Talk:Auraria, Georgia

clarity

I've edited the article a bit for clarity, but it is still kind of choppy throughout and there are some points where the meaning is ambiguous:

• "Settlers came in the Indian lands..." is vague. Were the settlers venturing into Cherokee Territory in general, or were they looking for gold just in the area around Findley Ridge?
• "The indians were dismayed at the influx of unauthorized settlers." Were there any authorized settlers in Indian territory at that time?
• "...and seceeded the land in Georgia for land in Oklahoma." "Seceeded" is perhaps a misspelling of "seceded", but does the article perhaps mean "annexed"? "Seceded" means "withdrawn (from an organization)"... but then "for land in Oklahoma" makes it sound like it was traded, in which case the word should be simply "traded".
• "Due to politics and land ownership..." and "Due to location and political influence..." in consecutive sentences. The "location" part makes sense, but "political influence" is meaningless when we don't know whose influence is under discussion. "Due to political influence of nearby landowners, the town of Dahlonega was established and given a Federal Mint for gold coins", perhaps?
• "About 1849, gold was discovered in California, then Colorado." On first reading, I thought this meant that gold was first discovered in California and then in Colorado, but it could also mean that what we now call California was at that time part of Colorado... which lends further confusion to the following item:
• "Men from Auraria settled outside Denver, Colorado, and the city Aurora derives its name from here." There's Aurora in Colorado, but there's also Aurora, CA; neither of these seem likely. At the end of the article, however, is a sentence which says the name of the new town was Auroraria, in Kansas Territory, not Aurora. The wikipedia entry for Auraria, Kansas Territory, agrees about the history... so I've revised the earlier "Aurora" reference.
• "Gold mining operations all but ceased" -- did they stop, or not? If the town is a ghost town, they must have stopped completely at some point, but did a small trickle of mining continue for awhile after this? If not, we should just say "Gold mining ceased", preferably with some idea of how long it took for them to stop; what year did the last mine shut down? It sounds like the last mine closed sometime during or shortly after the Civil War, but I'd like something a bit more definitive before I go rewriting anything.
• "After the California gold rush in 1849, Auraria faded into history." This is almost redundant, unless it is meant to indicate that gold mining in Auraria declined or ended at about the same time as California gold mining.

There were two different paragraphs describing what remains of the town in the present day; I pulled them together, making some assumptions about which items referred to were the same things and which weren't (or might not be).

This is my first actual article edit on Wikipedia -- whee! Comments and suggestions appreciated. --Woozle 15:30, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Auraria Historical Marker

According to the Auraria Historical Marker in Georgia; "From Auraria in 1858 the "Russell Boys", led by Green Russell, went west and established another Auraria near the mouth of the Cherry Creek that later became Denver, Colo." Quoted in verbatum. -taken from http://www.ghosttowns.com

Benjamin Parks

Benjamin parks was "the man who kicked a rock"