Montgomery County sentinel. [volume] (Rockville, Md.) 1855-1974, 1953-04-09

. This is the 21st of a series of
articles dealing with little-known
spots of local color, generally I'M
! known and unappreciated.
. THE GOLD MINES OF
MONTGOMERY COUNTY"
One hundred and twenty-six
years ago, a Prof. Ducatelle, a
. French mineralogist of highest
repute, emphatically stated that
the region in or near Great Falls,
gave strong indications of the
. presence of gold. A few years
, later. a Mr.. Hitz, a native Mont
gomery Countian, who lived near
Great Falls, found indubitable
proof of gold whereabouts. Shortly
, after the War between the States,
a gold seeker (name unknown)
from Nevada, found definite traces
of free" gold in this section. Free
, gold is gold found loosely in
streams, and is that portion of
auriferous rock which has become
separated from the "ixed" gold,
or gold in solid ore formation.)
A company to mine gold was
formed as early as 1865-land was
bought, ore samples were secured,
. and operations started. However,
. the metamorphic rock, although
usually glistening with gold, was
found, after all, to be no more
than fools gold, and the first
gold-seeking adventure at Great
! Falls was, of course, a dismal
failure.
A year later, at another spot on
, the Forrest property, another OPP
timistic outfit sunk several shafts,
but failed to find gold in paying
amounts.
Undaunted by two failures, an
other company formed of small
business men from Baltimore and
Washington, sunk a shaft one hun
bred feet on the canal level, but
this effort too, was doomed to dis
appointment.
And then, magically, and to the
amazement of all, in October, 1869
a nugget weighing nine and two
fifths ounces, eight pennyweights
and eleven grains, was found on
the farm of Robert Davidson, by
his son who had been tending
cattle at the time of the find. 1t
was a lustrous stone, lying on a
sedimentary shale surface, and
assayed at $165.45. In length it
was three and three-eighth inches;
it was two and three-quarters of
an inch wide, and about one-half
inch thick. 1t was lying loose, and
was a matrix of hard granite or
marble quartz, Drowned by the de-
composition of iron pyrites, which
were very much in evidence.
To check the authenticity of this
momentous discovery, the dis
tinguished Prof. Hitchcock of
Williams College, Massachusetts,
was called in, and after examining
the hornblende rocks, the steatite,
zalc slate, and granite in the vic
nifty of the historic find, averred
that in this section were geologic
and auriferous formations identi-
cal with and equally as celebrated
as any of the deposits of other
countries.
The tremendous excitement en-
gendered by this spectacular find
quickly led to further large-scale
explorations, and a quartz rock
twelve inches by fourteen inches
was found containing $4,000
worth of gold. The Davidson's,
who had by this time, gone into the
gold business on big scale be-
cause of large land holdings, pur-
sued their mining career until
1776, when the gold seemed to
peter out, and the Revolutionary
War coming at the same time,
put an end to their work.
In 1878, Mr.. Davidson sold 65
acres of promising gold-bearing
land to the firm of Bartlett, Mar
tin and Jones. Later on, this tract
was sold to a Baltimore concern,
and became known as the Mont
gomery Mining Company. Thirty
men were Immediately put to
work, and a desperate effort made
to wrest the precious metal from
the earth. Five shafts, ranging
from twenty to eighty feet deep,
were sunk, and thousands of tons
of ore brought to the surface. A
IA horsepower steam engine, a
novelty in those early days, was
purchased; also large ore crusher
known as "Knowl's Patent" The
machinery expedited the work
but there apparently was no such
thing as mother Lode" and
after operations became unprofit-
ape, the ambitious enterprise, like
al an the others, gave up the ghost.