The Gold History that Inspired Deadly Gold Rush: PART III
In this post, I discuss real places from the Charlotte Gold Rush era that inspired the scenes in Deadly Gold Rush.
The Rudisill Mine
I picked the Rudisill Mine as the focus for the novel because of its importance to the Charlotte Gold Rush and its staying power. Mining on the Rudisill load lasted one hundred years, from the early days of deep shaft mining to the late 1930s.
Located in what is now the heart of booming South End, the gold vein extends from Summit Avenue (formerly Gold Street) down to Bank of American Stadium where the Carolina Panthers play professional football. The mine is a historical relic hiding in plain sight.
There is a concrete cover over the pump shaft that sits in a gravel parking lot, backing up to the Wilmore neighborhood, just like the novel said. This pump shaft head is the only ground-level reminder of the major producer of gold in Charlotte.
A prospector—some say a hunter stalking deer—found gold on Rudisill Hill in 1826, leading to early efforts to mine the gold with shallow digs, pits, and trenches.
Then along came Rivafinoli, and then Penman, and then the mine changed hands many times over the next one hundred years.
The Carsons were the last to own the operating mine before it shut down in the 1930s—remember, Carson Street? It was one of the streets where the characters searched for Penny’s gold coins.
In September 1965, the director of the Mint Museum of Art made a public plea that the Rudisill Mine be reopened as a tourist attraction. He suggested it be equipped with shuttle cars and reinforced for safety, and he tried to shame the city for letting this piece of Charlotte history go ignored. He also complained the city had changed the name of Gold Street to Summit Avenue.
It took a few years, but the city listened enough to solicit studies. The probable condition of the Rudisill Mine, as described in a report to the city in the 1970s was: “Except where thick veins have been mined out, tunnels are likely to be very narrow, allowing only single-file passage of a man and possibly a wheelbarrow.… Commonly, low ceiling height will require a man to walk in a stooped position or even crawl.” The report also described tunnels packed with rubble and decaying timbers. Added to that was the problem of the underground water that filled the mines. Not a good report to promote the building of a gold mine museum.
In other words, the Standish family dream was an unrealistic venture from the start.
But a few things did happen to bring attention to the area.
The Gold District
In 2014, a nonprofit known as The Gold District of Charlotte, Inc., was formed to promote the district in Charlotte’s South End. So far, they have helped put historical signage in place, helped obtained favorable zoning, generated interest in the history, and created a 2030 Vision Plan—the date 2030 being two hundred years after Rivafinoli arrived in Charlotte.
In addition to street names and markers that honor gold mines and gold miners, a commemorative marker was placed at the site of the Rudisill Mine. While I was doing research for this novel, the marker was there, but then when I went back for another visit, it looked like a truck had sideswiped it and knocked it down. I was told efforts were being made to put the sign up again. Perhaps the Rudisill Mine just can’t get the respect it deserves.
The Charlotte Mint and the Mint Museum
Charlotte’s gold mines and expanding population of gold seekers in the 1800s led local leaders, with the support of President Andrew Jackson, to put pressure on Congress to place a branch mint in Charlotte. In 1835, Congress passed an act to establish branch mints in Charlotte; Dahlonega, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana. Charlotte’s mint was the first branch to open in 1837 and was located where the federal courthouse sits on Trade Street today.
On March 28, 1837, the mint struck its first coin, a half-eagle, followed by the quarter eagle. An eagle was worth ten dollars, so the quarter-eagle was two-fifty and the half eagle was five dollars. And to make you remember what they were making, they hung a gold eagle above the entrance, but more about that below.
Of the three denominations of gold coins made at the Charlotte Mint, the quarter eagle is the most difficult to collect and requires patience. Maybe that’s why it took Penny Penman so long to compile his collection.
Operations at the Charlotte Mint continued until April 20, 1861, when production was halted with the seizure of the mint by Confederate troops.
For the next four years, the flag of the Confederacy flew over the golden eagle, but the inside was turned into a military headquarters, begging the question: what happened to the gold? As tempting as it was, I decided not to turn this into a Confederate gold treasure story.
When the mint reopened in 1869 after the Civil War, it never made another gold coin but instead operated as an assay office.
In 1895, a federal courthouse and post office were built next to the Charlotte Mint, and in 1913, the mint’s assay office closed, and the US Treasury vacated the building, leading in 1930 to a plan to demolish it to make room for an expansion of the post office.
But when demolition began in 1933, the Charlotte Woman’s Club undertook an effort to save the mint—or, at least, its structure. With the club’s fundraising efforts, a donation of land by E.C. Griffith in the Eastover neighborhood, and construction done by Depression-era CWA workers, the Mint Museum of Art, North Carolina’s first art museum, came to life in September 1936.
In December 1935, The Charlotte Observer reported that a committee of five local chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution were working to recover the gold eagle that “formerly spread its wings above the entrance to the old mint building for presentation to the Mint Museum of Art.” The old bird was found, bought, and readied for restoration—the paper reporting an on-again, off-again prognosis for the project over several months given its condition. Finally, the eagle made of oak that stood five feet tall with a fourteen-foot wingspan was restored. The August 23, 1936, Charlotte News showed a picture of the eagle under the headline “Mint Eagle Will Grace New Mint Museum.”
Another article shared with me by Ellen Show, director of Library and Archives of the Mint Museum, gave me an idea for the novel. The October 14, 1936 headline commented on what the artist faced when he undertook to gild the eagle with gold leaf: “Bees Found in Eagle at Mint.”
The gold eagle proudly protected the entrance to the Mint Museum until it began to fall apart in 1971. Once again, local women came together to save the mint’s symbol. This time it was the Charlotte Debutante Club who raised the money, but instead of wood, the new eagle was built of fiberglass impregnated with polyester over a foam core to last longer.
A July 8, 1972, article in The Charlotte Observer featured a picture of the eagle being lifted with a crane to “its new nest” over the front door of the former US Mint and Assay Office with the headline “The Eagle Flies.”
According to museum staff when I took my own tour, the bees have continued to be a problem. In Deadly Gold Rush, I used artistic license and turned the bees into hornets.
The museum expanded several times, first in 1967 and again in 1985, and there is a new entrance on the opposite side of the building from where the eagle flies. But still, the eagle flies.
Today, the Mint Museum of Art offers permanent and rotating exhibits, community and cultural programs, and they have on display a complete set of every coin minted at the Charlotte Mint. If you walk the halls and grounds and use your imagination, you can wander back in time to the Charlotte Gold Rush era.
If you’d like to learn more my novel Deadly Gold Rush and how to order it, please see the home page of landiswade.com. The novel will be available in print, eBook, and audiobook. Kindle Unlimited readers can get the eBook for free HERE.