Maryland Mining
Maryland mine
Discovered
1830
Address
11710 MacArthur Boulevard Potomac, MD 20854
Contact Number
(301) 767-3714.
Gold was reported in Maryland as early as 1830, but no production resulted. Placer gold was discovered at Great Falls near Washington, DC in 1861 during the American Civil War by Union soldiers from California. Gold is found in rocks of the Piedmont Plateau, a belt of metamorphic rocks extending from New York to South Carolina. The metal occurs as grains, wires or sheets in quartz veins and along mineralized fault zones in the surrounding metamorphic rocks. The distribution of gold in the quartz veins is sporadic and the concentration ranges from 0.1 to 5 ppm (Reed and Reed, 1969). Sulfides sometimes found with the gold are pyrite, sphalerite, and galena. In the copper districts of Maryland, gold has often been noted as a minor accessory mineral.
