Underwater gold rush: fake sites still attract victims

The first gold rush in North America began with a fairy tale. One day in 1799, Conrad Reed, the son of a farmer from Cabarrus County, finds a large yellow stone. The seven-kilo boulder, which plays with shiny colors, will reach home. And there he loses interest in him: for the next three years he will use it as a door stop.

It was not until 1802 that a traveling jeweler from Fayetteville, North Carolina, accidentally noticed this decoration at the bus stop. The stone looks at it and says it's a really big golden nugget. Conrad has no idea what gold is, but he's willing to get rid of the "worthless rubble" with him and the annoying presence of a stranger. She'll sell it to him for $ 3.50, about the lumberjack's weekly salary. And he thinks he made a very good deal.

However, his father Johannes Reidt (Reed) almost had a morning stroke. The real price was around $ 3,600. But Johannes doesn't despair: his son will remember where the damn nugget found, won't he? But his memory overestimated it somewhat.

It will take another two years before Conrad Reed remembers that the site was the bed of Little Meadow Creek. But by then, crowds of people were heading to North Carolina. Everyone wants to find the golden vein of Mad Reed. However, not everyone is lucky to find gold.

The story has a good ending, at least as far as Reed is concerned. They will eventually build their gold mine, the first commercial enterprise of its kind in America. They will mine gold in bulk and get rich. One of their slaves, Peter, even digs a twelve-pound nugget here.

But the important thing is that gold appeared here in a somewhat unexpected place, and the hunt for finding it triggered the first gold rush in North America. Why work in a field when you can make money like a king in a tin shed with a pickaxe or a sieve in a few hours? Thirty years later, gold will be discovered in the Appalachian Mountains in Georgia and between 1848-55 in the Sierra Nevada in California. And in Montana, Idaho, Oregon and the Colorado River in New Mexico. Gold can appear everywhere, can't it?