Cherokee and Georgia gold miners back to Colorado in 1858, and they began placer mining along the South Platte River in present-day Denver. Three Auraria Georgians, W. Green, Levi J., and J. Oliver Russell, founded Auraria, Colorado, named after the gold-mining town in Georgia. Auraria merged with Denver in 1860, but the neighborhood is still known as Auraria. The town of Golden, Colorado, is named after Georgia miner Thomas L. Golden. Another Georgia gold miner, John H. Gregory, discovered the first lode gold in Colorado in 1859. In 1864, four prospectors known as "the Georgians" found one of the early gold placers in Montana, at Last Chance Gulch. The site became the state capital of Helena. The migration of people down into the South shifted the economy in Georgia, much like it did in California. There were the few who 'made it rich', and that was a boon for the communities, but there was also a surge of people with different skills and backgrounds to further build a more functional and rounded community. However, because of the amount of miners looking to make it big in the industry, whatever fortunes that were made were marginally decreased when they had to be dispersed among more and more miners on the work force. The Georgia Gold Rush was useful for its additions to the further development in the South, namely in pushing industrialization. This, however, also meant that it disturbed what established communities and economies already existed, both for indigenous people and for those that had already settled there. It led to destruction of landscapes and geography due to procedures necessary for mining: cutting down forests, stripped away streams, creating dams to block water flow, and settling previously untouched areas. As seen with the California Gold Rush, there was also an uptick in criminal rates, including homicide. This was largely due to the opportunity to commit crime because of a lack of developed and consistent punishments for crime in mining communities, made largely of miners. The rise in crime in Georgia has also been attributed to an increase of different minorities settling in the South. This conflict was a consequence of different movtivations, including class, race, and claims to land. This has been said to last through the ages and could be a cause of the race disparity in the South that persists today. Christopher Bechtler Crisson Mine Consolidated Mine References Further