Chapter 20: Gold ... in Alabama?

Hog Mountain in Tallapoosa County had the ravages of the mining spread out over a fairly wide area, but journals and filed claims that were in the Auburn Historical Collection pinpointed exactly where the first find was made.

Back then... 1820's and '30's ... folks didn't go looking for gold ... it was found by accident. Bumping up against a bluff and having a slab of rock slide off the side and uncovering a vein of gold bearing quartz, stumbling into a creek and coming out with a nugget or going to dip a pot full of water and having nuggets smiling at you through the water happened a lot more often than some engineer or geologist looking at a rock formation and saying..."There's gold over there"...

Ninety nine times out of a hundred, there wasn't.

In the beginning it was hunters or farmers or even Indians telling of shining rock in the water or rock falling off a cliff. Sure, there were prospectors ... and some of them actually knew what they were doing, but a lot of 'prospecting' was getting away from a termagant wife or mother in law. Most of the gold finds were accidental.

So, Bill, knowing where to look, when to look and getting there first put him at an extreme advantage. Showing up a couple of years ahead of the registered find meant he could pick up the easy stuff and go home with it.

As long as no one objected.

There were a couple of times that the watch saved his life. Someone objected ... violently. Sure, there were laws ... but it was mostly people agreeing to be good to their neighbors that kept the peace.

Sometimes it was Indians ... sometimes it was bullies ... sometimes it was as accidental as the discovery that a 'stranger' had gold. Strangers were 'movers.' Folks either passing through or looking for a pleasant view or plowable land, or pasture were movers ... moving in or moving on.

Families who were movers in two years ago, objected to new people..."Keep Moving!"

The country was filling up as more people moved in. There were those who saw the smoke from a cabin 20 miles away and thought, 'Well. that's just too close.' and moved to the next ridge or valley so they could be 'free.'

'Free' meant different things to different folks, but for some it was free of preachers. Some it meant free to rape, pillage and murder. Some folks just want to do their own thing ... without 'let or hinderance.'

Others wanted to be away from people ... until they got the itch to howl!

Bill's watch was a little different. It was loose in it's settings. Unlike Timothy Leary's watch, which put it's original owner in rock, Bill's watch would make sure you weren't going to pop out in a tree ... it could juggle a little distance ... so, when Bill stood in the GPS guided spot where 'first discovery' was made, he wasn't stuck in the tree that had to fall over to expose the gold.

Nope, he missed the leaning tree, but it was so dead and the ground so washed out he pushed it over by hand. And, there, in the rootball now staring him in the face, was the gold that the pioneer missed in the discovery. Bill scraped it out of the trunk into the canvas bag he'd brought and then snatched the good sized chunk out of the bottom of the rootball hole and depressed the watch stem.

Next week, when the pioneer came into the area, he'd still find gold flakes and small nuggets in the hole and set off the Alabama Gold Rush... 24 thousand ounces later it was over ... two hundred years later the scars were still there.

"Been good, Bill?" Mina asked as she breezed in with Megan, Laurel, Carl, Pyewacket and ... of all folks ... Cal.

(Cal of the green Jeep station wagon. The Jeep he'd sold to Mina for five hundred twenty three dollars and 27 cents.

The Cal who used to bring her Dr. Pepper at work just so he could watch Mina bend over in her Daisy Dukes to put the bottle or can in the office fridge.