In twelve-year-old Conrad Reed found a large glittering rock in the stream that ran through his family rsquo s small farm in North Carolina He carried it home to show his father a poor immigrant farmer His father didn rsquo t understand the rock rsquo s potential value and used it as a doorstop The family walked by it for years Eventually Conrad rsquo s rock mdash actually a seventeen-pound gold nugget mdash caught the eye of a local jeweler Soon the Reed family became wealthy and their property became the site of the first major gold strike in the [... more]