‘THEY FOUND GOLD, WHERE?’

          Back in the spring of 1898, Mr. John D. Johns, a Whitfield County cotton farmer, had just taken a break from his plowing to tighten the heel screw on his plow, when he noticed something shiny on the plow point. Taking a closer look, he found what looked like…

Naw, it couldn’t be! But after a closer look, surely the thought must have crossed his mind, ‘what if it is though?' Of course, his next reaction was probably the same as yours or mine would have been… GOLD! Sudden and abundant wealth, no more want, no more worry, and, for dang sure, no more following along behind a contrary, stubborn old mule anymore. But then, just as quickly, common sense took hold of him again.

Naw, it can’t be, he told himself. More than likely, it’s just some of that there iron pyrite, what folks called ‘Fool’s Gold’. The 47-year-old bachelor then got back to the task at hand, and resumed his plowing, promising himself that one of these days, when he had more time; he’d look into it a mite further. Right now, though, he had work to get done, and daylight was a-wastin'.

Over the next several years, somethin’ always seemed to divert Mr. John’s attention from the find, until in the latter part of 1903, a Mr. Higgins, a former Lumpkin and White County miner, happened by the Johns’ farm and became ‘greatly excited’ by the ore he found lying around the field edges. Mr. John was persuaded to have some of the ore tested, and reportedly, the results found a richness that seemed incredulous, predicting that the value of the ore would run $2,000 per ton. That figure would be something like $85,000 per ton, in today’s market.

Mineral mining experts in nearby Chattanooga unhesitantly declared that Mr. John’s find was by far the richest that their eyes had ever beheld. They also believed the ore to be almost unlimited in quantity.

In no time, Mr. John had a trench opened up measuring some thirty-feet long, six-feet wide, and eight-feet deep. The ore from Mr. John’s mine was described as ‘simply dazzling’. Reports were that the ore got even richer the farther down into the vein was dug.

Then, just east of the gold lead, another vein was discovered, only this time it was of anthracite or ‘stone coal’. The coal found on Mr. Johns’ property was considered, at the time, to be as good quality as that which was being obtained from the mines, at Coal Creek, Tennessee, where the majority of the area’s coal was being shipped from at that time.



John D. Johns with his great-nephew George C. Wilson


           Not long after that, a third find was realized on the Johns’ place, this time of a superior quality of lead ore. John was hailed in area newspapers as being ‘veritably the possessor of a vast bonanza’.
           Mr. John’s finds had some of his neighbors lookin’ at their own properties in a whole new light, as well. Within two weeks, his close neighbor Bill Chambers was blasting on his place in search of a gold mine, and shortly after that, a second mine was operating a couple of miles to the west.

The total amount of gold taken from Mr. Johns’ trench mine is not known, nor is how long mining operations were actually conducted in the area. However, by April of 1904, there was open speculation in the North Georgia Citizen newspaper (precursor to today’s Daily Citizen News) on just how long the area’s gold boom would last. After that last reference, though, no further mention of the gold mines can be found in the local newspapers.

Now, a century later, what was once Mr. Johns’ cotton farm is now a mix of pastureland and residential housing with all traces of past mining operations having been effectively erased by the passage of time, and the incident has become just another piece of Cohutta, Georgia’s forgotten history.