Cooperative Living February 2021 - 36
FieldTrip | Story and photos by Audrey T. Hingley, Contributing Writer
These 7-ton " hornet balls "
were used to crush ore
to free the gold.
Searching for a Lode in Goldvein
Virginia: known for tobacco, apples, peanuts ... and gold
here's gold in them thar Virginia
hills. Or at least there was at
one time.
Long before the 1848-49 California
Gold Rush, Thomas Jefferson wrote in
1782 about a goldbearing
rock found
on the north side of
the Rappahannock
River near
Fredericksburg, Va.
Prospectors
eventually located a
1,000-mile-long
" gold belt " stretching
from Maryland into
Virginia and as far
south as Alabama.
Today, that legacy
lives on at Monroe
Park, the Gold
Mining Interpretive
Center and Gold
Mining Camp
Museum, the only
34 | Cooperative Living | February 2021
T
museum in Virginia dedicated to the
history of gold mining, located in
Goldvein in southern Fauquier County.
" Most people are surprised; they
didn't know there was gold in Virginia.
It's not even in school history books
because it was a comparatively small
industry, " says park manager/curator
Todd Bonshire.
GOLD RUSH
Entrepreneurs discovered the first
lode deposit in Virginia in 1806 in
Spotsylvania County.
In 1818, Fauquier
gold was first officially
mined at Union Gold
Mine. Goldvein sits
2 miles to the east.
Todd Bonshire,
park manager/curator
at Monroe Park,
sits at the site's goldpanning
area.
Named in 1901, it remains linked to
19 gold mines once operating nearby.
Early exploration concentrated on
surface deposits. Placer mines, where
miners ran water through gravel dug
from stream bottoms, were in local
streams. When Goldvein's Franklin
Mine opened in 1825, miners began
digging " open cuts, " a process like
strip mining where a large trench
follows the path of a vein. Mine shafts
were later dug.
" Around here, gold is found inside
quartz [deposits], so in the early days
they blasted out quartz and used
pickaxes and hand equipment, "
Bonshire notes.
Production in Virginia averaged
nearly 3,000 ounces from 1840 to
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Cooperative Living February 2021
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Cooperative Living February 2021
Cooperative Living February 2021 - 1
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