At the Gold Mining Camp Museum in Goldvein are two enormous relics from Virginia’s gold mining past. Few realize that Virginia was one of the first states in which gold was discovered. In 1782, Thomas Jefferson discovered a four-pound rock containing gold ore along the Rappahannock riverbank. His find caught the attention of local farmers and landowners, and by 1804, gold prospectors and small-scale mining operations were at work in the state. Most Virginia gold mining enterprises were concentrated in the “Gold-Pyrite Belt,” a 15- to 25-mile-wide strip of land…
