Cotton Patch Gold Mine,
Union Copper Mine
North Carolina
May 10th - 12th, 2013

Photos by: Richard Jacquot


Old mining equipment at the Cotton Patch Gold Mine.

Tony Jones gold from the Cotton Patch. (IronTom pic)

Sunday, only ten people came with me to the Union Copper Mine. Rob Stine was there with "Biscuits the MAGMA Bear"

Matt and Stacey Tieszen came with their daughters and their rockhound.

Collapsed south shaft at the Union Copper Mine.

Collapsed adit at the top of the Union Mine.

Jeff Pickett was at the Union Mine with us on Sunday. He was showing members which rocks to look for to find the gold when he spotted a huge iron/pyrite cube.


Well, we thought it was a huge cube, it was a cube, a cube off the end of a railroad tie.

Big hunk of malachite on matrix rock that Steve Barr dug. Steve hit a sweet spot on Saturday and dug quite a bit of nice malachite. (Ken Dean pic)

My haul from the weekend, everything to the left of the single bucket I dug on Sunday, all has some amount of gold, from trace to visible gold.

Since I like to collect artifacts, I grabbed a few of the bricks that formed the old foundation around the top of the south shaft at the mine.

Mark Davis found this cool 100 year old pry bar or drill steel and let me have it for my collection. I later found a 100 year old chisel and gave it to Mark for his collection.

Some of my iron after pyrite cubes.


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