(upbeat music) (paper rustling) In the late 1820s, something shiny, deep in North Georgia, set off a chain reaction that would reshape the state's economy, politics, and its people.

It was the discovery of gold.

It all began when gold deposits were found near present day Dahlonega in the hills of North Georgia.

The thought of quick riches attracted tons of white settlers to this area and kicked off one of the nation's first gold rushes.

But this land was a part of the Cherokee Nation.

As more gold was discovered across North Georgia, the pressure on the Cherokee Indians to surrender their homeland grew stronger.

To better understand the impact of the Dahlonega gold rush, we need to go back to see how the discovery of this precious metal set the stage for the removal of the Cherokee people.

- You boys ready to eat yet?

- [Narrator] 20 years before the famous gold rush out west, hardy frontiersmen set up camp along rivers and creeks of North Georgia with dreams of striking it rich.

- Gold.

It's nice enough there.

Struck it rich, Abel.

- [Narrator] One of these miners could be Benjamin Parks, a farmer who would become a legend after his famous discovery in 1828.

- He had cattle that came across the Chestatee River up here into the Dahlonega area and grazed.

He frequently hunted out in the woods.

And in fact, one cold day in 1828, he was out hunting when he came across an area and he stubbed his toe accidentally on a rock.

Looked down at the rock and it was broken open and he found gold.

And as they say, the rest is history.

- [Narrator] The mountains of northern Georgia would never be the same.

- When Parks made his discovery, oh, word spread like wildfire.

In a very short time, approximately 10,000 people flocked into this area.

- [Narrator] The town of Auraria grew from scratch, and it happened fast.

In June 1832, there was just a small cabin on a ridge between the Chestatee and the Etowah Rivers.

A few months later, a tavern in a small hotel was built by a man named Nathaniel Knuckles.

- So the town was originally called Knucklesville.

Now, a lot of people think that from that day to this, that Knucklesville means these kind of knuckles and that they had a lot of fights and brawling and so forth that went on down there.

But that really wasn't the case.

It was a town that was started by Nathaniel Knuckles.

- [Driver] Woo.

(wheel clattering) - [Narrator] Within six months, Auraria was a bustling town.

(lively music) But it takes more than miners to make a town.

It takes innkeepers, lawyers, shopkeepers, and they're the ones that usually make a buck.

- Those people who really made money from the gold rush were usually those who mined the miners, who put up stores and sold them picks and pans and shovels.

(water whooshing) - [Narrator] During this period, the miners were squatters, camping and living on land that belonged to the Cherokee Indians.

- Then in 1832, the state of Georgia parceled out all of the land in the area and lotteried it off.

The white people came in claiming that it was legally theirs, literally evicted Indians from their houses, from their dwellings and farms and everything.

The Indians, for all intents and purposes, became vagabonds and beggars in their own land.

- [Narrator] In fact, within a few years, Native Americans would be forced out of Georgia all together.

But ironically, the gold rush wouldn't last much longer.

Easy to find, gold became scarce and there was news of gold discovered out West.

(indistinct cheering) - The kind of people that are drawn to the gold rush are the kind who wanna get rich quick.

And many of them found that there was just an awful lot of hard work involved here and not much riches.

So when word of Sutter strike out in California reached here, they're the kind of people who have caught gold fever and they head out West.

- [Narrator] In the Dahlonega Courthouse Square, miners debated whether to chase that California gold.

One prominent man, Matthew Stevenson, pleaded with 200 miners.

"Stay here," he said.

"There's still plenty of gold left in Georgia."

(tranquil music) The Dahlonega gold rush invited a wave of miners, merchants, and settlers to the mountains of North Georgia.

There was so much gold that the federal government even decided to establish a U.S.

Mint in Dahlonega to make the nation's gold coins.

But the rush for riches came at a steep cost.

As more white settlers moved onto land belonging to the Cherokee, other forces were already at work, helping to push them out.

Land policies that moved Georgia's expansion westward, combined with outbreaks of disease, gradually weakened Native groups in the area.

Still, the Cherokee worked hard to protect their land.

One strategy was assimilation or adopting parts of White American culture.

The Cherokee Indians changed how they dressed, farmed, and even governed themselves, hoping this would convince the United States to let them stay.

They also fought back through the legal system.

The Cherokee sued Georgia and even won a U.S.

Supreme Court case that recognized the Cherokee Nation as a separate sovereign nation.

But despite these efforts, the federal government under President Andrew Jackson continued to push for Indian removal.

When the Indian Removal Act was passed in 1830, it gave the federal government the power to remove Indigenous tribes from their ancestral lands east of the Mississippi River.

This legislation would lead to the Trail of Tears.

The Dahlonega gold rush forever changed Georgia's history.

It drew in new settlers while forcing Indigenous people out of their lands and led to the first U.S.

Mint in the South.

Its legacy is a reminder of how the search for riches can shape both people and places.

(dramatic music)