Abstract:
The earliest documented gold found in North Carolina was a seventeen-pound nugget discovered in Cabarrus County in 1799. An eleven-year-old boy named Conrad Reed made the find, and the gold was valued at $3,600. Until 1825 when vein mining was introduced in North Carolina, most gold mining was haphazard and done by amateurs. By 1891, there were thirty-five active mines in the state, and the Reed Gold Mine in Cabarrus County is now a state historical site.