Lot 10 Gold Mine aka the Jones Mine or Old Lumsden Property White County, GA |
All Text & Images: Copyright (2023) |
Gold was first discovered on this property in 1830. Early operations were placer, but serious mining began around 1890. The Lot 10 Mine is on very hilly country, and was primarily a hydraulic mining operation, with only a few tunnels and a small shafts, now collapsed. Photos don't adequately convey the devastation that was wreaked on these ridges by this method of mining. |
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Boulders at the head of one of the mine cuts. |
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Hydraulic mining laid waste to large swathes of land. |
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The scars on this hill-side are still raw a century after the area was mined. |
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Boulder in the middle of a cut |
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More evidence of the hydraulic mining |
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Saprolite |
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A report mentions an adit half-way up the wall of a shaft. |
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I thought this might be it, but if so, the mouth is caved in. Probably not it, as this is more a cut than a shaft... |
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Encountering a large pit, I saw the remains of a rock structure on the opposite side. |
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I climbed across for a closer view. I'm not sure what this was. |
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Bottom of the pit, partially covered in water... |
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Small Vertical shaft, off to one side of the pit bottom. It was narrow, wet and partially slumped, so I didn't go down there. |
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The miners had followed a vein up the middle of this drainage. |
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From the ridge-top, a view back down that long cut. |
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View along ridge line... The cut that I followed up is on the right; a smaller cut is to the left. |
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The smaller cut on the left side of the ridge-top. |
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A map in an old report shows a tunnel at the top of the ridge. There are two short leads that head into the hill. This is the one that would appear to be the tunnel per the map, but if so, it has completely slumped. |
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The adjacent lead looks more likely to have been the mouth of a tunnel, but it has been filled with tree debris. |
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Further downslope, a long trench ran over a ridge. |
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Evidence of placer mining in the next drainage |
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Miners stacked the rocks like a wall in placer mining. |
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Rock ledge part way down the wall of a large cut. |
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Close-up of the rock in the wall... |