Reed Gold Mine
historic mine in North Carolina, United States
The Reed Gold Mine is located in Midland, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, and is the site of the first documented commercial gold find in the United States. It has been designated a National Historic Landmark because of its importance and listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
History
In 1799, Conrad Reed, the son of farmer and former Hessian soldier John Reed (né Johannes Reith) born June 6, 1757, found a 17-pound yellow "rock" in Little Meadow Creek on the family farm in Cabarrus County, North Carolina. For three years, the rock served as a bulky doorstop. In 1802, a jeweler from Fayetteville identified the rock as a large gold nugget. He told John Reed to name his price. Reed, not understanding the true value of gold, asked for what he thought was the hefty price of $3.50, or a week's worth of wages. The large nugget's true value was around $3,600.
About 1803, John Reed organized a small gold mining operation. Soon afterward a slave named Peter found a 28-pound nugget.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7306649. Authority coordinates are 35.285, -80.470. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1799, 1757, 1802 and 1803.
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This entry incorporates text from “Reed Gold Mine” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.