Russell had spent his boyhood in the Cherokee country near Dahlonega, site of the only significant gold rush east of the Mississippi, in what would become Dawson County, along the Etowah River.
The bonanza in California sent him across the continent in 1849, and along the way he panned a little gold in the Sweetwater River, in southwest Wyoming just east of the Rockies.
Then, through his Cherokee connections Russell heard about an 1849 discovery of gold along the South Platte River at the foot of the Rocky Mountains.
They rendezvoused with Cherokee tribe members along the Arkansas River in present-day Oklahoma and continued westward along the Santa Fe Trail.
In the first week of July 1858, Green Russell and Sam Bates found a small placer deposit near the mouth of Little Dry Creek that yielded about 20 troy ounces (620 g) of gold, then worth about 380 dollars (about $44,000 USD today), the first significant gold discovery in the Rocky Mountain region.
Word of gold first reached the rest of the nation when an old trader named John Cantrell who had visited the Russell diggings arrived in Kansas City in 1858 with samples to back up his story.
[2] While his mining activities were successful, the political environment turned against Green as Union men began to outnumber southerners.
After the death of his son John in a mining accident in 1874 he sought to gain land in the Indian Territory through his Cherokee wife.