by Denise Farnsworth 
Sluice box
My last two posts introduced the Georgia Gold Rush and its first boom town, Auraria. Today let’s look at the gold mining methods used in the early days of the bonanza.
The typical picture we imagine of a miner bent over a creek with pan in hand reflects placer or deposit mining. Prospectors often searched for a bend in the stream where the eroding bank might reveal a gold-bearing layer. Gold flakes washed into the stream would be caught at the bend with other rocks and minerals in a gravel layer. The process of plunging and swirling water over the contents would eventually reveal the heavier gold flakes on the bottom of the pan.
Other early methods were not much more advanced and consisted of washing the gravel layer of a stream through a sluice box or a splint basket into a trough rocker, a hollowed-out log about a dozen feet long. While the water from the sluice box passed through the trough, it was kept in constant motion. The gold sank to the bottom through the continually moving silt and was caught by transverse cleats. 
Diving bell on its side with bottom exposed.
Enterprising miners with some cash on hand soon broadened efforts by drifting flatboats on the Chestatee and Etowah rivers to dredge the bottom. In early 1833, a diving bell was launched on the Chestatee by a former Tennessean named McCallom.
Eventually, placer mining petered out, and hard rock mining was required. To locate a vein mine, a miner would begin at a spot in the creek known to have placer deposits and work their way upstream, test-panning as they went. An abrupt drop in the gold content indicated a vein in the surrounding hills. Soil testing continued until it was located. Then tunneling operations would begin.
The ideal tunnel was seven feet square, but most ran only two to four. Timbers were needed to reinforce the rock riddled with fissures. Wheelbarrows or tracks and carts might be employed depending on the size of the mining operation. Vertical shafts were also dug, usually twenty to thirty feet deep but occasionally over a hundred. Once the ore was extracted from the vein mines, it was taken to a stamp mill to be crushed. These mills ranged from a single stamp hung from a bent sapling to as many as ten stamps powered by a water wheel.
The more complex mining methods required organization and financing. A number of gold mining companies were formed during the Gold Rush. Some of these included:
- Augusta Mining Company, Habersham Mining Company, and Naucoochy Mining Company, 1832
- Pigeon Roost Mining Company and Belfast Mining Company, 1834
- Georgia Mining Company, Chestatee Mining Company, and Cherokee Mining Company, 1835
- Lumpkin County Mining and Manufacturing Company, 1837
The easy gold played out by the early 1840s so that when gold was discovered in California, prospectors were all too eager to abandon the Georgia hills. They took their tools, their expertise, and even their town names with them. But later in the 1800s, another surge of hard rock mining occurred with the use of high-powered drills and hydraulic mining methods. Many Georgia mines continued lucrative operations well into the 1900s.
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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