Gold miner had hope as NC site ran dry. Then he hit a big ‘rock' 129 years ago

Miami Herald

09-04-2025

A gold mine was running dry — but a North Carolina man held onto hope when he visited 129 years ago.
Jacob Shinn's optimism was rewarded when he hit something hard while digging on April 9, 1896. The big 'rock' — later determined to be a 23-pound gold nugget — was the last major find at Reed Gold Mine near Charlotte, historians said.
Here's what we know on the anniversary of the lucrative discovery.
Finding the huge gold nugget
Shinn struck gold almost 100 years after the first big nugget was found on John Reed's land in 1799. No gold discoveries had been documented in the United States before that.
The site became Reed Gold Mine, the focus of the nation's first gold rush. It operated decades before people flocked to California for that state's gold rush, according to the N.C. Division of State Historic Sites and Properties and NCpedia, an online encyclopedia.
But 'by the late 1800s, the mine had been mostly exhausted, and the prospectors who worked it had departed for other places like Colorado, Alaska and California,' the N.C. Department of Natural and Cultural Resources wrote in a blog post. 'Jake Shinn, though, hadn't lost hope.'
At the time, the Kelly family owned the mine and allowed people to dig near the surface. Shinn was on the property with a group of men when they explored an 'untouched' stretch of road, the Reed Gold Mine historic site wrote in a past news release and an email to McClatchy News.
Shinn was digging about 3 feet underground when he made a curious discovery on April 9, 1896. Other miners weren't paying attention to him since there had been 'false alarms,' historians wrote.
Shinn's group reportedly 'found a rather large heavy rock, but it didn't have the correct look, so was tossed aside. Finally Jacob Shinn took it to the creek, washed it off and realized it did in fact contain a large amount of gold.'
'Boys I've got it!' Shinn said.
The group was 'jubilant,' making a school principal wonder if they were drunk as they brought the gold to a store to go on display. The 23-pound nugget was melted down and sold for $4,800, according to historians.
Relatives of one of the other group members, Mack Cox, claim he was the one who discovered the gold nugget. While it's possible that Cox dug it from the ground, the property on its website said it 'interprets this as the Shinn nugget.' Shinn was the one who washed off the nugget, unveiling the find, Larry Neal, site manager at Reed Gold Mine, told McClatchy News in an email.
Is there more gold at the mine?
Reed Gold Mine closed in 1912. Though Shinn is credited with making the last big discovery, the largest piece of gold unearthed at the property was a 28-pound nugget found early on by an enslaved boy, historians said.
Today, a plaster cast of Shinn's nugget is held in a safe at Reed Gold Mine, now a state historic site. Visitors can follow a creek to see the area where Shinn made history. And those seeking the thrill of finding their own shiny piece of metal may be in luck.
'We use dirt from Little Meadow Creek for the panning area and find smaller natural gold all the time,' Neal wrote. 'To fully explore the property, it would have to be strip mined, ruining all historical evidence in the process.'
The mine is in the Cabarrus County town of Midland, a roughly 20-mile drive east from uptown Charlotte.