits empty in the ruins. Little is left to reveal the past glory of the community except Isenhour and a few oldtimers who still take delight in trudging over the scarred hills and telling the stories of the "golden" days of Gold Hill.

There was a brief revival of gold fever in North Carolina in the 1930s when several mines were 
reopened, one of the largest being the Rudisill Mine in Mecklenburg County.

Who knows? There may still be gold in them thar hills.