california gold rush

The Gold Rush started in January 1848 when a supervisor building a saw mill in the mountains of California found shiny pieces of metal in the tailrace of the mill; tests showed the metal to be gold. Word soon leaked out, first to the rest of California, and then to the world. Within a few years, hundreds of thousands of prospectors and merchants came to California from around the globe, drawn by “gold fever” and the tales of riches available.

Gold had concentrated in the mountains of California as the result of hundreds of millions of years of geologic action. Early prospectors, called "Forty-Niners," at first retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, and later developed recovery techniques that spread around the world.

The Gold Rush brought wide-spread change to California, primarily through an over-whelming increase in the non-Native American population. These changes included the admission of California as a state in 1850, less than three years after the discovery of gold.

The discovery of gold

Beginning in 1848, two years after the United States took control of California, the Gold Rush was a mass movement of some 300,000 people (primarily young men) into California from the United States and around the world. The California Gold Rush is generally considered to have ended by 1855.

The Gold Rush started at Sutter's Mill near Coloma on January 24, 1848; James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento agriculturist John Sutter, found particles of gold in the tail race of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter along the American River.^[1] Marshall quietly brought what he had found to Sutter, and the two of them privately subjected the findings to tests. Dismayed that Marshall's particles passed all the tests for gold, Sutter wanted to suppress this knowledge because he was concerned with expanding his utopian ideal of an agricultural empire, and dreaded the effects of a mass search for gold.^[2] Rumors soon surfaced, however, and were confirmed by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan in March 1848. The most famous quote of the California Gold Rush is attributed to Brannan; after hurriedly setting up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies ^[3], Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" while holding aloft a vial of gold.^[4]

On August 19, 1848, the New York Herald was the first major newspaper on the East Coast to report that there was a gold rush in California; on December 5, 1848, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress.^[5] Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, called the "Forty-Niners," invaded what would be called the "Mother Lode" or the Gold Country of California. As Sutter had predicted, he was ruined as more and more of his workers left in search of gold and squatters invaded his land and stole his crops.^[6]

The then-small settlement of San Francisco at first became a ghost town of abandoned ships and businesses whose owners had decided to join in the Gold Rush,^[7] and then, slightly later, boomed as miners returned rich or, more often, broke and looking for wages. The population of San Francisco exploded from perhaps 1,000^[8] in 1848 to 20,000 full-time residents by 1850. Like many boom towns, the infrastructure of San Francisco and other towns near the fields were strained by the sudden influx; leftover cigar boxes and planks served as sidewalks.

There was no easy way to get to California; Forty-Niners faced hardship and often death on the way to the gold fields. At first, most Argonauts, as they were also known, traveled by sea. From the East Coast, a sailing voyage around the tip of South America would take five to eight months,^[9] and cover some 18,000 nautical miles. An alternative route was to sail to the Isthmus of Panama, take canoes and mules for a week or more through the jungle, and board a ship again on the Pacific side, bound for San Francisco.^[10] Eventually, most gold-seekers took the overland route across the continental United States, particularly along the California Trail.^[11] Each of these routes had their own deadly hazards, from shipwreck to typhoid to cholera.

To meet the demands of the new arrivals, ships bearing goods from around the world—porcelain and silk from China, ale from Scotland—poured into San Francisco as well. Upon arrival in San Francisco, the ship captains often found that their entire crews deserted and went to the gold fields. The wharves and docks of San Francisco became a forest of masts of hundreds of abandoned ships. Enterprising San Franciscans then simply took over these abandoned ships and turned them into stores, taverns, brothels and one into a jail.

Within a few years, there was an important, but lesser-known surge of prospectors into far Northern California, specifically into present-day Siskiyou County, Shasta County and Trinity County.^[12] Discovery of gold nuggets at the site of present-day Yreka in 1851 brought gold-seekers up the Siskiyou Trail^[13] and throughout California's northern counties.^[14] Gold Rush-era settlements, such as Portuguese Flat, California on the Sacramento River sprang into existence and then faded. The Gold Rush-era town of Weaverville on the Trinity River today retains the oldest continuously-used Taoist temple in California, a legacy of Chinese miners who came. While there are not many Gold Rush-era "ghost towns" which are in existence, the well-preserved remains of the once-bustling town of Shasta, California is a California state historic park in Northern California.*^[15]

Gold was also discovered in Southern California, but of a much smaller magnitude. The first discovery of gold, in the mountains north of present-day Los Angeles, had been in 1842, six years before Marshall's discovery, while California was still part of Mexico.^[16] However, these first deposits, and later discoveries in Southern California mountains, attracted little notice, and were of limited consequence economically.

Who were the Forty-Niners

The first people to rush to the gold fields, beginning in the spring of 1848, were the residents of California themselves, primarily Americans and Europeans living in Northern California, along with Native Americans and some Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians).^[17]

Word of the Gold Rush spread slowly at first. The first gold-seekers to arrive during 1848 tended to be those people in close geographic proximity, or people who heard the news from ships on direct sailing routes from California. The first large contingent of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians who came down the Siskiyou Trail.^[18] Next, a significant group of people came from Hawaii by ship, and several thousand Latin Americans, including from Mexico, Chile^[19] and Peru arrived, both overland and by ship.^[20] By the end of 1848, some 6000 Argonauts had come to California.^[20] Only a small number (probably less than 500) travelled overland from the United States that year.^[20]

Some of these "Forty-Eighters" (as they were sometimes called), were able to collect large amounts of easily accessible gold - in some cases, thousands of dollars worth a day.^[21][22] Even ordinary prospectors averaged daily gold finds worth ten to fifteen times the daily wage of a laborer on the East Coast. A person could work for six months in the gold fields and find the equivalent of six years’ wages back home. ^[23]

By the beginning of 1849, word of the Gold Rush had spread around the world, and a tidal wave of gold-seekers and merchants began to arrive from virtually every continent. The largest contingent in 1849 were Americans, arriving by the tens of thousands overland across the continent, and along various ship routes.^[24] Australians^[25] and New Zealanders picked up the news from ships carrying Hawaiian newspapers, and thousands boarded ships for California.^[26] Forty-Niners arriving from Latin America became a flood, particularly from the mining districts of Mexico, near Sonora, Mexico.^[26] The first gold-seekers and merchants from Asia, primarily from China,^[27] began arriving in 1849 in modest numbers to "Gold Mountain," the name given to California in Chinese. The first immigrants from Europe, reeling from the effects of the Revolutions of 1848, and with a longer distance to travel, began arriving in late 1849, mostly from France,^[28] with some Germans, Italians, and British.^[24]

It is estimated that almost 90,000 people arrived in California in 1849 - about half by land and half by sea.^[24] Of these arrivals, perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 were Americans, and the rest were from other countries.^[24]

By 1849, most of the easily accessible gold had been collected, and attention turned to the task of extracting the gold from more difficult locations. Partly as a reaction, tension began to develop between the American and foreign Argonauts. In addition, the huge numbers of people were driving Native Americans out of traditional hunting, fishing and food gathering resources, and conflict began to develop there as well.

By 1855, some 300,000 gold-seekers, merchants, and other immigrants had arrived in California from around the world. The largest group continued to be Americans, but there were tens of thousands each of Mexicans, Chinese, French, and Latin Americans,^[29] with many other countries represented by smaller groups of miners, such as Philipinos and Basques.^[30] A modest number of miners of African ancestry (probably less than 4,000) had come from the American South, the Caribbean and Brazil.^[31]

Who profited from the Gold Rush

Although the conventional wisdom is that merchants made more money than miners during the Gold Rush, the truth is perhaps more complex. There were certainly merchants who profited handsomely. The wealthiest man in California during the early years of the Gold Rush was Sam Brannan, the tireless self-promoter, shopkeeper and newspaper publisher. Brannan alertly opened the first supply stores in Sacramento, Coloma, and other spots in the gold fields; just as the Gold Rush began, he purchased all the prospecting supplies available in San Francisco, and re-sold them at a substantial profit.^[32]. At the same time, however, real money was made by gold-seekers as well. For example, one small group of prospectors, working on the Feather River in 1848, retrieved 273 pounds of gold in a few months^[33] (worth $2.5 million at 2006 prices). Still others made money in shipping, entertainment, lodging, and transportation.

On average, many early Forty-Niners did perhaps eke out a modest profit, after all expenses were taken into account (many others of course made little or wound up losing money).^[32] Similarly, some unlucky merchants set up shop in a settlement that did not last a season, or were wiped out in one of the many calamitous fires that swept the towns springing up. Other merchants, through good fortune and hard work reaped great rewards.

By 1855, the economic climate had changed dramatically. Gold could be retrieved from the gold fields only by medium to large groups of workers, either in partnerships or as employees. It was now the owners of these gold-mining companies who made the money. Similarly, the population of California had grown so dramatically, and the economic base had started to diversify, that money could be made in a wide variety of conventional businesses.

What happened to the gold

Once the gold was recovered, there were many paths the gold itself took in those early years. First, much of the gold was used locally to purchase food, supplies and lodging for the miners. These transactions often took place using the recently recovered gold, carefully weighed out. These merchants and vendors, in turn, used the gold to purchase supplies from ship captains or packers bringing goods to California. The gold then left California aboard ships or mules to go to the makers of the goods from around the world. A second path is the Argonauts themselves, having personally acquired a sufficient amount, sent the gold home, or returned home, taking with them their hard-earned “diggings.” For example, one estimate is that some $80 million worth of California gold was sent to France by French prospectors and merchants.^[34]

Finally, especially as the years progressed, the gold was sent to the U.S. government, in exchange for currency to be used in the booming California economy.

Legal rights

When the Gold Rush began, California was a peculiarly lawless place. On the actual discovery date of gold at Sutter's Mill, California was still technically part of Mexico, under American military occupation as the result of the Mexican-American War. With the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, California became a part of the United States, but an unusual part – it was not a formal “territory” and was certainly not yet a state. California existed in an unusual condition of a region under military control - there was no civil legislature, executive or judicial body for the entire region. Local citizens operated under a confusing and changing mixture of Mexican rules, American principles, and personal dictates.

While the treaty ending the Mexican-American War obligated the United States to honor Mexican land grants, almost all of the gold fields were outside those grants. Instead, the gold fields were primarily on “public land” – that is, land formally owned by the United States government. However, there were simply no legal rules yet in place, and certainly no practical enforcement mechanisms.

The benefit to the Forty-Niners was that the gold was “free for the taking.” In the gold fields, there was no privately-owned property, no licensing fees, no taxes. The Forty-Niners resorted to making up their own codes, and setting up their own local enforcement. It was understood that a “claim” could be “staked” by a prospector, but that claim was valid only as long as it was being actively worked. Disputes were sometimes handled personally and violently, and sometimes addressed by groups of prospectors acting as arbitrators.

Development of gold recovery techniques

Because the gold in the California gravel beds was so richly concentrated, the early Forty-Niners simply panned for gold in California’s rivers and streams.^[35] However, panning cannot be done on a large scale, and industrious miners and groups of miners graduated to "cradles," "rockers," and "long-toms" to process larger volumes of gravel.^[36] Modern estimates are that some 12 million ounces (373 t) of gold were removed in the first five years of the Gold Rush (worth approximately US$8.5 billion at mid-2006 prices)

In the next stage, by 1853, the first hydraulic mining was used on old gold-bearing gravel beds which were on hillsides above current streams and rivers.^[37] In hydraulic mining (which was invented in California at this time), a high pressure hose directs a powerful stream of water at gold-bearing gravel beds. The loosened gravel and gold then pass over sluices, with the gold settling to the bottom, where it is collected. By the mid-1880s, it is estimated that 11 million ounces (342 t) of gold (worth approximately US$7.5 billion at mid-2006 prices) had been recovered via "hydraulicking."

An unwanted byproduct of this method of extraction was the introduction of heavy metals and other pollutants that were carried into fresh water rivers, streams, and lakes along with the runoff produced during hydraulic mining operations. Some estimates place the cost to repair the severe environmental damage caused during this period well beyond the value of the gold recovered. Additionally, many areas still bear the scars of hydraulic mining as the resulting exposed earth is unable to support plant life.

The final stage to recover loose gold was to prospect for gold which had washed down over millions of years into the flat river bottoms and sandbars of California’s Central Valley and other gold-bearing areas of California (such as Scott Valley in Siskiyou County). By the late 1890s, dredging technology (which was also invented in California at this time) had finally become economical, and it is estimated that more than 20 million ounces (622 t) were recovered by dredging (worth approximately US$14 billion at mid-2006 prices).

The Forty-Niners also engaged in "hard-rock" mining, that is, extracting the gold directly from the rock which contained it (typically quartz), usually by digging and blasting to follow and remove veins of the gold-bearing quartz. Once the gold-bearing rocks were brought to the surface, the rocks were crushed, and the gold was leached out, typically by using arsenic or mercury (yet another source of environmental contamination). Eventually, hard-rock mining wound up being the single largest source of gold produced in the Mother Lode.

Dozens of cottage industries sprang up around mining towns to support the miners' endeavors. In the end, very few Forty-Niners "struck it rich" in large part due to the rampant inflation that was often prevalent in these locales.

Effects on California and elsewhere

Historians have reflected on the Gold Rush and its effect on California. Historian Hubert Howe Bancroft used the phrase that the Gold Rush advanced California into a "rapid, monstrous maturity."^[38] Historian Kevin Starr stated, for all its problems and benefits, the Gold Rush established the "founding patterns, the DNA code, of American California."^[38]

The Gold Rush laid the foundation of the “California Dream” – a place to begin again, where riches rewarded hard work and good luck. This gold rush mentality continued in the agricultural expansion of California in the late 1800s and early 1900s, in the oil boom of the early 1900s, in the entertainment industry growth of the 1920s and 1930s, and in the post-war population and industrial spurt of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The most recent "gold rush," centered on Silicon Valley is only the latest in a long series of such events in California.

Immediate effects

The arrival of hundreds of thousand of new people within a few years, compared to a population of some 15,000 Europeans and Californios previously,^[39] had many dramatic effects.

On the one hand, the human and environmental costs of the Gold Rush were substantial. Native Americans became the victims of disease, starvation and genocidal attacks;^[40] the Native American population, estimated at 150,000 in 1845, was less than 30,000 by 1870.^[41] Explicitly racist acts and laws sought to drive out Chinese and Latin American immigrants.^[42] The toll on the American immigrants could be severe as well: one in twelve Forty-Niners lost his or her life, as the death and crime rates during the Gold Rush were extraordinarily high, and the resulting vigilantism took its toll.^[43] In addition, the environment suffered as gravel, silt and toxic chemicals from prospecting operations killed fish and destroyed habitats.

On the other hand, the Gold Rush propelled California from a sleepy, little-known backwater, to a center of the global imagination - the destination of hundreds of thousands. The new immigrants often showed remarkable inventiveness and civic-mindedness. For example, in the midst of the Gold Rush, towns and cities were chartered, a state constitutional convention was convened, elections held, and representatives sent to Washington, D.C. to negotiate the admission of California as a state.^[44] The seeds of large-scale agriculture (California's second "Gold Rush") were planted during this time.^[45] Schools, churches,^[46] roads, and civic organizations blossomed into existence.^[44]

The vast majority of these immigrants were Americans. Pressure grew for better communications and political connections to the rest of the United States, leading to statehood for California on September 9, 1850 in the Compromise of 1850 as the 31st state of the United States.

The Gold Rush wealth and population increase led to significantly improved transportation between California and the East Coast. The Panama Railway, spanning the Isthmus of Panama was finished in 1855.^[47] Steamships began regular service from San Francisco to Panama, where passengers, goods and mail would take the train across the Isthmus, and would board steamships headed to the East Coast. One ill-fated journey, that of the S.S. Central America, ended in disaster as the ship sank in a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas in 1857, with an estimated three tons of California gold aboard.^[48][49]

Within a few years thereafter, in 1863, the groundbreaking ceremony for the western leg of the First Transcontinental Railroad was held in Sacramento. The line's completion some six years later, financed in part with Gold Rush money, united California with the rest of the Eastern United States; travel that had taken weeks or even months could now be accomplished in days.

Longer-term effects

The California’s name became indelibly connected with the Gold Rush, and with the “California Dream” – a place of new beginnings, where great wealth rewarded hard work and good luck. Interestingly, historian H.W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread to the rest of the United States, and became part of the new “American Dream.”

The Gold Rush’s California Dream has remained bright for over 150 years, as generations of immigrants have flocked to California from around the globe, and California farmers, oil drillers, movie makers, airplane builders and “dot.com” entrepreneurs have exported their products to the world, and become wealthy while doing so.^[51]

Included among the modern legacies of the California Gold Rush are the California state motto, "Eureka" ("I have found it"), and the state nickname, "The Golden State," as well as place names such as Rough and Ready, Placerville, Whiskeytown, Drytown, Angels Camp, Happy Camp, and Sawyer's Bar. The San Francisco 49ers NFL football team, and the athletic teams of California State University, Long Beach, are named for the prospectors of the California Gold Rush. The literary history of the Gold Rush is reflected in the works of Mark Twain (The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County), Bret Harte (A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready), Joaquin Miller (Life Amongst the Modocs), and many others.

Today, a state highway travels through the Sierra Nevada foothills, connecting many Gold Rush-era towns such as Placerville, Auburn, Grass Valley, Coloma, Jackson, and Sonora. This road is designated, fittingly, as California State Route 49. Route 49 also passes very near Columbia State Historic Park, a protected area encompassing the historic business district of the town of Columbia; the park has preserved many Gold Rush-era buildings, which are presently occupied by tourist-oriented businesses.

Gold in California

Scientists believe that over a span of at least 400 million years, gold which had been widely dispersed in the Earth’s crust became more and more concentrated by geologic actions into what became known as the "Mother Lode" region of California and the gold-bearing regions of Northern California. Only gold which is concentrated can be economically recovered. Some 400 million years ago, California lay at the bottom of a large sea; underwater volcanoes deposited lava and minerals (including gold) onto the sea floor.^[52] Between 400 million and 200 million years ago, geologic movement forced the sea floor and these volcanic deposits eastwards, colliding with the North American continent, which was moving westwards.^[53]

Beginning about 200 million years ago, tectonic pressure forced the sea floor beneath the American continental mass.^[54] As it sank, or subducted, the sea floor heated and melted into very large molten masses (magma). Being lighter and hotter than the ancient continental crust above it, this magma forced its way upward, cooling as it rose^[55] to become the granite rock found throughout the Sierra Nevada and other mountains in California today — most famously in the sheer rock walls and domes of Yosemite Valley.^[56] As the hot magma cooled, solidified, and came in contact with water, minerals with similar melting temperatures tended to concentrate themselves together.^[56] As it solidified, gold became concentrated within the magma, and during this cooling process, veins of gold formed within fields of quartz^[55] because of the similar melting temperatures of both.^[57]

As the Sierra Nevada and other mountains in California were forced upwards by the actions of tectonic plates, the solidified minerals and rocks were raised to the surface, and exposed to rain, ice and snow.^[58] The surrounding rock then eroded and crumbled, and the exposed gold and other materials were carried downstream by water. Because gold is much heavier (denser) than almost all other minerals, this process further concentrated the gold as it sank, and pockets of gold gathered in quiet gravel beds along the sides of old rivers and streams.^[59]

The California mountains rose and shifted several times within the last fifty million years, and each time, old streambeds moved and were dried out, leaving the deposits of gold resting within the ancient gravel beds where the gold had been collecting.^[60] Newer rivers and streams then developed and some of these cut through the old channels, exposing the gold.^[60] The Forty-Niners first focused their efforts on these deposits of gold, which had been concentrated in the old gravel beds by hundreds of millions of years of geologic action.

See also

• List of people associated with the California Gold Rush
• Virginia gold mining
• Australian gold rush
• Colorado Gold Rush
• Witwatersrand Gold Rush
• Klondike Gold Rush

Notes

References

• Bancroft, Hubert Howe (1884-1890) History of California, vols 18-24, The works of Hubert Howe Bancroft, complete text online
• Brands, H.W. (2003). The age of gold: the California Gold Rush and the new American dream. New York: Doubleday. ISBN 0385720882.
• Dillon, Richard (1975). Siskiyou Trail. New York: McGraw Hill. ISBN 0070169802.
• Harper's New Monthly Magazine March 1855, Volume 10, Issue 58 complete text online
• Heizer, Robert F. (1974). The destruction of California Indians. Lincoln and London: Univ. of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803272626.
• Hill, Mary (1999). Gold: the California story. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. ISBN 0520215478.
• Holliday, J. S. (1999). Rush for riches; gold fever and the making of California. Oakland, California, Berkeley and Los Angeles: Oakland Museum of California and University of California Press. ISBN 0520214013.
• Rawls, James J. and Orsi, Richard J. (eds.) (1999). A golden state: mining and economic development in Gold Rush California (California History Sesquicentennial Series, 2). Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. ISBN 0520217713.
• Starr, Kevin (1973). Americans and the California dream: 1850-1915. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0195042336.
• Starr, Kevin (2005). California: a history. New York: The Modern Library. ISBN 0679642404.
• Starr, Kevin and Orsi, Richard J. (eds.) (2000). Rooted in barbarous soil: people, culture, and community in Gold Rush California. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. ISBN 0520224965.
• Wells, Harry L. (1881). History of Siskiyou County, California. Oakland, California: D.J. Stewart & Co.. ASIN B0006YP8IE. (reprinted 1971 Siskiyou County Historical Society)

Further reading

• Burchell, Robert A. "The Loss of a Reputation; or, The Image of California in Britain before 1875," California Historical Quarterly 53 (Summer I974): 115-30, stories about Gold Rush lawlessness slowed immigration for two decades
• Burns, John F. and Orsi, Richard J., eds. (2003). Taming the elephant: politics, government, and law in pioneer California. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. ISBN 0520234138. complete text online
• Clay, Karen and Wright, Gavin. "Order Without Law? Property Rights During the California Gold Rush." Explorations in Economic History 2005 42(2): 155-183. Issn: 0014-4983 Fulltext in Ingenta. Abstract: The system of mining claims created during the 19th century California gold rush was not the precursor of modern secure property rights. When the gold rush began in 1848 there were no federal regulations governing mining rights, and disputes about claim jumping were frequent and sometimes violent. In order to minimize violence and maximize the discovery of gold, regulations were created at the local level to clarify when a mining site could be considered abandoned and available for a new claim. Despite the presence of third-party enforcement of the regulations, however, miners had to be constantly vigilant to protect their claims, as they had not established a permanent property right.
• Drager, K., and Fracchia, C. (1997). The golden dream: California from Gold Rush to statehood. Portland, OR: Graphic Arts Center Publishing Company. ISBN 1558683127.
• Eifler, Mark A. (2002). Gold Rush capitalists: greed and growth in Sacramento. Univ. of New Mexico Press. ISBN 0826328229.
• , J. S. and Swain, William (1981). The world rushed in: the California Gold Rush experience. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press (reprint ed. 2002). ISBN 080613464X.
• Hurtado, Albert L. (2006). John Sutter: a life on the North American frontier. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press. ISBN 080613772X.
• Johnson, Susan Lee (2001). Roaring Camp: the social world of the California Gold Rush. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 0393320995.
• Levy, JoAnn (1990). They saw the elephant: women in the California Gold Rush. Norman: Univ. of Oklahoma Press (reprint ed. 1992). ISBN 0806124733.
• Owens, Kenneth N., ed. (2002). Riches for all: the California Gold Rush and the world. Univ. of Nebraska Press. ISBN 0803286171.
• Roberts, Brian (2000). American alchemy: the California Gold Rush and middle-class culture. Univ. of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0807848565.
• Rohrbough, Malcolm J. (1998). Days of gold: the California Gold Rush and American nation. Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press. ISBN 0520216598.
• Watson, Matthew A. "The Argonauts of '49: Class, Gender, and Partnership in Bret Harte's West." Western American Literature 2005 40(1): 33-53. Issn: 0043-3462 Abstract: Discusses Bret Harte's notion of Western partnership in such California gold rush stories as "The Luck of Roaring Camp` (1868), "Tennessee's Partner" (1869), and "Miggles" (1869). While critics have long recognized Harte's interest in gender constructs, Harte's depictions of Western partnerships also explore "changing dynamics of economic relationships and gendered relationships through terms of contract, mutual support, and the bonds of labor."

External links

• California Gold Rush chronology
• Museum of the Siskiyou Trail
• Description by John Sutter of the Discovery of Gold
• Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park
• Columbia State Historic Park
• Impact of Gold Rush on California
• California Gold Rush timeline
• The Gold Rush: fun facts
• Gold Rush geology
• USGS circular on the geology of gold
• Weaverville State Historic Park
• Chinese name for California and Chinese miners in California
• San Francisco harbor Gold Rush archeology
• Gold Rush era ship wreck
• S.S. Central America information