The vast majority of miners during the California Gold Rush were men. The census of 1850 showed that only 8 percent of the population in California was female. In fact, women were so scarce in the mining regions that a young man in Nevada City wrote, Got nearer to a […]
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Sluicing and Beyond: The Gold Rush Develops from Entrepreneurial to Capitalist
I’ve written about panning for gold and rockers and Long Toms. Inevitably, as the search for gold during the California Gold Rush, the miners developed more sophisticated methods of extracting gold. Sluicing was the next development after Long Toms. While some consider Long Toms to be primitive sluices, the difference […]
Continue readingUse of Rockers and Long-Toms During the California Gold Rush
As I wrote last month, the early California gold miners began with placer mining, simply picking the nuggets off the ground or from streams, with hands and pans and knives. Soon, however, they wanted to sift through more dirt faster to increase the profitability of their prospecting. One of the earliest […]
Continue readingPlacer Mining in 1848-49
Last year I recounted the story of James Marshall finding a gold nugget at Sutter’s Mill in January 1848. He looked down into the mill race and saw the bright and glittering metal. Like Marshall’s original find, many of the early gold discoveries were made by men who simply spotted […]
Continue readingPresident Polk Acknowledges California Gold Discovery Ten Months After It Occurred
It wasn’t until December 1848 that President James Polk acknowledged that gold had been found in California. President Polk was a strong supporter of western expansion. He had worked to acquire Oregon south of the 49th parallel for the United States in 1846. The Mexican-American War which President Polk supported left […]
Continue readingCalifornia Grows Quickly Despite Slow Communications
Throughout 1848, fortune-seekers streamed into California, even though the U.S. government had not yet acknowledged the discovery of gold. By October 1848, there were 8,000 men mining for gold in California, doubled from the 4,000 in July of that year. William T. Sherman made his second trip to the gold […]
Continue readingHaunting Book: The Luminaries, by Eleanor Catton
This month I’m writing another series of book reviews on “haunting books.” I haven’t read that many really good mysteries or thrillers by new authors this year, though I recommend to readers that you try any book by Tana French (see review of In the Woods here) or William Landry (see review […]
Continue readingWestern Heads Cool As Gold Fever Begins in the East
When autumn came to 1848, San Francisco was already a boom town and coping with the influx of gold. At the same time, rumors of the gold rush were just reaching Washington, D.C. By late September, more than 6000 men were mining in California. Wealth from the gold fields flooded into […]
Continue readingNews of California Gold Decimates the Population of Oregon
Word of the Sutter’s Fort gold discovery reached Oregon in the summer of 1848. Oregon learned of the gold finds indirectly, not from travelers arriving straight from California. Ships from California came to Oregon after stopping in Hawaii that summer. They brought the news about the gold. In July 1848, […]
Continue readingHonor in the Gold Fields in July 1848: Few Reports of Thievery
As I review my novel about the California Gold Rush with my writing critique partners, they tell me to put more violence and tension into the book. They’d like to see a bloody claim jumping or bushwhacking in every chapter. A good novel must include a lot of conflict and […]
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