The Battle Branch Mine, sometimes referred to as the Battle Creek Mine, was located near the town of Auraria in Lumpkin County, Georgia. During the Georgia Gold Rush, before the Gold Lottery of 1832, men from several different states were all working in the same stream when a dispute over the possession of the place ended in a fight in which a number of men were seriously wounded, providing the name for the mine ultimately located there. After the American Civil War, William John Turner Hutcheson, who served with the Blue Ridge Rifles, a Confederate fighting unit from Dahlonega, Georgia, became superintendent of the Battle Branch gold mine.