From the earliest recorded history of Coweta County, there have been stories about real and potential gold mines. land with gold and sold half of it for $1,200. A lawsuit followed. There were at least a couple of gold mines in Coweta County. Some 30 years ago, Robert Holbrook took me into the woods off Smokey Road to show the remnants of a mine on the Dennis farm. The mining had taken place in the mid1800s, and by the time I saw it, there were just a few depressions in the ground — the shafts having been filled decades earlier. I suspect the mine on the Bowers' place near Moreland dates to the same era. The big gold mining in this area was in Meriwether County, just south
of Grantville. An early post office in Meriwether — at John G. Carter’s store said to be near the Coweta line — was called Gold Hill. People began finding gold in streams between what is now Grantville, Luthersville and Lone Oak as far back as 1835, and mining continued there for some 70 years. A “Coweta Chronicles” entry for 1871 noted, “A gold mine near — though in Meriwether County — added much to the business of Grantville.” “There were three gold mines actually. They were all in the Yellow Jacket Creek area,” said Rosalind Edmondson, who with
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her cousin Eleanor Willingham wrote the 2006 “History of Lone Oak, Georgia.” The Lone Oak history reported Adam Ragland and men named Hardaway and Reagan made the initial discovery. They panned for gold in area creeks. It was after the Civil War that B.M. Wilkes, John Cross and a Mr. Lawshe ran a mine. “At the time of operation, the Wilkes mine was equipped with two Sturtevant roller mills, two Kincaid mills, concentrating tables and amalgamating tube, settling tank and other machinery,” according to the Edmondson-Willingham history.
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