Georgia Gold Rush! What?

By Denise Farnsworth

Pre-CW Graham Hotel remains, Auraria

As a native Georgia author, I was frequently surprised by the number of people who were unaware that not only did Georgia’s gold rush precede those in California and Alaska, but Georgia gold was typically purer. The first book of my very first series, The Georgia Gold Series, touched on the Gold Rush but went on to focus more on the Civil War. I’ve always known I might return to the unique time period of the 1830s to write more thoroughly about the days when miners bent over creek water with pans and sluice boxes and boom towns as wild as any in the West cropped up across North Georgia. This year and next, it’s happening with my Twenty-Niners of the Georgia Gold Rush Series.

Around 1828, Benjamin Parks was returning from a lick log on the west side of the Chestatee River when he kicked up a nugget that started the frenzy. By the next year, gold activity stretched from the Clarkesville to Canton. Desperate men—up to ten thousand as 1829 closed—paid big rents to mine areas for forty days or less. That the land was part of the Cherokee Nation did not deter prospectors. The Indian Removal Act was introduced in Congress and supported by President Andrew Jackson, even though Cherokee warriors had helped him rout Creek Indians allied to the British during the War of 1812.

The Cherokee lands were surveyed into 160-acre farm lots and 40-acre gold lots and reapportioned by lottery drawing to white settlers in the autumn of 1832. Every citizen had one draw with additional draws to heads of families and Revolutionary War veterans. Names of those eligible were placed in one huge drum while the numbers of each lot were placed in another. Some won lots that included Cherokee farmsteads with homes, outbuildings, businesses, and orchards, though the government was to compensate the families for such improvements. Incentives were offered for Cherokees who relocated to Oklahoma early. Otherwise, lottery winners had to wait for the May 1838 removal deadline.

One of the first boom towns, now a ghost town, was Auraria, located in Lumpkin County on a ridge between the Etowah and Chestatee rivers. Within six months of the lottery, a hundred families, eighteen to twenty stores, twelve to fifteen law offices, and four to five taverns comprised the rowdy village. Mining companies formed and assaying labs popped up. A newspaper, The Western Herald, began publication in 1833. Nathaniel Nuckolls opened the first hotel, later purchased by Agnes Paschal and her son, George W. Paschal, a lawyer from Lexington, Georgia. Former Vice President John C. Calhoun stayed at the hotel two weeks at a time, overseeing his thriving gold mine. Drovers brought hogs from Tennessee and wild turkeys to camps outside town to help offset the scarcity of meat in the area.

In 1832, farther west, 130 white families in Cherokee County set up a government. Cherokee Court House (or Etowah/Edawah) soon became Canton, and Harnageville soon became Tate. Residents in Canton planted mulberry trees and imported 100,000 silk worms.

Auraria, 1932

Back in Lumpkin County, a dispute about the legality of the land where the courthouse was to be placed led to the county seat being moved five or six miles north to Headquarters/Talonega/Licklog, close to where Parks had his bonanza. Town lots were sold on the Fourth of July, 1833. Within months, government offices and businesses deserted Auraria for the newly named Dahlonega. A jail and 18x32 log courthouse with a door so low that a tall man had to stoop to enter were hastily erected. As in Auraria, gambling dens, saloons, tenpin alleys, and houses of ill repute proliferated well before the Baptists, Methodists, and Presbyterians could organize places of worship.

Look for further posts to share more about gold mining methods and the rowdy towns and colorful characters of the Georgia Gold Rush. Book one, The Songbird and the Surveyor, set in Auraria in 1833, can be pre-ordered now for the Nov. 3 release. https://www.amazon.com/Songbird-Surveyor-Twenty-Niners-Georgia-Gold-ebook/dp/B0F556951W/

Denise Farnsworth, formerly Denise Weimer, writes historical and contemporary romance mostly set in Georgia and also serves as a freelance editor and the Acquisitions & Editorial Liaison for Wild Heart Books. A wife and mother, she always pauses for coffee, chocolate, and old houses. 

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