By Dr. Curtis Varnell
Just south of Booneville, in Logan County, sits the small community of Golden City. A few scattered homes, some old deserted mines, and a church are all that remain on the site of one of the biggest gold rushes in Arkansas.
The story began in late 1885 when a man by the name of John Redmon moved his sawmill into the area and began harvesting the many pine trees in the area. Needing water to operate his steam mill, he had the dug well on his property deepened. During the process, a large piece of quartz was uncovered. Knowing that quartz and gold are often found together, he had the sample assayed and discovered that it contained gold.
The news swept through the area! Within days, a stranger by the name of Dr. A. Guy Lewis, a gold miner from Oregon arrived and began waving around wads of money. He quickly bought up tracts of land and established an office in the rural community. Others soon followed, using hard cash to buy up the land and establish businesses. A hotel, several stores, and a stamp mill were soon constructed and hundreds of people flocked into the area.
Several shafts, some hundreds of feet deep were sunk into the earth. Pulverized rock by the ton was shipped to Fort Smith and the assay office in Dardanelle stayed busy processing claims. Stoked by traces of gold located in the samples, people from throughout the region invested in gold stock or bought up small plots of ground and began their own mines. Lewis and Redmon hired Bill Carrol and a group of men to stand watch over the opening leading into their mine and this just added frenzy to the mania.
This went on for over a year. Prospectors flocked into the region, buying up high-priced land claims to the west and south of town. Golden City flourished, establishing churches, a literary society, and a post office. Just as soon as it began, the boom died. After a night of heavy drinking, Carrol let it be known that Redmon, Lewis, and others were running the typical scam. Redmon’s son brought in gold samples from Colorado and, according to the story, filled shotgun shells with the samples and “salted” several of the local mines. The real money being made was made from selling the property at an extremely high cost.
Redmon, Lewis, and cohorts claimed that Carrol was lying and attempted to rally the local miners into hanging him on the spot but the secret was out. Afraid to hang Carrol but also afraid that he was right, many of the miners began to closely examine their claims and found the cost of extracting even a trace of gold exceeded any profit they could hope to extract. Many gullible people, looking to make a fast buck, lost life savings and found they held only worthless quick claims to Arkansas rock and dirt.
The bustling community soon disappeared, leaving the peaceful local community that we know today. As Jim Roberts, an editor for the Arkansas Democrat wrote in 1946, it makes you lonely to visit the once-thriving town but the daffodils still bloom, the birds still sing, and the sun still shines in the sky in Golden City, Arkansas.
