An interesting bit of history is that before the California Gold Rush, there was quite the gold rush in Georga and other Appalachian states. There is a major history of mining not only gold but other precious metals and gem stones as well as iron and coal.
In 1863, during the Civil War, there was a major shipment of gold from the Union Army to the US Mint in Philladelphia. It never arrived. Some people had some good clues as to where it might be. Because this is still Federal property, the FBI got involved and things went downhill fast.
From The Stamford Advocate (Norwalk, CT):
FBI records deepen mystery of dig for Civil War-era gold
The court-ordered release of a trove of government photos, videos, maps and other documents involving the FBI's secretive search for Civil War-era gold has a treasure hunter more convinced than ever of a coverup — and just as determined to prove it.
Dennis Parada waged a legal battle to force the FBI to turn over records of its excavation in Dents Run, Pennsylvania, where local lore says an 1863 shipment of Union gold disappeared on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia. The FBI, which went to Dents Run after sophisticated testing suggested tons of gold might be buried there, has long insisted the dig came up empty.
And...
“The truth will come out,” said Parada, co-founder of the treasure-hunting outfit Finders Keepers. Solving the mystery is not his only goal — he had hoped to earn a finder’s fee from the potential recovery of hundreds of millions of dollars worth of gold.
I would imagine a substantial finder's fee. And...
He and his son spent years looking for the fabled gold of Dents Run, eventually guiding the FBI to a remote woodland site 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh where they say their instruments identified a large quantity of metal. The FBI brought in a geophysical consulting firm whose sensitive equipment detected a 7- to 9-ton mass suggestive of gold.
Armed with a warrant, a team of FBI agents came in March 2018 to dig up the hillside. An FBI videographer was on hand to document it, at one point interviewing a Philadelphia-based agent on the FBI’s art-crime team who explained why the FBI was in the woods of one of Pennsylvania's most sparsely populated counties.
“We’ve identified through our investigation a site that we believe has U.S. property, which includes a significant sum of base metal which is valuable ... particularly gold, maybe silver,” the agent said on the video, his face blurred by the FBI to protect his privacy.
Yeah - the FBI excluded Parada and his workers and proceeded to spend several days digging up the hillside. They then said that they "did not find anything"
He suspects the agency conducted a clandestine, overnight dig between the first and second days of the court-authorized excavation, found the gold, and spirited it away. Residents have previously told of hearing a backhoe and jackhammer overnight — when the dig was supposed to have been paused — and seeing a convoy of FBI vehicles, including large armored trucks. The FBI has denied it conducted an overnight dig.
Yeah... Riiiiiight... That agency needs to have it's budget cut by 70% and their main office relocated to Adak, Alaska. Don't forget that they recently announced that they were planning a new headquarters building that will be twice as large as the Pentagon — currently the world's largest office building.
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