Auraria: Georgia’s Gold Rush Ghost Town

 by Denise Farnsworth

Auraria in 1932

Gold in Georgia! My last post on HHH explored the 1830s gold rush that few people are aware of. This month, let’s zero in on the first boom town of that gold rush, Auraria—also the setting for my upcoming release, The Songbird and the Surveyor. This mountain country crossroads proves especially intriguing since it’s been a ghost town for the past fifty years or so.

William Dean built the first cabin between the Chestatee and Etowah rivers in the summer of 1832. Nathaniel Nuckolls soon established a tavern and hotel to serve the miners that flooded North Georgia following the 1829 discovery of gold. The town that grew up along the narrow ridge there, traversed north to south by Gold Diggers’ Road, was first known as Nuckollsville.

Graham Hotel ruins

Land that originally belonged to the Cherokees, who were slated by the national government for removal by 1838, was surveyed into 160-acre farm lots and 40-acre gold lots and reapportioned to white settlers through a land lottery in the autumn of 1832. In November, Nuckollsville was renamed Auraria. 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. The population soon swelled to over a thousand…with twenty saloons and five hotels. Auraria was a wild place, much akin to the later boomtowns of the Wild West. Georgia law prohibited gambling in public places, but there were exceptions for “respectable gentlemen” for dice games, board games, a bluffing game which became poker, and vingt-et-un (twenty-one), which came from New Orleans and became blackjack. Fights and horse thefts were common, as were houses of ill repute.

Room inside hotel in ruins

Legitimate businesses also thrived. Mining companies formed and assaying labs popped up. A newspaper, The Western Herald, began publication in 1833. Agnes Paschal and her son, George W. Paschal, a lawyer from Lexington, Georgia, purchased the Nuckolls hotel and soon built a new one. They also helped establish the first Baptist church. Former Vice President John C. Calhoun stayed at their establishment 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. John Ware established a confectionery in a new building. The Athens Stage Line arrived Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday mornings and left for Augusta on Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings. Another line ran from Pendleton, South Carolina, via Carnesville, through Auraria and on to Gainesville, Georgia.

In April of 1833, due to a legal dispute over the land where the courthouse for the new Lumpkin County was to be located, the court announced the selection of a courthouse site north of Auraria, near where gold was first discovered at a place then called Licklog or Headquarters…later Dahlonega. Dahlonega and Auraria held rival Fourth of July celebrations that summer, with town lots being sold in Dahlonega. Soon county offices and businesses closed in Auraria and reopened in Dahlonega. Auraria held on through the early twentieth century with just a few homes and businesses, but the heyday had ended. Hulks of crumbling buildings soon lined Gold Diggers’ Road, forgotten, mere shadows of a colorful past.

Look for further posts about gold mining methods and the rowdy towns and 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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