Glittering Dust, Dormant Treasure: Press, Public Memory and Georgia's “Forgotten” Gold Rush

Abstract

This article examines nineteenth-century local, regional and national newspaper coverage of the first major American gold rush, which began in 1828 when as many as 20,000 people headed to the hills of northern Georgia to seek their fortunes. So much gold was discovered that a United States Mint was established in Dahlonega, Georgia, a town named for the Cherokee word for gold. The mint produced more than $100,000 during its first year, and more than one-and-a-half million coins by the time it closed in 1861. Accounts of this gold rush are “as fascinating as any fiction,” yet unlike the storied gold stampedes in California, Colorado, Alaska and the Black Hills, the Georgia rush has been lost to American collective memory. The purpose of this article is to seek to understand why. Despite boosterism and increasing nostalgia in coverage, the story was overshadowed by the Civil War, the exploitation of the Cherokee, the hardships of Reconstruction and the sensationalized gold rushes in the American West.