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PAGE 2A PICKENS COUNTY PROGRESS THURSDAY. JANUARY 7. 2016 "Thar's gold in them hills" - Yellow Creek's mining legacy The only remaining building that still stands from the Franklin Gold Mine is the office and com missary, located on Yellow Creek Road, where it crosses the Etowah River. Old photos courtesy of Ball Ground Historical Society In the 1880's, the Franklin-Creighton Gold Mine was modernized after it was purchased by J. M. Creighton. The Etowah River was dammed in order to power stamp mills that separated the gold from the ore. The small mine originally operated by Mary G. Franklin grew into an enormous mining facility in the latter nineteenth century. The Franklin-Creighton Mine used some of the most modern tech niques for extracting ore including a chlorination process which occured in this mill. By Larry Lavender Contributing writer Although the Cherokees had been aware of gold in the moun tains of north Georgia for cen turies, European-American settlers first laid claim to discov ering the gold in 1828. This "dis covery" led to the first gold rush in the young United States of America and also to the removal of the Cherokees from their an cestral homelands in what was to become infamously known as the "Trail of Tears." The town of Dahlonega, whose name is derived from a Cherokee word meaning "yellow rock," usually gets most of the fame for being the center of the gold rush, but at one time. Ball Ground rivaled the Lumpkin County community when it came to gold mining. In fact, Cherokee County was second only to Lumpkin for gold production in the nineteenth century due in large part to the Franklin- Creighton Mine. Geologically, the same ten- mile wide vein of gold that proved to be so lucrative to prospectors in the Dahlonega area actually extends southwest- ward through Cherokee County, cutting the county in half from its northeastern to its southwestern comers. When some prospectors had no luck with their claims in Lumpkin County, many of them, along with scores of first-time fortune seekers from all points of the compass, ventured to Chero kee County. Many gold mines sprang up in Cherokee including the Put nam, Sixes, Kellogg, LaBelle, and Old Cherokee mines, to name a few of the more produc tive ones, but none of these mines could match the size, pro duction, and technique of the Franklin-Creighton Mine located just to the east of Ball Ground in the Ophir community. Only four years after the dis covery of gold, the state of Geor gia divided up the Cherokee lands into forty acre tracts and offered these lots to citizens by way of the Gold Lottery of 1832. Mrs. Mary G. Franklin, a desti tute widow who lived in south Georgia and who possessed only a small farm with one mule, was surprised when many potential buyers showed interest in the lot won by her in the lottery. Like many others who had been awarded the tracts, Mrs. Franklin had little interest in the plot of land located in a remote northern area of the state, but when she re ceived about a dozen offers to buy the property in a single week, she decided to see this tract of land for herself. After several days journey on her mule, Mrs. Franklin arrived at her property to discover twenty or more prospectors pan ning for placer gold in the Etowah River which bisected her forty acres. She immediately or dered the claim-jumpers off her property, hired a man to keep others away, and returned to south Georgia to gather up her family and belongings. Upon re turning to her property near Ball Ground a few weeks later, she and her family began their own gold-mining venture. A few months after Mrs. Franklin began her operation, an Englishman named John Pascoe, who had been unsuccessful in his prospecting attempts near Dahlonega, arrived in northeast ern Cherokee County to have an other go at gold mining. Almost penniless, Pascoe was granted a "stake" by Major Wyley Petty, a well-to-do farmer who lived in the area. Financed by Petty, Pas coe leased ten acres and began operating a small stamp mill, which was a gold-mining tech nique that used the water from the Etowah River to power large hammers to crash the ore to sep arate the gold. This time, Pascoe, who was an experienced miner in his native England, was success ful in his attempts and made enough money to purchase the leased property as his own. Upon his death a few years later, he re portedly left a sizable fortune to his brothers and sisters. Meanwhile, Mrs. Franklin proved to be a very able business woman and estab lished her own stamp mill. From the pro ceeds of her opera tion, she was eventually able to purchase sev eral adjoining lots of land, to build a large residential mansion, to buy several slaves to work in her mines, and to provide good educa tions for her children. Another fortunate Gold Lot tery winner was Charles J. Mc Donald, whose property was adjacent to Mrs. Franklin's land. McDonald began his own min ing operation, married one of Mrs. Franklin's daughters, and also made himself a fortune. In terestingly, McDonald also served as governor of Georgia from 1839 to 1843 In the following decade, the Franklin Gold Mine flourished and expanded and by 1845 was one of the top producing gold mines in the south, but the search for gold fortunes turned west in January of 1848 when James W. Marshall found a few flakes of gold in the sediment of the South Fork of the American River near John Sutter's sawmill in Coloma, California. Many north Georgia prospectors packed up both their belongings and hopes and headed to the west coast. Although the number of mines in north Georgia dimin ished during the following year as the Forty-niners swarmed Cal ifornia, many local mines contin ued their operations well into the latter decades of the nineteenth century with only a brief inter ruption necessitated by the Civil War. This included the Franklin Mine which continued to expand and modernize with only a few setbacks along the way. One tragic setback for the Franklin Mine was a cave-in which pur portedly killed several of Mrs. Franklin's slave mine-workers. Eventually, northern capital ists became interested in pur chasing and investing in many of the local mines. In the early 1880's, a group of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania investors bought the Franklin, McDonald, and Pascoe holdings as well as sev eral other smaller operations and combined them into the new Franklin and McDonald Mining and Manufacturing Company that was now expanded to thirty- two lots of land, a total of 1,280 acres, and the operations were further modernized with a dam erected across the Etowah River to power a planned three-hun dred stamp mill. The latest scien tific methods of extracting gold from the ore were also intro duced. The Philadelphia capitalists hired A. H. Moore, a southern mining engineer, as the resident manager and he incorporated many of the most modem tech niques of extraction including the quicksilver or amalgam process, the cyanide process, and another method Moore in vented himself, the chlorination process. Moore also oversaw the excavation of a number of shafts, including one of a depth of five-hundred feet which was undoubtedly the deepest mine shaft in the state and possibly the entire south. In a news article in the Cherokee Advance newspaper dated October 18, 1881, Mr. Moore was quoted as boasting of the new Franklin and Mc Donald Mine comparing it to one of the more famous mines in the west. The mining engi neer said, "The Ontario Mining Company of Utah declares a monthly dividend payable today...of $75,000.00 - a total of $3,800,000.00 in six years. These gentlemen of Pennsylva nia have a better mine than the Ontario." For the next couple of decades, from Mary G. Franklin's original mine and the other mines purchased, the new owners sometimes extracted gold at a value of as much as eighty dollars per ton of ore. Shortly after the combining of the several mining concerns into the one larger Franklin and McDonald Mining Company was completed, one of the Philadelphia investors, a wealthy railroad official by the name of J. M. Creighton bought out all of the other owners in 1883. This resulted in the Franklin Mine, from that point on, being called the Creighton Mine. Creighton continued to retain A. H. Moore as resident manager until the death of Creighton in 1887 when Moore resigned. The Creighton mine continued operations under sev eral different managements and owners until shortly after the turn of the century. Coincidentally, during the same year that Creighton took over management of the mines, Ball Ground was incorporated. It was in the previous year of 1882 when the Marietta and North Georgia Railroad ex tended their railway from Can ton through what was soon to become the city of Ball Ground. It was decided to build a depot there and to lay out town lots from land that had been donated to the railroad company by local landowners. Nearly all of the lots were sold immediately and within just two years, the lit tle crossroads community be came a bustling town with a population of over 250, new business buildings erected, three churches formed, a high school started, and municipal officers elected. The town's rapid growth could very well be attributed in part to the success of the Creighton Mine and the new means of transporting the ore and gold from the mine on the new railroad. Some of the most productive years of the Franklin-Creighton Mine came in the two decades following the incorporation of Ball Ground. Although there is no definitive account of the ac tual production numbers from the mine, one report states that the Franklin-Creighton Mine produced as much as $1,000.00 a day in 1893. Other estimates state that the mine easily pro duced over a million dollars in gold during the last two decades of its existence, and that amount, combined with the gold extracted in its earlier years could place the mine's production at near or above two million dollars total. The value of gold in that time pe riod was about $18.00 per ounce compared to today's price of over $1,000.00 per ounce. That means the gold extracted from the Franklin-Creighton Mine would have been valued at nearly $112,000,000 in today's money. What was it exactly that led to the demise of the gold mining in dustry in Ball Ground. Many ex perts state that there was a combination of many different things that led to the end of the "gold rash." Unscrupulous spec ulators are cited as one cause as is local ownership giving way to owners who resided hundreds and even thousands of miles away from their holdings. Be cause of a lack of trust in the speculators, investment money dried up, and remote owners could not manage their opera tions efficiently. As far as a more immediate cause of death for the Franklin-Creighton Mine, the Etowah River is said to have bro ken through one of the mine shafts resulting in the flooding of all the shafts. This accident meant that any further mining could only be accomplished by massive and very expensive re pairs of the entire mining opera tion. Management abandoned the flooded shafts instead of making those repairs. There are reportedly vast quantities of low grade ore still in existence in the vicinity of Ball Ground, but the cost of ex tracting the gold from the ore is prohibitive. However, hundreds of gold prospecting enthusiasts and hobbiests continue to roam the hills of northeast Cherokee County every year panning for gold in the local streams, proof that "Thar is gold in them thar hills" still to this day. Classes Saturdays w eftbruary 1 * 3jd>'?ns* $60 fnctuctis£as/csu0)lie& C c lhssC£>yube<£t&ifens 4o4 MEDICAL ASSOCIATES of NORTH GEORGIA New Location, Accepting New Patients Medical Associates of North Georgia is proud to announce the opening of a new location in Ball Ground. You can expect the same quality, hometown care that has served the metro Atlanta and North Georgia Communities for over thirty years. Our new location offers a range of services, including: • Adult and Pediatric Care • Annual, Sports & School Physicals • Total Family Care • Experienced, On-site Local Pharmacy Immunizations EKG’s, Lab Testing & Spirometry Sick and Well Visits Early Morning & Late Afternoon Appointments 470 Valley Drive, Suite 200, Ball Ground, GA 30107 phone: (770) 737-2770 • fax: (770) 737-2406 medassoc.com