Hidden history: The first U.S. gold rush was started by a 12-year-old boy.

Although the 1848 California Gold Rush was the largest in American history, it wasn’t the first. That distinction belongs in the state of North Carolina, where in 1799, Conrad Reed, the 12-year-old son of a Hessian Revolutionary War deserter named John Reed, found a 17-pound gold nugget in Little Meadow Creek outside Charlotte. At first — not knowing what his son had stumbled across — the elder Reed used the rock as a doorstop for his home’s front door. It wasn’t until 1802, when he took the rock to a local jeweler, that he began to grasp the enormity of his son’s discovery (although he sold the nugget for far less than it was actually worth).  By 1803, Reed had established the first gold mining operation in the U.S. MORE