If there is gold to be found, you can bet the farm I will be out there panning for it. When a touch of gold fever takes hold, I’m there. That’s why I love finding old reports of gold mines, such as this one about Alabama’s gold fields published in 1898.
Alabama Gold
A special correspondent of the Anniston Hot Blast returned from the gold fields of Cleburne County, where he inspected one mine, and heard from a number of other enterprises in the county.
The mine he saw is in a swamp, near Arbacoochee, once a town of 2,000 people, but now possessing 30 or 40 souls.
It was a mining center about 60 years ago, and the mine in operation is working chiefly “the old dirt” of the early mining days.
From a pocket at this spot one man took in one day $13,000, and recently $15,000 was taken out nearby.
It is believed that the dirt of the entire belt contains from $18 to $25 to the ton, or cubic yard. Colorado dirt that yields $5 to $8 is considered desirable and profitable.
There is more or less difficulty in getting the gold from such earth. There is a lack of both machinery and water. If the supply of water were abundant, the other difficulties could be overcome. It is not, and it will not be until more capital is at command, when the Tallapoosa River could be utilized.
How Gold is Mined
The manner of mining in Cleburne is this – the dirt is carried in large pipes to the desired elevation, and is then turned into long sluice boxes holding quicksilver which gathers the gold.
Water is needed in the sluice boxes, but it is chiefly needed in powerful streams to loosen the dirt from its original position, and prepare it for elevation to the sluice boxes.
Profitable Mines
A number of mines in Cleburne are profitable worked, but it is plain that the gold belt in that county will not yield its maximum until an ample supply of water is turned through it.
If enough money could be attracted to that belt to carry by means of a tunnel or deep cutting the Tallapoosa through it, Alabama gold would again cut a figure in the returns of gold mining.
The gold is in the soil and rocks of Cleburne, but skill and capital are needed before it can be largely brought out and placed in men’s pockets.
Source: The age-herald. (Birmingham, Ala.), 04 Jan. 1898.
