In the village of Gold Hill, St. Stephens Road hasn’t seen traffic like this in about 200 years — or at least since last year’s Gold Hill Founders Day festival. Horses clomp down the road, while old tractors and vintage cars roll past the crowd that has gathered for the parade at the town’s largest annual event.
While Gold Hill is historically known more for its natural resources — it was home to two of the most profitable gold mines in the Southeast in the 19th century — these days visitors find treasures in the town’s small businesses.
During the festival, shop owner Darius Hedrick can be found helping customers at Mauney’s Store and Museum, his shop that’s next door to his home. His grandfather bought both structures in 1906. Hedrick restored them, and they became the first of his efforts to revitalize this area.
Hedrick is not alone in his dream to bring the tiny mining village back to life. Vivian Hopkins, local historian and owner of the town’s other original business, E.H. Montgomery General Store, was in high school when she moved to Gold Hill from Wilkes County in 1970. It was around this time that the town’s last remaining structure from its mining days, the Gold Hill Mining Office, burned down. As a student, Hopkins was fascinated by geology and history — “I was always a rock hound,” she says, and the loss of the mining office piqued her interest.
She spent many afternoons at the library in nearby Salisbury, digging for pieces of Gold Hill’s story. She learned that miners came here from faraway places like Germany and Cornwall, England; she saw pictures of wealthy women from Salisbury dressed in trendy Gibson Girl styles, touring the town in carriages; and she read about Andrew Troutman, the farmer who, in 1824, dug a tunnel at a small quartz outcrop on his property, finding the first bit of gold in town.
Hopkins put her studies on hold to raise her family, but later found herself surrounded by Gold Hill’s history at a small festival at the firehouse, where her neighbors had displayed historic photographs and artifacts. The images of people who came here for the promise of a more prosperous life struck a desire in Hopkins to share this history.
Soon after, she helped start the Historic Gold Hill and Mine Foundation to preserve and promote the town’s history, and she put on its first official Founders Day event. It was a small festival with live bluegrass music, a street dance, and gold-mining artifacts, but people came in droves.
Today, Gold Hill doesn’t need the promise of striking gold to bring people to town. While the area’s 24 mines had ceased operation by the early 20th century, the town’s history and warm welcome invite modern-day visitors. The remaining structures — the rock walls and remnants of old mines and powder houses — elicit a feeling of discovery like the one that inspired those who came here from all over the world 200 years ago. As long as Gold Hill has curious leaders like Hedrick and Hopkins, there will always be more to discover.
Gold Hill Founders Day — September 28
Gold Hill Mines Historic Park
735 St. Stephens Church Road
Gold Hill, NC 28071
(704) 267-9439
historicgoldhill.org/gold-hill-founders-day
More to Explore: Discover more September events across the state at ourstate.com/calendar.
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