Harvest | A publication of
| Sunday, August 29, 2010
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Story by MIMI ENSLEY & Photos by SARA GUEVARA
he way Dahlonega Gold Museum volunteer Fred Boggs tells it, it all started with a large gold nugget and a stumped toe. But from the day gold was discovered in the mountains of Northeast Georgia, Dahlonega has never been the same. It’s become a tourist center with an enticing history centered around something that will always draw people to the small mountain town: a legacy of gold. Two men stand at the entrance of a mine in Dahlonega in 1905 or 1906.
Courtesy of Vanishing Georgia, Georgia Division of Archives and History, Office of Secretary of State
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(Inset) This 1929 photo shows the Lumpkin County Courthouse that is now the Dahlonega Gold Museum Historic Site. Courtesy of Vanishing Georgia, Georgia Division of Archives and History, Office of Secretary of State
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The Dahlonega Gold Museum is located inside the the historic 1836 Lumpkin County Courthouse, the oldest courthouse in Georgia.
“They say to start with, some of the gold was just laying on top of the ground,” Boggs said. In Boggs’ account, the gold rush began when a man walking through the woods around Auraria southwest of Dahlonega kicked an unusual-looking stone. As he bent down to pick up the object, he thought it might be valuable, and he had it assayed. Come to find out, he’d stumbled upon gold. “From what I heard, he was mad because he stumped his toe — it was a good-sized nugget,” Boggs said, laughing. “But I don’t know how true
that was.” Whether or not Boggs’ anecdote is the real story, by 1828 miners flocked to Lumpkin County to strike it rich and get a taste of the gold-mining lifestyle. At first the gold was easy to find, but as the mining progressed, the job got harder. By the 1840s, the rush was over. Miners headed west to California, but the town was forever changed. Now, more than 150 years after Dahlonega’s gold rush, people from across the country still come to visit the former mining town. The allure of a golden