Mine Mtn Gold Mine

Mine Mountain sits near the Union-Towns County border, on the north side of US-76. For some time I have wanted to look for the mine that the mountain had to have been named for. Several old topo maps show the mine at the peak of the mountain, but nobody I know who had looked up there had ever found anything. In one of the old GA Geologic Survey gold reports, I found references to a mine, excerpts from which included "On the side of a high ridge a half or three-quarters of a mile from the XXX residence, on lot 184, 17th district, an auriferous quartz vein occurs that was prospected about 1904 by Mr. W. M. Killian...", and "A shaft was sunk on the incline of the vein to a depth of about 70 feet. This shaft at the time of visit could only be explored for a short distance..." So this report indicated that the mine was on the side of the mountain, not on the top! Using LIDAR, I saw an indication that looked very promising, and subsequently Sheldon and I walked right up to the remains of the old gold mine shaft. Although I had hopes that more of the shaft might remain open, I had a feeling that would not be the case, since the report indicated that the shaft was already partially inaccessible just five years after it had been dug. Still, it was nice to finally find the namesake for Mine Mountain.

Old gold mine shaft Viewed from the side of the excavated waste rock pile.

Gold mine shaft, from the side

Gold mine shaft, from the front (down-slope) side With the mine shaft already being much collapsed in 1909, it was no surprise to find it mostly filled in 115 years later.

Sheldon on the rim of the mostly caved-in mine shaft

Climbing into the shaft for the next photo

Sheldon in the collapsed shaft, for scale

Same view, vertical aspect

To the left was a smaller prospect pit

Same prospect pit There was also another smaller prospect pit off to the right but I didn't get a photo of it.

We thought this boulder looked like a turtle, or maybe a slug! lol

I had noted another odd LIDAR indication on the mountain, so we went looking for it. It turned out to be a natural rock feature, but we did come across a few more small mining prospect areas.

The waste pile at the mine was loaded with chunks of massive white quartz. While poking around in the pile, I noticed what looked like a crystal face peeking out of the dirt. Digging around it with a stick, I saw that it was indeed a (very rough!) terminated hexagonal crystal. Using another rock, I managed to break it off with a piece of the matrix white quartz attached. Certainly nothing great as far as quartz crystals go, but it's kind of unusual to find any large crystals in the massive quartz that we have around here.