After learning of the value of the resource on his land, John Reed entered into a partnership with Federick Kisor, James Love, and Martin Phifer. In the year 1803, the men found a nugget weighing . News of the discovery was quickly spread by regional newspapers, and land owners across the area began to search for gold on their property. Nearly all of the land was privately owned and the beginning of the Carolina gold rush was largely conducted by farmers at the end of the growing season each year. These farmers were capable of conducting shallow surface mining of the stream-beds known as
placer mining. However, by the late 1820s these placer deposits had been exhausted and the first lode mine shaft was excavated in pursuit of a gold-containing
quartz vein in 1825 by Matthias Barringer in
Montgomery County, North Carolina (now Montgomery and
Stanly counties). With this progression of mining technique, the profession of mining became a necessity as tunnels and ventilation issues were outside the skill set of land owning farmers. By the 1830s placer mining had been nearly entirely replaced by the more technical lode mining, including at the Reed mine; with this development came opportunity for immigrants from southern England. The region of
Cornwall had produced miners for decades, who skillfully extracted the
copper and
tin from their deep mines until, by the early 19th century, those deposits became exhausted. Learning of new opportunity in North Carolina many of these miners immigrated in pursuit of work and brought their expertise with them. Some of the ore mills built in the Carolinas can be seen to resemble the design of the old mines in Cornwall. The expertise that these miners taught to the Carolina men spread throughout the region as men sought gold across the
Carolina terrane. The establishment of a skilled and experienced workforce from this Carolina gold rush can be directly credited for the success of the much larger gold rush of 1849 in California, which drew many of these now skilled miners West. Over 2,500 ounces of gold was deposited in the
Philadelphia Mint by 1824. Due to the bountiful gold production in the Carolinas, the
Charlotte Mint was built in Charlotte and opened for business on July 27, 1837. ==References==