<p>Low water in the Chestatee River, near Dahlonega, Georgia, revealed the long-forgotten, sunken remains of a wooden barge and a cast and wrought iron structure that proved to be an 1869 version of a pre-war patent of a “diving bell” first introduced in New York, Dublin and London in the 1840s and modified in the late 1850s and during the American Civil War by French-born American engineer Benjamin Maillefert and other inventors. Bells of this type were a unique aspect of underwater exploration, exploitation, and underwater construction in the decades before and the decades after the American Civil War and an evolutionary step in the development of both submersibles and caissons. Ultimately, these bells proved to be a costly, labor-intensive “dead end” in the evolutionary chain of submersibles. The Chestatee River Diving Bell, also known as the Dahlonega Diving Bell, is the only known surviving American example of this type. Its history as a specifically utilized craft connects it to early efforts to clear harbors of obstructions, salvage shipwrecks, and in the harvesting of placer gold from riverbeds. In its specific use, the Chestatee River diving bell is a unique reminder of the Georgia gold rush and its long-lived aftermath and the application and misapplication of technologies to extract gold. It is also a rare surviving example of both a nineteenth century diving bell and a support craft, but the only known maritime archaeological example of an associated bell and the craft used to deploy that bell.</p>