Carrick On Shannon, Co. Leitrim
Prospecting for gold in the early 1800's was something we imagine happened only in the wild west of the U.S of A.
Alot of people don't know about the gold rush of 1804 that happened in Carrick on Shannon. At the time the town used to have a population of 34. This swelled to 104,357 in a matter of weeks.It all started when a child one day had been out fishing for his dinner in the river when he pulled out a gold nugget the size and shape of a space hopper. This is why people from Carrick are none as "Spacers".
As soon as this was found, the influx to the area begun.With the population that large, the city at the time became Europe's largest and was to become the capital of Ireland. People went mad looking for gold. They were digging holes, mining rocks, drilling, building tunnels, pan handling the river and even checking the trees for gold. But the problem was nothing could be found, not even a flex.
Since the only find was by a child in the river, all children were put to work pan handling in the river, 7 days a week. This payed off as gold started to surface, literally. They believe the lighter child was not pushing the gold into the river bed where it then floated to the top. This yielded vast amounts of wealth.The gold only lasted 8 years in total. By 1812 the children had grown up and were too heavy to find the gold. Nobody had any time to have more children as they were too busy spending all thier money and enjoying the fruits of life. So everybody decided to move out and the population dropped back to 34 again.
The town only found out about this history in the last few years and decided to erect this statue to commemorate the period of time that brought so much welt to the area and also sorrow. Mostly sorrow due to the fact they should have just got some more children from the road and they could have got more.
Unfortunately the river and the silt pushed all the gold down the river and out to sea. To this day the area and the Shannon are still popular with boat trips. Unknown to the renters of the boats, most have fine mesh nets attached to the bottom which are then brought up and down the river in hope of finding the treasures below.