Father, son unearth golden opportunity on Nash Co. hill

In early October, Tim Fisher and his son Ross were hiking their 14-acre property off Taylor's Store Road when they stumbled onto something.

"We saw timbers sticking out," Tim Fisher said.

They knew that gold had been mined in this area a century ago. Was it an abandoned mine shaft?

Together with buddy Paul Bellman, the Fishers started digging.

"We knew right then that this is something way different from what we thought," Tim Fisher said.

They had found the Robinson Gold Dredge, a boat 94 feet long and 32 feet wide. The boat was built in 1906 and hauled in pieces from New York to dig for gold in Nash County.

"It was a floating gold processing plant," Tim Fisher said.

But what did it float on? The Fishers found the buried boat embedded in a hill, with nothing more than a brook in sight.

Historically, miners built big ditches, called dikes, and filled them with water to float the boat.

"As they built dikes, they'd keep digging, keep processing the gold, and move up and process some more," Tim Fisher said. He figures that the miners tapped this vein of gold then left the boat here for trees to grow on top of it.

They even found flakes of gold on the boat.

"What are the odds of finding a vessel like this on your own property? I mean, it's just staggering," Ross Fisher said.

What they found on their own property makes for must-see TV.

"Mine shafts are a dime a dozen, but this, this is something very rare," Ross Fisher said.

The find presents the Fishers with a golden opportunity. They want to make it a local attraction for kids to come, pan for gold and learn some history.

First, they are working with the Army Corps of Engineers on a plan to preserve the boat and protect the environment around it.

"I don't know if it'll make me rich or not, but it'll make me happy," Ross Fisher said.