Not too many hours after touching down in a hot and sunny NC last weekend, I found myself sitting on the porch of a good friend, eating good food and sharing good wine. A warm welcome back indeed!
Said friend and I sealed our friendship over our love of the beach and so to take advantage of the great weather we plotted a weekend camping at the Carolina coast. The evening ended with a thunderstorm that perhaps should have been a portent but through the giddy wine goggles we had a plan for escape which was augmented over the next few days with a camping reservation, borrowed sleeping mats and a stack of camping treats from jiffypop to s’mores fixings. We were good to go and more than a bit excited.
Fast forward to Friday morning and it became clear that tropical storm Andrea was going to turn our sea and sand fix into mud and misery. Reluctant to lose an opportunity to explore, as the deluge continued outside, Google was scoured for alternative days out.
We fixed upon a trip to an historic gold mine (followed by a quick stop at the modern gold mine that is Ikea which just so happened to be almost on the way). Now if you think of gold and America you most likely think of crazy-eyed mid C19th prospectors in California, or I certainly did, but in actual fact the first gold to be found in the US was here in NC at the Reed Gold Mine. Conrad Reed, the 12 year old son of German-born farmer Johannas Ried / Reidt /Reith (who’s name was / is Anglicised to John Reed) was fishing in Little Meadow Creek when he spotted a shiny, wedge-shaped rock on the stream bed. His father, unable to identify the heavy rock and being a man of a practical nature set it to use as a doorstop which it remained for three years until identified as gold in 1802 by a jeweller who told Reed to name his price. Reed walked away with the princely sum of $3.50 (equivalent of a week’s wages) in return for gold to the value of $3600, but soon realised his mistake and not only recouped about $1000 from the unscrupulous C19th Dell Boy jeweller but set up a mining operation that was to last over 100 years and prompted the first gold fever in America as farmers in the surrounding Piedmont area took to their creeks to get lucky.
Today the site is maintained by the state and is free to access, with a tour of some of the mine works, a working stamp mill (for crushing ore) and the opportunity to pan for your own piece of gold. Like, Town Creek Mound, the site itself is somewhat understated, but beautiful and was surprisingly quiet with few visitors for a sunny Saturday. The well-interpreted museum (including surprises such as a Cornish connection and Merry Widows) provided 
insight to both the site and the archaeological techniques used to investigate it (big thumbs up here!). The enthusiastic staff insisted on making me pan for gold a second time as my first attempt failed miserably. Thanks to the able assistance of Alexis, (the under-15 gold-panning champion with the patience of a saint), I was able to pick up my very own tiny flake of gold as a memento. A grand morning out indeed!
