The Galipeau's Adventures: Day 3 Gold time

Day 3 Rainy day in Gold country Real gold that is Auraria and Dahlonega.

Started the day traveling to find a ghost town called Auraria. Reading some history on it sound pretty interesting even if we wouldn’t find much we were going to head in that direction anyways. Here’s some history.

In 1828, a hunter by the name of Benjamin Parks was hunting the territory west of the Chattahoochee River when he tripped over a rock only to discover that it was full of gold. At the time, the area was part of the Cherokee Indian Reservation. Benjamin Parks told a few people about the gold and in 10 months there were over 1,000 miners living illegally on Cherokee Land. The miners called themselves the 29's after the year 1829. The first two towns they built were Auraria and Dahlonega. The year 1849 marked the end of Georgia’s first and most major gold rush when word of gold being discovered in California, reached Dahlonega and Auraria. The Miners Picked up their belongings and headed west. (To come back later just a poor as they left)

Today Dahlonega is a tourist town where you can pan for gold or take tours of an old gold mine circa 1906. Not much is left of Auraria, it was the first town born in a gold rush and the first to die. It should be noted however that the suburb of Denver, Colo. called Auraria was named after Auraria, Ga. In 1858 the "Russell Boy's," went west and established another Auraria near the mouth of Cherry Creek that later became Denver, Colorado. Green Russell uncovered a fabulous lobe called Russell Gulch near which the Central City of Colorado was built "richest square mile on earth." (Maybe we will check that out when we are in Colo.)

So hope I didn’t bore you with this history but it does play the part in most of what we did today.

Tracked down the ghost town, (got some pictures little left) then headed to the town of Dahlonega. Here we walked through a true small town usa, talking with some people they told us of all the history and how they a trying to preserve the small town. All shops and restaurants cannot be a chain of any kind. They have pride in their history. Their first courthouse now a museum and their brick actually has gold flakes in them. Yes now that class. We also found a diving bell, now most of you that knows us know that that would spark our interest having own a dive company and made our living that way. Had to check it out. Without diving into too much history (pun intended) it was a 1875 Chestatee River Diving Bell, this sat was on a boat and was let down on to the bottom of the river bed to let the miners shoal on the bottom of the river. Some research was done and they think that it is the only remain dive bell is existence from a patented design of 1858 by Benjamin Maillefert of the New York Submarine Engineering Co. Wow cool find for us.

Then on to the gold mine tour and gold panning. The tour takes you underground 250 feet and it had 4 ½ miles of tunnels. Our tour guide Adam took us through as we began our decent down OMG more stairs we were still in pain from the day before. Ouch, Ouch as we descended down (damn that hindsight thing again). Oh well, the tour was great and the mine had been in existence for a 100 years. Did some gold panning yeap have some gold flakes to prove it. A whole 5 flakes total between us. I’m thinking that’s not enough to pay for our cross-country trip…..

Had a great lunch is town at a place called The Smith Tavern. Everything homemade. Chili, tator tots, and veggie quesadilla. Now with a full belly and a raining day let hit the wineries. First stop was interesting but not good wine but a beautiful place it was a community that had these beautiful large Tuscan homes and all around was the vineyards. The winery sat in the middle of it. Our last stop for the day was the Habersham Winery their claim to fame is they are the largest and oldest in Georgia. Now get this being the oldest is 1983. OK then. After all that excitement we called it a day.

Oh my almost forgot, laying in bed, (I know you are thinking TMI) but we are listening to the radio and then beep beep beep tornado warning take cover in …..countries waiting what, what county are we i,n where do we go……phones didn’t go off so maybe we are ok. Let’s waiting a bit, ok I think we are not in the area. Whew. Now let call it a day.