March….. 2018

We are at the bottom of the Appalachian Mtns., in fact the “Trail” starts just a short ways from here at Springer Mountain. And there is “gold in these hills”, which is partly why we are here.
The very first Gold Rush in American happened here, in the 1830s, and ended quickly when the California Gold Rush in 1849 enticed every prospecter here to go west. We toured the oldest gold mine in the area and panned for gold- lots of fun and very informative. We were given pans and panned over a water trough in a roofed over building- a great tourist spot, but now quite the real thing. We also went to another gold mine, this one still crushes rock from their mine for us to pan. And we were also given two buckets of sand “seeded” with gemstones from Franklin River in North Carolina to sift through- and lo and behold we had about a dozen different types of gemstones, a couple actually have jewelry value- a piece of ruby and one of emerald- so we are having them cut into small stones, neither one of them looked like anything other than pretty rocks!

This area is now a tourist center- cooler in the summer in the mountains, very scenic, lots of new vineyards and winerys and a small “alpine village”- Helen. We walked up to Ruby Falls- a steep but paved half mile trek to beautiful falls.

Apparently, not only do we not know the date, but we were also to busy to take any photos of us panning for gold or visiting the quaint towns of Helen and Dahlonega…:-) This one is of cherry blossoms at the North Georgia University.