During the early days of the Georgia Gold Rush, vast deposits of gold were known to exist at the bottom of the Chestatee River, but mining was limited to shallow areas near the banks until inventor and entrepreneur Philologus Hawkins (P.H.) Loud introduced a new river-mining operation in 1875. Using ideas adapted from earlier patents, Loud had iron plates for an air lock-type diving bell cast at the Pottstown Iron Company in Pennsylvania, then partially assembled and shipped by rail to Gainesville, GA, before final assembly at the Chestatee River. After weeks of trials, a specially constructed boat and its diving bell began retrieving gold-bearing gravel from the riverbed by lowering the bell through an open chamber in the boat, forcing out excess water with pressurized air, and sending miners down through an air lock with hatches, an air valve, and glass windows for light. Inside, miners shoveled auriferous gravel into a large vacuum tube that pumped it to the deck, where a sluice box separated the gold from the gravel, while larger rocks were likely raised in buckets or ballast bins. Although the method appeared promising, mechanical breakdowns, legal problems, and bad weather prevented the machinery from being used to its full potential, and on October 18, 1876, the boat sank with the diving bell attached under mysterious circumstances. Because it remained hidden in the river for so many decades, this submersible is the only known air lock-type diving bell in the United States, and Loud’s 1875 venture became the first of various river-mining operations attempted in Lumpkin County, where such mining continued for more than forty-five years until boats became too expensive and unreliable to operate.