Georgia Gold Rush

One of America's earliest gold rushes, following North Carolina's, took off in 1829 in the north Georgia hills, on land the Cherokee Nation still held. By spring 1830 some 4,000 miners were working Yahoola Creek alone, and Georgia handed out land seized from the Cherokee by lottery. Within a decade came removal: in the winter of 1838 to 1839 the U.S. Army drove the Cherokee west on the Trail of Tears. Dahlonega is the town the rush left, and its branch mint struck almost 1.5 million gold coins between 1838 and 1861. Few places show as directly how gold and Indian removal were tied together.