Before There Was the
Charlotte Rifle and Pistol Club
The Catawba Indian Reservation and The Grady Rodgers Mine
by Gordon Thorsby
No Photos exist of the Grady Rodgers Mine. (Photo above is that of a shaft opening at nearby Howie Mine around 1908.)
If members or guests visit the Charlotte Rifle and Pistol Club Shotgun Range, walk onto the porch, look at the flagpole and Trap Field two, they might notice something rather interesting. At the base of the flagpole is a circular large stone of solid granite and leaning up against it is a similar granite circle of stone. These once had another purpose besides their current decorative use. These were the grinding stones from the Grady Rogers Gold mine.1
In 1799, George Washington was enjoying his third year in retirement. The North Carolina Counties of Ashe, Wilke, Greene, and Washington (latter two after recent War Generals) were officially incorporated in the State and Tennessee had been separated as North Carolina territory. It was also the year gold was discovered in a small creek in Cabarrus County, north of Charlotte by a twelve-year old boy. This was America's first gold rush and the discovery placed Charlotte on the map. Not long afterward, gold was discovered in the Waxhaw area.2
Native American tribes were mining gold as early as 1534 when Spanish Explorer, Hernando de Soto, traded for the valuable metal that all Spanish explorers sought. The Catawba Tribe continuously mined gold in various places in the region over the centuries and it provided the 15,000-25,000-member tribe great wealth. In 1828, Charlotte and the surrounding region was the only resource for gold in the United States. The Catawba Tribe that was granted 144,000 acres of land by King George III in 1763 (included the Club property) was in the way. Gradual residential incursions into the granted land and population growth forced the tribe to negotiate for a solution. By 1847, the tribe was paid off, they were moved to the present 700-acre piece of property along the Catawba River in York County, SC, and the Catawba Grant was dissolved. Mining continued until 1849 when miners exited to California and most mines closed. During the rest of the nineteenth century, there were brief periods of development but the fluctuating price of gold, and poor Post-War Southern economic conditions limited mining investments.3
The creek beyond the Trap and Skeet Ranges
Serious efforts in mining gold began to resurface in the late 1880s. The price of gold surged and organized efforts were developed to derive new income in highly troubled times in the South. By 1900, there were at least a dozen mines in Waxhaw pulling deposits of gold from the earth. On another map by the U.S. Geological Survey, twenty-eight different mines within a ten-mile radius of the CRPC entrance on both sides of the State Line.4
The property that today is the Charlotte Rifle and Pistol Club was two separate parcels until the late 1800s. One property was owned by Grady Rodgers (north side), and the south property was owned by his brother Wiley Rodgers that extended to Kensington Road. These two men tried individual mining ventures but struggled to break even. Grady bought Wiley out and combined the two together with the objective to produce more with greater economies of scale. The price of gold continued to swing through the next few years and mines around Waxhaw commenced permanent shuttering. Mining needed to get cheaper, more gold needed to be abstracted, or gold had to become reliably more valuable.5
The U.S. Mining Industry described The Grady Rogers mine as “a shaft forty feet by twenty-five feet at the collar opened at the prospect. Many small pits were dug along a northeast-trending ridge, and numerous shallow trenches were cut perpendicular to the ridge." If one drives up the cement drive today toward the top of the hill and look to the right, that was where the Grady Rogers main mine processing line was located. You can see several large unnatural mounds of dirt piled up. You may notice a slight depression that runs slightly parallel to the left of the road. It is unverified if it is a shallow trench or the remains of an entryway/road access. As the main entry was dug, several test pits were begun to determine the true potential of the Grady Rogers Mine. Pits are visible about the property. There is evidence of operations to the left of trap field one on the Shotgun range to be covered later in more detail. Based upon geological tests and the years mined, " the material unearthed revealed unsatisfactory results, and further test digs were immediately halted." (GPS location: 34.9438°N 80.7874°W).6
As reported:
“The Grady-Rogers Mine is a surface and underground mining operation. The ore mined is composed of galena and chalcopyrite with waste material consisting primarily of pyrite. The host rock in this area is phyllite from the Lopingian epoch 259.80 to 252.17 million years ago. Gold was not the only metal extrapolated from the mine. Lead and Copper were tertiary metals that came out of the mine but these too were low producing. The reality is that the mine has really 'panned out.' There might be gold dust extracted with considerable effort but not worth any mining investment." 7
No known photos of Grady Rodgers were located as of this publication. The black and white photos are of the nearby Howie Mine (Lowes at Kensington and Providence Roads), more productive but of the same period.
The mines of Waxhaw, North Carolina were and still are on the “Carolina Slate Belt- Monroe Area.” The U.S. Geological Survey reported concern that the mine was once on the Catawba Indian Reservation. The Carolina Slate Belt-Monroe Area extends from Granville County and Person County of Virginia to the South Carolina state line near Union/Anson Counties and is considered a “slate belt." The best mines in the heydays were north of Charlotte. Slate and quartz is frequently a product club volunteers find on Saturday Work Sessions. Digging deeper than six inches in places will frequently hit the two materials.8
Other mines in the area were the Howie Mine (previously), the Ezell (a.k.a. Izell) Mine .16 miles away in the current Walnut Creek subdivision), Cureton Gold Mine, 1/2 mile away toward Waxhaw, and Joseph Clark 1.37 miles away toward Waxhaw. Most of the mines in the area were speculative and produced little. The Grady Rogers Mine produced $234,000 of gold over the time that it was in production. Present day value based on the price of gold cannot be ascertained because the statistics of the weight of abstraction is unpublished. Based on the costs and efforts, it was marginally successful. When the U.S. government devalued the dollar in 1971, profit rose for goldmining in general and other metals spurred new mining.9
The geology industry still considers the Grady Rogers mine as active but under productive. As valuable metals for EV and chips increase, gold mining is expanding in the area at the Haile Gold Mine in Kershaw, southern Lancaster County, SC.)10
What remains today?
When geologists recognized potential veins of precious metals in the late 1800s, investment in equipment varied from individual panning methods, and sluicing up to the employment of mercury or cyanide to separate the precious metal. There is one piece of the mining process that remains on the Charlotte Club property. These are the two granite grinding millstones.11
The CRPC Millstones at the Shotgun Clubhouse
The CRPC property's past was as a mine and the millstones that remain symbolize something important to the club. Millstones were essential objects to any community. The grinding of wheat in grist mills was necessary to make the "bread of life." The existence of milling represented strength and longevity of civilizations. The deriving of gold held other symbolism. For cultures and countries to become powerful, gold was the foundation for their strength. In early America, the millstone meant community, where people came together to produce food and wealth. it meant making life better and helping one another, and the weight of the stone was such that "it can’t be taken away."
In Deuteronomy 24:6:
"No one shall take a lower millstone, nor an upper millstone, in pledge [for the payment of a debt], for that would be tantamount to taking away a life in pledge." 12
A special thanks to Jim, Devereaux, Jim Payne, and Hugh Stone.
Sources:
- U.S. Geological Survey, Mineral Resources Program for the U. S. Mining Industry, 1968, (located) Monroe County Library, Monroe, NC.
Footnote numbers: 4, 5, 6, 7, 9
- Reed Gold Mine State Historic Site, Cabarrus, NC.
Footnote Numbers: 2,11
- Website: https://www.usgs.gov/gravity-studies-carolina-slate-beltnear-haile-and-brewer-mines-north-central-south
Footnote numbers: 8, 10
- Merrell, James.The Catawba’s. New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1989.
Footnote Numbers: 3
-Additional Information of Clubmembers Jim Devereaux, Jim Payne, and Hugh Stone
Footnote Numbers: 1
Secondary Sources:
- Pettus, Louise. The Waxhaws. Rock Hill, S.C.: Regal Graphics, 1993. Pettus, Louise, and Martha Bishop. Lancaster County: A Pictorial History. Norfolk, Va.: Donning, 1984.
- The Catawba Indian Tribe, https://www.catawba.com/about-the-nation.
- Howie Mine Photos, courtesy of www.mindat.org.
- The Hebrew Bible, Deuteronomy 24:6.