The age-herald., 1899-06-24
 GOLD MINING
 IN ALABAMA An Old Miner Talks of His Ex-
 perience. EXTENSIVE GOLD FIELDS In This State e-He Says That This Sec ton Will One Day be the Mecca of the Gold Hunter-Iu- < .teresting Narrative.
EXTENSIVE GOLD FIELDS

Anniston June 23.-(Special.) )-Mr. John G. Tyson, of this city is an old gold miner who has been following the business at in- tervals all of his life in Alabama. Georgia and Colorado. He talks very interestingly of his gold mining experiences, and is par ticularly enthusiastic over what has been and may and will yet be done in the Ala bama gold fields.
 "The gold mines of Alabama will soon be the great Mecca for the gold hunter" said he the other day. q know of several mines that will pay well if they are worked right. One of them is within twenty-four miles of Anniston, all on one section of land. over half of it will pay handsomely. I have tested it. There are eight veins of good paying ore and work for forty men fifty years.
 "Twentytwo years ago." continued MT. Tyson, we wrote to the different hints and got statements of the amounts that had been shipped to them from these mines. We ran it up, and it was over $4000,O09 worth of gold. It was all Cleburne county gold, and there is millions of it there yet.
 "From 1S46 to 1852 there were some two thousand men at work in these Cleburne county mines.
 Many rich finds have been made there. One man with four negroes took out in one day thirteen pounds of clean gold few years ago l was at this place. There were some friends of mine working this same pit, which they said they had been watch ing for fifty years. They went three feet deeper and struck it rich. l saw 5000 or 1000 worth of the precious metal there that day.
 When l was there last a company was working the property. The men said it was paying very well. 1 worked there two years. l did not strike it rich like 1 have. in Georgia mines, though I got $50 worth one day twelve years ago There was man who struck it rich close to my pit. l saw some of his gold. There were many pieces worth 80 to $i0 each A man at an- other pit near by said he had taken out in one day as much gold as he could carry in 25-pound flour sack.
 "I have worked in Georgia and Colorado as we'll as in Alabama gold mines, but gold can be mined much more cheaply here than in either of the other states. Digging can be done all the year round. It is never too cold. Everything is uch cheaper, too. Ala bama gold is also worth from $1 to a per ounce ore than Colorado gold.
 q see men running iron furnaces mak- ing iron. If l could get one of those men to run a Cleburne county gold mine awhile he would never look at iron ore bed again. The profit would be ten times greater"
 MT. Tyson is highly esteemed by those who know him. He is regarded as entirely reliable and trustworthy and a man not given to extravagant assertions.
 Gold mining in Cleburne county is at present done on very small scale, but very rich finds are frequently made. The gold is there and it is easily mined, but two great handicaps have been the lack of water and the lack of proper machinery. A reasonable amount of capital can supply both and as this gold belt is now attracting much attention its early and thorough de- velopment upon proper and systematic lines is very probable When this is done there may be discoveries which will startle the world and make East Alabama a second Alaska, with Anniston as it's Dawson City, all of which is not at all impossible nor even improbable.