Abstract Renewed gold exploration in the Carolina slate belt of North and South Carolina that led to the discovery of the Ridgeway gold mine (#5 on Figure 1) by Amselco (now Kennecott) began at about the same time as the last Geological Society of America field trip to focus on southeastern metal deposits. That trip occurred in the fall of 1980 as part of the national GSA meeting in Atlanta, Georgia (Bell, Carpenter, and Feiss, 1980). On that trip at stop 8, Henry Bell described abundant hydrothermal alteration similar to the Haile and Brewer mines in an area with no known gold mines. He noted that auger cuttings from a hole drilled by the South Carolina Geological Survey in the 1960’s near stop 8 at Mount Rehovah church contained 0.06 ppm gold and 220 ppm copper in the upper 9 feet of rock and 10 ppm molybdenum from 30-40 feet. Because the values decreased with depth, the gold was attributed to surface enrichment (Bell, 1976). Samples collected by Bell (1976) of small drainage basins in the region contained up to 1000 ppm tin in heavy mineral concentrates that were also anomalous in gold, boron, lanthanum, niobium, beryllium, and copper (Figure 16 of Bell, Carpenter, and Feiss, 1980). Bell et al. (1980) stated “Geochemical data suggest that this region is on the periphery of an area having many of the ore-bearing characteristics of the Haile and Brewer mines” Stop 8 was only hundred’s of feet west of the present site of the