The book traces the history of the Haile Gold Mine in South Carolina from its origin in 1827, a generation before the California Gold Rush, to its reopening in 2017 as a state-of-the-art, environmentally-conscious mine. The Haile is the oldest operating mine in the country and contains the largest gold reserve in the Eastern US. For most of the past 190 years it has been the largest gold producer in the South. This is a business-focused history covering changes in labor (from slavery to high tech), mining and processing (panning to huge extraction pits and chemical processing for sub microscopic particles of gold) to ownership (from individual to a large global company with major institutional investors). All is placed in context of other Southern gold mines and changes across the region.