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The Lost Greenbrier Mine

This is the story of the lost greenbrier mine. Some people have referred to this lost mine as the lost shulz mine because of a man named Perry Shulz who supposedly had found this mine. Very little is known of this mine and in fact some people say it is just a fabled story, however, as you will see, old Perry was know to have gold and silver coins in his possession and would always jingle these silver coins in his pockets.

The story takes place deep in the Smoky mountains of Tennesee. It is said that Perry Shulz had left his home and went to the Carolinas because back in the early 1800's there was a pretty big gold rush. There were some very large gold nuggets that were found in that region that started that gold rush and rumors were that many people very finding new wealth, so Albert decided to go and check it out for himself. However, once we got to where the goldfields and the mines were, he found out that the rush was long over and there was little land left to stake. In fact Perry was several years late and had no where to go but return home.

While he was in the Carolinas, he did meet some people who were still active in mining gold and from these people he was able to learn what to look for and even learned how to process hard rock gold and silver. Once he got back home he decided to look around at these different formations in the smoky mountians that these other miners talked about. As it so happened, one day while out in the hills, deep in some under brush, Perry found a small out cropping of quartz and gold. Not really sure if it was gold or not, he chipped a few chunks for samples and then headed back to his home. Once he was at home he crushed the samples and because he was a blacksmith by trade, he proceeded to smelt the gold out of the rock wanting to make sure it was gold that he had. Sure enough, Perry had real found gold and now the big problem became, how to keep the mines location a secret.

Perry started going off to his mine out in the Smoky's quite regularly and word was starting to get out. Locals around the area were whispering rumors and so everytime Perry headed out he would take a different route to get to his secret location. On different occasions he would take his wife and have her stand watch while he would head into the bush alone. Even his wife never knew where this mine was located. After a while Perry has a considerable amount of gold and silver and not wanting people to know about it, he set about with the plan he had devised way earlier.

While he was in the Carolina's, he had gone to Charlotte and while there, he visited the new mint. While visiting the mint where they made gold and silver coins, he happened to steal a couple of coin punch plates. With these coin stamp plates he was able to mint his own coins. It was a brilliant plan and it almost worked, however Perry didn't know that there was a formula for mixing the gold and silver like the U.S. Treasury coins. Perry's coins were too pure and it wasn't to long before there were federal agents out looking for him. Perry supposedly threw the coin plates into a river and fled out west.

So is there really a lost mine out in the Smoky mountains somewhere? It is proven fact that there is gold out in the Smoky mountian and miners have worked the creeks for many years. This lost mine could be almost anywhere out in those mountains. The other questions was where did Perry get the coins from? After all most ppeople back then had very little money. Only the wealthy had silver coins in their pockets. Some people suggest that Albert had found a cash of coins that was stashed during the civil war but that couldn't be proven either.

Then in the 1960's a farmer who had bought the same land that Perry lived on over 150 years earlier, was plowing a field and plowed up a clay pot filled with gold and silver coins valued at over $35,000. Where these the coins that Perry minted? If not, where did they come from. No one really knows. And what about Perry Shulz? Well we do know that there is a gravestone in the local cemetary with his name, dated in 1889.









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