Explore Alabama: Alabama mining region, rich and prolific as it is, does not monopolize all the mineral wealth of Alabama. In several of the counties of the Tennessee valley, in portions of the “cotton belt,” and also in the far south, called the “timber belt,” minerals have been found in more or less profusion.

Gold was first discovered in Alabama about the year 1830, and states that, shortly afterward, the placers and gravel washes became the seats of an active industry in the counties of Cleburne, Talladega, Randolph, Tallaposa, Coosa, Chilton, and perhaps, also of Clay. No record of these operations has been preserved; all that is now known is that large numbers of men were engaged in the work and that in some places, at least, it was found profitable.