Exhausted from an opening stretch of short nights and long hauls, we decided to stick around the Charlotte area for an extra day and do some exploring. We needed destination to get us started, and so chose the Reed Gold Mine in Midland, the site of the first documented discovery of gold in America.
The museum was a little hokey. Plastic mining helmets were for sale in the vestibule/gift shop, along with gold flakes, panning kits, and other items that would become unforgivably silly immediately after one leaves the park. We were shown a video that looked like it was made by PBS in 1980, with “Wipeout” drums and a synth brass section playing over the transitions. It told the story of how in 1799 young Conrad Reed had found a 17-pound hunk of gold while playing hooky from Sunday school and given to his father, who sold it to a jeweler for a the equivalent of a week’s wages—or slightly less than the price of a Reed Gold Mine-brand plastic mining helmet. This history lesson was followed by a ten-minute tutorial in gold-panning, a process that seemed only slightly less tedious to do than to hear explained.
Posted from Appeley Mead Lane, Charlotte, North Carolina.
