The Carolina gold rush, the first gold rush in the United States, followed the discovery of a large gold nugget in North Carolina in 1799,[2] by a 12-year-old boy named Conrad Reed. He spotted the nugget while playing in Meadow Creek on his family's farm in Cabarrus County, North Carolina.[3][4] Conrad took the 17-pound (7.7 kg) gold nugget home to show his father. However, gold was not commonly seen in their community and the value of the nugget was not understood. The nugget was used as a door stop in the family's home for several years.[5] In 1802, Conrad's father, John Reed, showed the rock to a jeweler, who recognized it as gold and offered to buy it. Reed, still unaware of the real value of his "doorstop," sold it to the jeweler for US$3.50 (equivalent to $74.53 in 2023) (approximately one week's pay for a farm laborer at that time). The large nugget's true value was around $3,600.
^Becker, G.F., 1895, Reconnaissance of the Gold Fields of the Southern Appalachians, Washington: Government Printing Office, Sixteenth Annual Report, Part II
^Knapp, Dr. Richard K. (1999). "The History of John Reed's Gold Mine."Archived 2017-02-17 at the Wayback Machine North Carolina State Historic Sites, Reed Gold Mine, Midland, N.C. Information from Golden Promise in the Piedmont: The Story of John Reed's Mine by Dr. Richard F. Knapp, revised edition, North Carolina Department of Cultural Resources, Raleigh, N.C., 1999. Retrieved March 26, 2017.
^Martin, Jonathan (July 8, 2011). "Mecklenburg County (1762)". North Carolina History Project. Retrieved September 7, 2023.