Sixes Gold Mine, Cherokee County, Georgia, USAi

Regional Level Types
Sixes Gold Mine	Mine
Cherokee County	County
Georgia	State
USA	Country

The Sixes Mine, lots 150, 212, 221 and 284, 15th district, is one of the best known placer mines in Cherokee county. Gold was discovered in a small stream, now known as Sixes creek, prior to the removal of the Indians, from this section of the country. As early as 1834, extensive mining was carried on, here. During these early workings, an average miner is said to have made, from fifteen to twenty pennyweights of gold, per day, by the use of a long-tom, or a rocker.

The entire worked portion of the placer does not exceed five acres; yet, from this small area, if reports are to be credited, many thousand pennyweights of gold have been obtained. Much of the placer has been worked twice, and even three times; and it is not at all improbable, that there may be certain portions of the mine, even now, containing paying deposits. Both coarse and fine gold occur, here; but the latter is more abundant. Many nuggets, which are usually rough and angular, have been found; the largest of which is reported to have weighed ninety pennyweights.

A considerable amount of money and labor has been expended, in prospecting for the vein, that has supplied the placer; but, so far, the work has met with only partial success. A number of shafts and tunnels have been made, on the hillside, near the upper edge of the placer. In one of these excavations, near a contact of granite and hornblende-schist, is a vein or layer of mica-schist, about three and a half feet wide, which carries gold. It is possible, that this gold-bearing schist is a portion of the vein, which has fed the placer. However, if this be true, it must, in places, have contained rich pockets or ore-shoots, that were removed by denudation, and its auriferous contents, distributed along the stream below.

The geological formations, occurring in the vicinity of the Sixes Mine, are entirely different, from any, heretofore examined. The hill, on which the vein-prospecting has been carried on, consists of granite and hornblende-schist; while the formation, lying to the east, and forming the greater portion of the bed-rock of the placer, is mica-schist. The granite is fine-grained, and of a light color; and it frequently contains more or less pyrite, unevenly distributed throughout the rock-mass. All the formations strike northeast and southwest, and dip, at an angle of about forty degrees, to the southeast.