Milton Public Library

Gold rush stories, 49 tales of seekers, scoundrels, loss, and luck

eng

no index present

non fiction

Gold rush stories

electronic resource

dictionaries

49 tales of seekers, scoundrels, loss, and luck

From the author of Hellacious California!, deeply human stories of the California Gold Rush generation, full of brutality, tragedy, humor, and prosperity. In less than ten years, more than 300,000 people made the journey to California, some from as far away as Chile and China. Many of them were dreamers seeking a better life, like Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, who eventually became the first African American judge, and Eliza Farnham, an early feminist who founded California's first association to advocate for women's civil rights. Still others were eccentrics-perhaps none more so than San Francisco's self-styled king, Norton I, Emperor of the United States. As Gold Rush Stories relates the social tumult of the world rushing in, so too does it unearth the environmental consequences of the influx, including the destructive flood of yellow ooze (known as "slickens") produced by the widespread and relentless practice of hydraulic mining. In the hands of a native son of the Sierra, these stories and dozens more reveal the surprising and untold complexities of the Gold Rush

adult

49 tales of seekers, scoundrels, loss, and luckForty-nine tales of seekers, scoundrels, loss, and luck