No gold in Arkansas hills, but plenty of gold fever

Arkansas has been blessed with a huge variety of natural resources, perhaps the most noted being the diamond deposit near Murfreesboro. While gold and silver have never been successfully mined here, it was not from lack of effort.

The earliest instance of mining for precious metals I know of was in 1816 when the Spanish sent a party up the Arkansas River to spy on the Americans who were flooding into what is now Arkansas.

The espionage party, which included famed pirate Jean Lafitte, traveled under the guise of being prospectors, and actually did a little silver mining in what is today the Kellogg Acres area of North Little Rock. The original name of North Little Rock, Argenta, means silver in Latin.

Most of the gold and silver rushes in Arkansas occurred during the 1870s and 1880s, but a Saline County immigrant thought he found gold in 1843. When he learned a few days later that he had discovered fool’s gold — worthless iron pyrite — the settler fell into a deep gloom.

That despair was broken when his wife picked up an ax and began cutting trees for a home. The downcast settler then spoke a memorable line: “Had it not been for her I might have died of chagrin …”

The 1878 gold strike in southern Boone County, which resulted in the town of Golden City, also turned out to be a lode of fool’s gold. A more prolonged gold excitement occurred in Searcy during the summer of 1887, when two shafts were sunk a few yards from the county courthouse.

The late Margaret Smith Ross has written about the Searcy mine, noting that the location of the digging in the center of the small town provided entertainment value for the locals. “An interested crowd of sidewalk supervisors came to the shaft every day while the work was in progress,” wrote Ross. After a hot summer of digging to a depth of 41 feet, the weary prospectors gave up.

While efforts have been made across Arkansas to mine precious metals, the area between Hot Springs and Mount Ida in the Ouachita Mountains became popularly known as “the mineral belt.” The locations of Silver City and Bear in eastern Montgomery County became the scenes of intense prospecting and mining before being debunked by the Arkansas Geological Survey in 1888.

About 15 miles east of Mount Ida, the area that would become known as Silver City first attracted prospectors about 1875, according to Leonard M. Sherman, author of an entry on mining in the Encyclopedia of Arkansas.

During the first week of 1879, the Arkansas Gazette began publishing features on the Silver City area. In June 1879, the Gazette reported that “silver fever” was running high in Montgomery County, followed a week later by a report that “wild excitement” prevailed in nearby Hot Springs. By the end of the year, more than 1,000 mining claims had been filed in Silver City.

The silver boom spread across the state, with reports of new discoveries in Saline, Stone, Searcy, and Boone counties. The old Kellogg mine in Argenta was brought back into service. Meantime, Silver City was prospering with riverboat and railroad magnate Joseph “Diamond Jo” Reynolds establishing the Minnesota Mine, while wealthy Joplin, Mo., smelter and “lead king” Elliott R. Moffet opened the Walnut Mine.

Many claims were worked at Silver City, but the yield of silver was never enough to turn a profit for any of the mines. Miners and prospectors gradually left, a process that accelerated after 1884 when rumors spread that gold had been discovered at nearby Bear. By 1887 Bear was bustling, with 35 mining companies operating and speculation out of control.

Many if not most of the gold rushes in Arkansas came about due to the discovery of iron pyrite. In some cases small amounts of gold or silver were found, but never in paying amounts. In the case of Bear, no one is quite sure how the rush began, but in a lusty mingling of adrenaline and greed, the rush was feverish, and many people innocently bought stock in worthless mines.

Bear City, as it was officially named, was platted in 1884 when rumors of gold were already being heard, and the settlement grew steadily. On July 4, 1887, the Hot Springs Daily News published a special mining edition with a detailed description of Bear.

Two months earlier, the reporter wrote, “the place was but an unattractive miner’s hamlet, but it is today a young city of nearly 1,000 souls, full and bustling with the life and activity characteristic of a booming new mining town.”

The reporter noted that people had been flooding into Bear “charmed with the stories of Arkansas mines.” A building boom supported seven steam saw mills, and “from dawn till dusk the clatter of hammers and the sound of the saw” could be heard.

People were anxious to believe in the mines at Bear. An aging veteran of the California gold rush of 1849 proclaimed: “I have seen all the mining camps in the United States, and I know Arkansas has the greatest mines in the world.” A reporter concluded that the “great rush of people to Bear City [has] given it a magical impetus.”

Like mushrooms after a spring shower, mining companies sprang up overnight. The late Donald Harington, who wrote about Bear in his wonderful book “Let Us Build Us a City” (1986), stated that 47 mining companies “with such names as Eureka, Ozark, Accident, Nonpareil, Phoenix, and Champion” were incorporated, and more than $80 million in shares were reportedly sold. Money was indeed being made, but it was from selling stock, not finding gold.

While Arkansas has never been known for its consumer protection, it did step in to bring an end to the runaway speculation that held sway in Bear. In 1887, the General Assembly appropriated funds for a professional geological survey of the state, and highly regarded John C. Branner became the new state geologist.

Branner, who would later become a renowned geologist and president of Stanford University in California, issued a report in August 1888 that knocked the wind out of the Bear gold rush.

“Gigantic frauds” read the front-page headlines as the Arkansas Gazette reported Branner’s findings. He pulled no punches, stating “we are brought to the irresistible conclusion that ignorance or fraud, or both, are at the bottom of the high gold assays reported from Montgomery and Garland counties.”

One business enterprise did survive at Bear long after the mines closed and prospectors drifted away: chair manufacturing. The Rouse and Bump families made handcrafted wooden chairs with woven oak bottoms there for more than a century.