Though you won\u2019t become a millionaire panning for gold in Indiana, today\u2019s recreational gold hunters have a lot of fun sloshing around Hoosier creeks in search of the shiny metal that led many a conquistador<\/em> to his doom.\u00a0 Around\u00a01900, however, Indiana farmers and geologists explored the possibility that the hills of Brown, Monroe, and Morgan counties\u00a0might become something of a Klondike.<\/p>\n Mining for gold in the Eastern United States might sound far-fetched, but it goes back over two centuries. \u00a0While Spanish explorers\u00a0who crisscrossed parts of the South\u00a0and Southwest\u00a0were fooled by\u00a0El Dorado<\/em> myths,\u00a0the soils of the Southeastern U.S. do hold\u00a0significant quantities of the mineral. \u00a0In fact, until the discovery of California\u2019s huge deposits in the 1840s, most domestic gold\u00a0came from North Carolina, home of America\u2019s \u201cfirst gold rush.\u201d<\/p>\n The South\u2019s gold industry began in 1799, when a 17-pound nugget turned up on the farm of John Reed, a former Hessian soldier. \u00a0An undocumented immigrant, Johannes Ried had deserted from the British Army and settled near Charlotte after the war, anglicizing his name. Reed had apparently never seen gold and didn\u2019t know what the shiny yellow rock his son had found was. \u00a0For three years, he used it as a door post. Finally asking a jeweler to appraise it, Reed got swindled: he sold the big nugget, actually worth thousands of dollars, for just $3.50.<\/p>\n Fortunately, Reed and\u00a0other North Carolina farmers soon caught on. By the 1830s, placer mines on farms around Charlotte gave way to heavy-duty\u00a0mining operations. \u00a0At their peak, these mines employed about 25,000 people. \u00a0With deep-vein mines wreaking havoc on the land and destroying good agricultural sites, Southern gold mining may have played a role in the exodus of Southerners to fertile\u00a0land in the Midwest. \u00a0Yet the mines were a big boon for the U.S. government, which authorized a new branch of the U.S. Mint\u00a0in Charlotte in 1837. \u00a0Although it\u00a0was still the poorest state in the South, North Carolina produced the first\u00a0gold coins ever minted in the U.S. \u00a0These replaced English and Spanish coins legally used by Americans as currency.<\/p>\n Begun by Germans, the Southern gold industry also attracted thousands of immigrants, mostly from places\u00a0with a long history of mining, like Cornwall, Wales, and Germany. \u00a0Many joined the rush to California in 1849, around the time\u00a0the Carolina gold rush peaked. Others came\u00a0to the Midwest, settling in places like Wisconsin, originally a federal lead mining district.<\/p>\n Gold mining never really took off in Brown County, Indiana. \u00a0But when Southerners flocked into the uplands in the 1830s, they began\u00a0finding gold there, too.<\/p>\n The irony is that one of the historically\u00a0poorest Hoosier counties got an unexpected windfall\u00a0from the glaciers\u00a0that stopped on its doorstep and spared most of it from being flattened. \u00a0That gift was Canadian gold,\u00a0originally delivered to Earth \u2014 so the\u00a0theory runs \u2014 by\u00a0asteroid collisions four billion years ago.<\/p>\n While artist colonies found a different sort\u00a0of gold in Brown County\u2019s rustic hills, farmers \u2014 most of them with Southern Appalachian roots \u2014 found the allure of gold hidden in creek\u00a0beds worth pursuing. \u00a0By the 1920s, traditional upland farming practices, heavy logging, and hogs wandering loose through the woods had seriously degraded Brown County\u2019s soil. \u00a0The situation was so bad that by the time of the Great Depression, much of the county\u00a0was nearly\u00a0abandoned. \u00a0Conservationists were\u00a0able to snatch up plenty of\u00a0cheap land for the new park, created in 1929, plus other degraded land later added to the Hoosier National Forest and Yellowwood State Forest. \u00a0Though considered the crown jewel of the state park system today, Brown County was no\u00a0wilderness a century ago. \u00a0And the presence of gold there must have appealed to cash-strapped farmers eking out a basic livelihood.<\/p>\n Locals had been panning gold in streams like Bean Blossom Creek, Lick Creek, and Bear Creek since at least the 1840s, often turning up enough of the mineral to supplement their small\u00a0income from crops\u00a0and livestock. \u00a0In 1897, one\u00a0prospector told of making\u00a0as much as $27 a day<\/a> \u2014 over $700 in today\u2019s money\u00a0\u2014 but nobody here was\u00a0getting filthy rich.\u00a0 Yet in 1903, Indiana State Geologist Willis S. Blatchley came down from Indianapolis to weigh in on an old\u00a0debate about whether Brown County could sustain a serious gold mining operation.<\/p>\n Blatchley wrote several reports, intended for a popular audience. He described how the glaciers that once covered Indiana in ice five-hundred feet thick lugged\u00a0gold-bearing rocks down from Hudson Bay, depositing them in \u201cterminal moraines,\u201d piles of rubble left where the ice sheets stopped. \u00a0Water erosion then washed the gold out of the moraines into streams, dispersing it over several counties south of Indianapolis, where it turned up as tiny flakes in creek beds. Primitive panning and placer mines would help sift the gold out from mud and gravel, but more intensive mining to get all the gold wasn\u2019t traditionally considered worth the effort.<\/p>\n Blatchley was one of Indiana\u2019s great naturalists and took a strong interest in mining. \u00a0Born in Connecticut, he grew up on farms in Putnam County, whose unusual geology and rich wildlife got him interested in nature, especially rocks, bugs, and butterflies. \u00a0At Indiana University in the 1880\u2019s, Blatchley\u00a0studied with the great ichthyologist David Starr Jordan and geologist John Casper Branner. Pioneer Hoosier scientists, Jordan and Branner, later became the first and second presidents of Stanford University in California.<\/p>\n Ironically, Branner, who served as Arkansas State Geologist<\/a>\u00a0while still a\u00a0faculty member at IU, was famously burned in effigy in 1888 after\u00a0he exposed bogus gold and silver mines in the Ozarks, dashing\u00a0the hopes of optimistic capitalists and investors there. \u00a0One of Branner\u2019s assistants on the Arkansas surveys turned out to be\u00a0future U.S. president Herbert Hoover, who majored in geology at Stanford<\/a>\u00a0after Branner left his job in Bloomington\u00a0to head the new department. (Hoover went on to get his first job after college as a gold-mining engineer in Western Australia and later worked for the Chinese Bureau of Mines and in Russia. \u00a0Before he went into politics, Hoover was an internationally-recognized\u00a0mining expert and even published a standard textbook on the subject. \u00a0In 1912, he and his wife also made the definitive translation from Latin of a 16th-century German mining classic,\u00a0De re metallica<\/a><\/em>.)<\/p>\n On the heels of a new hunt for Hoosier gold, Branner\u2019s former student W.S. Blatchley\u2019s trip to southern Indiana in early 1902 was covered by the Indianapolis News<\/em>. \u00a0The News<\/em> was excited to announce \u201cgreat gold discoveries,\u201d and the Chicago Tribune<\/em>\u00a0reprinted the story almost verbatim the following winter. The exciting\u00a0gold finds of 1902, however, were on Highland Creek, between Martinsville and Brooklyn in Morgan County.<\/p>\n Leading the hunt for Highland Creek\u2019s gold was a former California miner, F.F. Taylor, and R.L. Royse, an \u201cIndianapolis gold\u00a0and diamond\u00a0prospector.\u201d \u00a0Taylor ran a hydraulic operation on the creek, called \u201cThe Black Eye Flumes,\u201d a name\u00a0inspired by all the ridicule heaped on Indiana gold mining. Though most experts remained skeptical, the flamboyant Royse announced his confidence\u00a0that Indiana was soon destined to become the \u201crichest placer gold state\u201d in the Union.<\/p>\n Taylor and Royse tried\u00a0to disprove\u00a0what a previous State Geologist, John Collett<\/a>, had said about Indiana gold. \u00a0Collett, who died in 1899, quipped that he thought there was enough gold in Brown County to pay off the national debt, but that it would \u201ctake the dollar of gold mined and an extra dollar to mine every dollar of it.\u201d \u00a0The brash prospector R.L. Royse, however, insisted that not only was he going to make a fortune in Morgan County: \u00a0soon enough, he said, he would come to downtown Indianapolis and \u201cpan some gold out of Washington Street.\u201d \u00a0(He had already claimed to have found gold<\/a>\u00a0in a North Indianapolis street sewer.)<\/p>\n William E. Stafford, known as \u201cWild Bill,\u201d was one of the colorful prospectors scouring the creeks of Morgan and Brown counties. The reporter for the\u00a0News<\/em>\u00a0gave Stafford a long write-up in 1902. This \u201cHercules of the gold diggings\u201d would reappear in the\u00a0Chicago Tribune<\/em>\u00a0a year later.<\/p>\n Another man who panned gold on Hoosier streams was \u201cUncle\u201d John Merriman. \u00a0Merriman, who lived until 1906, was the son of Hoosier pioneer William Merriman. \u00a0(William was born in Virginia in 1786, just three years after the end of the Revolutionary War.) Originally from\u00a0Morgan County, John had lived around Ellettsville and Bloomington, then moved over to\u00a0Fruitdale in Brown County in the 1870s, where he ran an orchard. \u00a0Panning gold helped supplement his small income. \u00a0In spite of a bad kidney ailment, Merriman took enough interest in gold to\u00a0venture out to the California gold fields in the 1880s.<\/p>\n Like many men who went west, the Hoosier prospector never struck\u00a0it rich. \u00a0But in 1903, the 69-year-old helped show State Geologist Blatchley around Brown County\u2019s own \u201cgold fields.\u201d<\/p>\n Blatchley wrote of men like John Merriman that some \u201cdo little else than\u00a0pan gold along the streams.\u201d \u00a0The geologist did some panning himself on Bean Blossom Creek, where children went out looking for gold after floods and snow melts. Merriman came with him. Blatchley wrote that Merriman averaged\u00a0about\u00a0$1.25 a day \u2014 approximately $30 in today\u2019s money. \u00a0Both men thought that modern machinery could increase the yield.<\/p>\n Some panners, like W.W. Young \u2014 alias \u201cOld Man\u201d Young \u2014 sent their gold off to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. \u00a0\u201cOld Man\u201d Young found fourteen ounces of gold in nine months of panning and got a receipt from the mint for $250.07, equivalent to about\u00a0$7,000 today. Young was considered \u201cquaint . . . the most peculiar character in any of the Indiana diggings. \u00a0He will not permit anyone to be near him, and will not pan as long as there is anyone in sight.\u201d<\/p>\n Blatchley\u2019s report states that local Indiana \u201cdrift gold\u201d averaged 22 carats, compared to 16-18 for California gold and 14-16 for Alaskan Klondike gold. \u00a0In other words, Hoosier\u00a0gold was actually superior to the stuff out West.<\/p>\n Yet he also\u00a0recognized that shortage of local water sources during the summertime, when many streams ran almost dry, would seriously hamper mining of the mineral. \u00a0\u201cBy constructing permanent dams in several of the valleys enough water could probably be conserved to tide over the dry season.\u201d \u00a0Taylor proposed sluicing water out of the White River, but the plan never really took on.<\/p>\n For a while, rumor even had it that birds had gotten interested in mining. \u00a0Gold in duck craws? \u00a0The\u00a0tales you\u2019re about to hear\u00a0sound like an old\u00a0St. Nicholas story.<\/a> \u00a0But for now, we\u2019ll assume these aren\u2019t just\u00a0tall tales.<\/p>\n Ultimately, however, predictions about great yields of gold in southern Indiana weren\u2019t justified. \u00a0The slough of excited stories<\/a> in the Indianapolis press about gold mining going on just \u201ctwenty-three miles from\u00a0the golden dome of the Indiana State House\u201d died out after 1903. \u00a0But that didn\u2019t stop two men from Ohio<\/a> from coming to Brown County, panning the stuff, and buying a farm with their profits in 1908.<\/p>\n Today, gold prospecting is said\u00a0to be the fastest-growing form of outdoor recreation of Indiana and many other states. \u00a0(In 2010, when\u00a0the price of gold\u00a0hit\u00a0almost\u00a0$1,500 an ounce, the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/em>\u00a0hosted a video<\/a>\u00a0about the revival of recreational gold-seeking in Vermont, where it\u2019s a great way to get outdoors, but \u201cmore about the experience than the riches.\u201d) \u00a0Brown, Morgan, and Monroe counties are still the most popular places for gold prospecting in the Hoosier State, but Blatchley reported<\/a> many other counties where the mineral turned up, including a few in northern Indiana like Cass and Warren.<\/p>\n But watch out, Indiana! \u00a0Don\u2019t hunt on private property unless you have permission first . . . even if you think you\u2019re as clever as this guy:<\/p>\n Contact: \u00a0staylor336 [AT] gmail.com<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"Chicago](\"http:\/\/blog.newspapers.library.in.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Chicago-Tribune-March-1-1903.jpg\")
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