Jackpot in the ground. Some of the coins found in 2013. |
Discussing
the Gold Rush was always fun; and if nothing else, I always thought history was best when history was interesting. (That lesson often seems to have escaped the publishers of textbooks.)
In my class, I found students rarely knew what year gold was discovered in California, why the San Francisco 49ers of the NFL were named the “49ers,” or why their colors were red and…gold.
In my class, I found students rarely knew what year gold was discovered in California, why the San Francisco 49ers of the NFL were named the “49ers,” or why their colors were red and…gold.
Once we began our discussion, students often asked why the first discoverers didn’t keep their secret. I always told them “think like yourselves.” Who might you want to
tell? And would you want to brag or would you have trouble keeping a secret?
Most students also seemed unclear about what the term “prospector” meant. I
used to make fun of myself (I had one date during high school—and that was when
a friend’s sister asked me to a dance; I couldn’t dance worth a darn, either).
I would pick some young man, and put the idea to him: You are going to ask out
your dream girl. What are the “prospects” or chances she says yes.
We also talked about “prospects” in the NBA draft.
There are all kinds of good examples to use to stir student interest. One
story I used every year (and can’t find right now) involved a rush in
the Amazonian jungles of Brazil, touched off in 1985. The first “find”
was accidental, when loggers scouting for promising sites came upon an uprotted
forest giant. In the roots they found several gold nuggets. A mad
rush followed. In one case, miners uncovered a “nugget” the size
of a briefcase. I always reached behind my desk and thumped down my briefcase
to make a point.
I retired from teaching in 2008; but my memory is that the “nugget” was worth $1.4 million. I do remember that the miners broke it up, fearing it would end in a museum and they’d
be cheated somehow. But (see below), it would have had to weigh almost a
thousand pounds to be worth that much.
Gold,
of course, is much denser than almost any other element. A gold bar the size of
a brick would weigh fifty pounds. As of today, as I type this up
(11/8/18), gold is selling for $1,228 an ounce.
A
pound of gold (there are only 12 Troy ounces per pound) would then be worth
$14,736.
Other
terms and details I thought students should know: the terms vigilante, lynching
and stake a claim, pan out. (The term “stake a claim” comes from the habit of
miners driving markers at the four corners of their claims to indicate property
had already been taken.) The prejudice directed at non-white miners also seemed
important to discuss. The Chinese, for example, were not allowed to own land,
vote, serve on juries or testify against whites.
One
immigrant who “struck it rich,” was Levi Strauss, who left Bavaria in 1848 and
arrived in San Francisco in 1853. Strauss was soon selling heavy duty work pants
to miners, using rivets at points of strain to make them more durable. In 1873
he patented these pants, today known as jeans.
*
Finding
gold in 1849 was not unlike winning the lottery now. One couple that “struck it
rich” deserves special mention. In 2013 a
California couple walking
their dog noticed a can buried near a tree in their backyard. Inside, they found
1,427 gold coins, dating from 1847-1894. In May 2014 they began auctioning them
off, the first coin going for $15,000.
The
total estimated value: $11 million.
*
If you are not familiar with the
story of the S.S. Central America, my
students were always intrigued.
The book Ship of Gold in the Deep Blue Sea chronicles the story in great and
often exciting detail.
Loaded with gold minted in San
Francisco, the vessel was sailing for New York in 1857 when caught in a violent
Atlantic storm. The Central America
soon went down, taking three tons (or perhaps fifteen
tons, sources differing) of gold and 425 passengers and crew with her. For the next 125 years no one gave
much thought to finding the wreckage. A man named Tommy G. Thompson, who had
studied engineering and robotics at Ohio State, began studying old records.
Eventually, he and a company he had founded with 160 other investors discovered
the wreck in 7,000 feet of water (some sources say 8,000).
A great deal of detective
work and searching of possible wreck sites were involved; one summer was
spent on a site of another vessel, sunk around the same time, which fit the
proper profile. Eventually robot cameras located the right wreck. Thompson and
others first looked at a series of pictures snapped by the robot. Thompson
described what they saw now:
“It was just…it was just…covered with gold!
I couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it! That was the most thrilling….We
had hit right on a pile, nice low pictures, nice and clear. I mean everything
was perfect, man. It was incredible! But I looked at it, and I looked up, and,
Naaaah, this can’t be. I thought, That’s gotta be a bunch of brass laying
there. So I looked again! Holy! And I just started looking at the other shots,
and I…mean…it…was…PILES! I’m not kidding you, it is awesome! It is absolutely
awesome! Stacks of coins and bars of gold of every size and shape just sitting
there!” (Ship of Gold, p. 450)
Some of the coins were still in neat sacks, the bags they were
contained in having long since rotted away.
In another scene from the book a
robot camera is filming the ocean bottom. The submersible approached a beam
sticking up. Nearby, a hundred gold coins, washed by some current glinted in
the searchlight. Other hints of bars and coins showed under a layer of
sediment. An operator above pointed the forward thruster downward and shot out
a gentle wash of water to blow away the covering.
The
sediment was thin, but when the wake of the thruster hit, it exploded upward,
swirling into clouds, blotting out the rotted timbers, turning the monitors
white. For several minutes the techs could see nothing but the roiling
sediment. Then the clouds began to drift with the light current; the picture on
the monitorys began to clear and slowly revealed a scene few people could
imagine.
“The bottom was carpeted with gold,” Tommy
said. “Gold everywhere, like a garden. The more you looked, the more you saw gold
growing out of everything, embedded in all the wood and beams. It was amazing,
clear back in the far distance bars stacked on the bottom like brownies, bars
stacked like loaves of bread, bars that appear to have slid into the corner of
the room. Some of the bars formed a bridge, all gold bars spanning one area of
treasure over here and another over here, water underneath, and the decks
collapsed through on both sides.Then there was a beam with coins stacked on it,
just covered, couldn’t see the top of the beam it had so many coins on it.” (p.
452)
Author Gary Kinder describes what the recovery team saw that
day:
So many bricks lay tumbled upon one another
at myriad angles that the thrity-foot pile appeared to be the remnants of an
old building just demolished. Except these were bricks of gold: bricks flat,
bricks stacked, bricks upright, bricks cocked on top of other bricks. And coins
single, coins stacked, coins once in stacks now collapsed into spreading piles,
some coins mottled in the ferrous oxide orange and brown from the rusting
engines, others with their original mint luster. Besides a tiny squat lobster
carefully picking its way across piles of coins, the scene lay perfectly still.
One team member laughed, “Look at theose damn fire bricks.” A pink-orange
anemone drifted softly through the scene. “Stiking up out of another area was a
coin tower,” Kinder writes, “eight stacks of gold coins, twenty-five coins to a
stack, all of the stacks abutting one another like poker chips still in the
rack, the whole thing frozen together and angled upward at sixty degrees.” The
camera on the underwater vehicle could swivel; and now they saw “a mound of
gold dust frozen ten inches high, dotted with nuggets, and capped by two small
gold bars.” (p. 453)
The camera
swung again, briefly passing a coin standing straight up. Tommy had caught the
date. The camera was swung back.
Everyone laughed as Moore tapped the camera
back again. There stood a coin upright, face front, just as pure and lustrous
as the day it left the San Francisco Mint. It was emblazoned with the bust of
Lady Liberty, lovely in profile, her hair crossed with a tiara and cascading in
ringlets down her neck, thirteen stars surrounding her, and her ringlets
stopping just short of the date “1857.” In a pocket thirty feet across, the
ocean floor lay covered with these coins.
Doering [another member of the recovery
team] figured he had now seen more gold coins in one place at one time than any
other treasure hunter in history, and that included Cortes and Pizarro. He was
ready to pluck some of that gold from the ocean floor, drop it into the
artifact drawer, and bring it to the surface, so he could feel it right there
in the palm of his hand. 9p. 455)
New technologies had to be developed
to bring the coins up, unscratched, making them many times more valuable. (It
was soon decided to lower a long, wide hose down to the site, coat the coins in
silicon, pick them up and drop them in a drawer on the robot vehicle, the pull
them out at the surface, unmarred.) There were gold bars fifteen times larger
than anything then known to exist. The estimated value of the haul was $400
million; but there were multiple court challenges ahead—including one from an
insurance company that had paid off the losses back in 1857.
In the end, Thompson prevailed, and
the treasure was declared to be his; but he later ran off and left investors
with the same amount of gold they started with, which would be none. Thompson sold
his share of the gold, including 532 gold bars and a trove of coins, for
$50 million. A lengthy manhunt ended with his arrest in 2015; but when last I
checked he was still in jail and refused to reveal what had become of all the
treasure. At least some of it had probably gone into a trust fund for his
children.
Some of the gold from the wreck. |
Coins and bars thousands of feet below the surface. |
Gold bars cleaned up for display: each is worth tens of thousands (or more). |
*
The journals of
Alfred Doten, who left Plymouth, Massachusetts and sailed for California in
1849 also look promising as a source. I till check them out further soon.
*
My students
also liked the story of Bodie, California, a town founded in 1859 after another
gold find. William Bodey, who found the first gold, later died in a blizzard.
During its heyday, 1877-79, the town had a population of 11,000. The town
reportedly had a murder per day, on average; and it was said the teacher went
to school heavily armed.
Various
criminals came to no good end. Buffalo Bill Gross was stealing firewood; one
victim tired of his losses, cut out part of a log, filled it with gunpowder,
and sealed it up. Bill stole his firewood again and soon blew himself up. Two
other men were digging up new graves ans stealing the caskets. A stage was
robbed, and $30,000 in gold taken, but the robbers were caught, and the gold
never found. At least one criminal escaped from a flimsy jail, by pushing a
piano through the wall. As was often the case, prejudice against the Chinese
was rampant. They were buried separately from the whites. A fire swept the town
in 1892, doing significant damage and speeding the downhill slide.
The town, on
the border of Nevada and California is at 8,379 feet above sea level, sitting
in an almost treeless valley. Temperatures can drop to 30 or 40 degrees below
zero. There can be eight or ten feet of snow blanketing the town during the
winter. And when the gold ran out, the people soon began to trickle away. About
$95 million was taken from the mines (not sure of what point that figure was
computed). By the 1930s it was a ghost town, now a State of California
historical site.
Bodie, California: Present population: 0. |
My students liked writing ghost stories about Bodie. |
Pool table left behind when the last inhabitants left. |
Abandoned buildings, Bodie. |
*
Notes from the following story, Ralph K. Andrist in “Gold!” (American Heritage), may be of use to teachers. In the summer of 1847, John Sutter, a large land owner in California sent a carpenter, James Marshall, up the American River to build a sawmill. Months later, Marshall made his famous discovery:
January 24, 1848: Marshall lets the water run
all night, to clean debris from the millrace in preparation for putting the sawmill into operation; and on this morning he spots yellow specks in the
millrace. The men Sutther has hired continue to work, panning for gold only on
Sundays, until the mill is finished in March. The first nugget, found by
Marshall was about the size of a dime. The people of San Francisco, then a town
of about 900, did not much believe early reports of gold.
A group of Mormons began
digging about 25 miles from the sawmill, what became known as Mormon Diggings.
Sam Brannan, a store owner with a
place in Sutterville, near Sutter’s Fort, headed for San Francisco in May; with
him he brought a vial of gold dust; it is said he walked the streets shouting,
“Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” and waving his vial. This sparked
the first, local rush. Within two days boats were leaving San Francisco and headed for the
diggings. There they found Brannan’s store stocked with supplies and equipment
needed to go prospecting. By June it is estimated only 100 people remained in San Francisco. According to the alcalade, workers constructing a school house in Monterey,
California, heard the news, “threw down their saws and planes, shouldered their
picks, and are off for the Yuba. Three seamen ran off from the Warren,
forfeiting their four years’ pay; and a whole platoon of soldiers left their
colors behind.” The stories continued to get better and better; there were said
to be streams “paved with gold.” The mines, said one authority, exceeded “all
the dreams of romance and all the golden marvels of the wand of Midas.”
A miner later wrote his wife, “I do
not like to be apacking a thousand dollars about in my coat pockets for it has
toar my pockets and puld the Coat to pieces.”
On December 5, President Polk, in his
annual message, gave official blessing to the accounts. There were reports of
rich veins as “would scarcely command belief.”
Sutter ended up with “his cattle
butchered, his fields trampled and untended, his land taken by squatters, until
he had not a thing left.”
After Polk’s announcement, the rush
was on. The Argonauts, as they were called (after Jason and the golden fleece)
had two water routes; almost all available ships were taken over; the New
England whaling fleet was suddenly transporting passengers. As fast as vessels
reached SF, their crews deserted and headed for the gold fields, leaving the
harbor a forest of masts. Those going by the shorter route, across Panama, died
by the undreds from malaria, cholera and unsanitary conditions. Hiram Pierce, a
New York blacksmith, left a wife and seven children behind. He wrote home about
“swineish” behavior by the passengers and a ship’s doctor almost always drunk.
One night the doctor became tangled in his hammock and was hanging upside down
until morning. Another time, “the same worthy took a dose of medicine to a
patient & haveing a bone in his hand knowing, he took the medicine &
gave the bone to the patient.”
Others crossed by land in the spring.
Spring found one man ready to jump off for the trip West, armed with a rifle
and accompanied only by his bulldog. He was planning to walk to California—and
had already walked all the way from Maine. Another man planned to push a
wheelbarrow to the fields. Cholera, brought from Europe to New Orleans in 1848,
now spread up the river and was carried across the plains by the wagon trains.
In parts of Utah and Nevada the water and grass were bitter with sulpher,
alkalai and salt, even poisonous. One barren stretch had to be crossed in one
jump, usually lasting 24 hours; at Boiling Springs, halfway, water could be
poured into troughs and allowed to cool, and then proved drinkable, albeit
unappetizing. Animals, already worn from the trail, gave out during this
stretch, what one writer calls “the Forty-Mile Desert.” A traveler wrote, “The
forty-five mile stretch is now almost impassable because of the stench of the
dead animals along the road which is literally lined with them and ther is
scarcely a single train or wagon but leaves one or more dead animal, so that it
must be getting worse every day.”
One traveler described traveling down
the Humboldt
“and
crossing the desert for more than one hundred miles before reaching the
Sink…There is no grass of any consequence, the water is slippery stuff
resembling weak lye as much as anything: from the Sink to Carson River is a
distance of forty miles, the last twelve deep sand.”
Estimates put the number of travelers
who came over the trails in 1849 at around 35,000. Another 15,000 came round
the Horn, 6,000 across Panama. Numbers ran just as high for the next three or
four years; but the fever ran hottest in ’49. (Andrist estimates that tens of
thousands of travelers died by the end of the 1850s)
Andrist describes the hard work
involved:
For
mining involved more than swishing a little gravel and water around in a basin;
it was hard, back-straining work. Placer gold, the only kind really known
during the gold rush, consists of gold dust and occasional nuggets scattered
thinly through sand and gravel (a miner never called it anything but “dirt”).
To obtain the gold, it was necessary to wash a great deal of dirt, taking
advantage of the fact that gold is about eight times as heavy as sand and will
settle to the bottom while the sand is being carried oft by the water. The gold
pan, traditional symbol of the miner, was used only in very rich claims or for
testing samples of dirt to see whether they were worth working further. In
ordinary circumstances, a hopperlike device of wood and perforated sheet iron
called a cradle, or rocker, was employed in a two-man operation: while one
shoveled in the dirt, the other rocked the device and poured water with a
dipper. The dirt was washed through, and the gold was caught in settling
pockets.
After
1849, an invention called the long tom was used wherever there was a good
supply of running water. It was simply a wooden flume with water running
through it; dirt was shoveled in and sluiced through while the gold caught on a
slatted bottom. A long torn was worked by several men and could handle four or
five times as much dirt per man per day as could a cradle. That meant, of
course, that a miner had to shovel four or five times as much dirt into it as
he would into a cradle to keep it operating at full efficiency. A man usually
had to pay for what he got, even in the gold fields.
The
terrain on which the prospectors worked did little to make things easier for
them; it was usually difficult. The diggings were chiefly along the tributaries
of the Sacramento and San Joaquin rivers, which flowed out of the Sierra
Nevada; each river, fork, branch, and creek was eventually followed by
prospectors to its source. In the lower foothills the land might be only
moderately rocky and hilly at best; near the headwaters rushing streams flowed
in the clefts of deep, precipitous gorges whose bottoms were often cluttered
with boulders and fallen rocks and choked with jackstraw tangles of dead trees.
Even under these conditions, miners persevered at the ever-absorbing task of
separating a small amount of gold from a mountain of gravel, and with amazing
energy and ingenuity constructed hydraulic works to enable them to move the
stream here or there or otherwise exploit it in their search for wealth.
One miner writes home that there are
stories of men taking in as much as $16,000 in one day, but such strikes are “once chance out of a thousand; the
average is from ½ to 2 ounces per day….I shall stay up to the mines all winter,
if I can make an ounce a day.”
In August, a miner wrote home, saying
that agriculture in N. California was “all at an end” and provisions had to be
brought from lands far away. Prices naturally skyrocketed:
“I
will just give you a summary; Salt Pork here [in San Francisco] 75 cents per
lb. at the mines $200 per Barrel. Flour $2.00 per lb. Bread at the mines one to
one half dollars per lb. Sugar at the mines $2.00 per lb. tea $4.00. Revolving
pistols woth in N. York $11.00 are here worth $55-75 dol. each. Onions 25-50
cents each. Potatoes about $30 per bushel. A ship load of the latter would
bring two hundred thousand dollars.”
Another miner described his comrades
as “the hairiest set of fellows that ever existed.”
Not only did most miners not “strike
it rich,” the gold fields could be a dangerous place. A former school teacher
wrote home in March 1852, “Seventeen dead bodies wee found on one road alone
within the last four months and no clue to the perpetrators of this wholesale
slaughter has as yet been discovered. California is yet sadly wanting in an
effective judicial and constabulary organization.”
As late as 1853, a missionary spoke
of the richness of California, but warned, “You can form no adequate idea of
the depth of sin and moral degredation to which most of the people are sunk or
rather sink themselves…There are a few however, who have not bowed the knee to
Baal.”
Still: There were stories of men
digging out gold flakes from between rocks with nothing but spoons. Near
Auburn, four cart loads of dirt yielded one lucky miner/s (??) $16,000 in gold;
and in the first days of the rush, Andrist writes, “it was not at all unusual
for a man to dig $1,000 to $1,500 worth of gold between dawn and dusk.” A man
near Angel’s Camp was hunting for rabbits. He jammed his ramrod down into the
roots of a manzanita bush, and turned up a piece of gold-bearing quartz. That
day, using his ramrod alone, he made $700. The next day, with better
implements, he made $2,000. His third day of digging yielded $7,000. Three
Germans, taking a shortcut home, struck it rich on the Feather River, taking
out $36,000 in four days, without even having to wash gravel, and what became
known as Rich Bar was soon swarming with other miners. Claims here were so rich
it was agreed they would be limited to 10 feet square. Single panfuls of dirt
were turning up $1,000 to $1,500. A company of four men made $50,000 in a
single day. By 1852, however, the rush was nearly ended, most of the great
spots having been discovered.
One miner wrote home in March 1852,
“Jane
i left you and them boys for no other reasons than this to come here to procure
a littl property by the swet of my brow so that we could have a place of our
own that i mite not be a dog for other people any longer…i think that this is a
far better country to lay up money than it is at home. if a man will…tend to
his business and keep out of licker shops and gambling houses. that is the way
the money goes with many of them in this country. thare are murders committed
about every day on the acount of licker and gambling but i have not bought a
glass of licker since i left home…i never knew what it was to leave home till i
left a wife and children…i know you feel lonsom when nigh apears but let us
think that it is for the best so to be for and do the best we can for two years
or so and i hope Jane that we shell be reworded for so doing and meet in a
famely sircal once more. that is my prayer.”
Sorry this is blurry; it's from an old slide turned into a picture. A stone pile at almost dead center shows where the sawmill used to be. |
*
Here’s
a short reading I provided for students, if you can use it.
James Marshall
had been born in New Jersey. He came to California after first trying his hand
at farming in Missouri. There he grew sich with fever carried by mosquitoes and
headed for healthier climates. He never made much money from his discovery.
Eventually, the State of California granted him a small pension.
Marshall
never married and died in 1885.
Henry
Bigler worked at Sutter’s Mill where gold was first discovered. Afterwards he
used to tell friends he was going “duck hunting” and look for gold on his own.
On February 22, 1849, three miles down the American River, he found an ounce-and-a-half
(worth the equivalent of $1,842 today)
“Gold fever” was always hard to resist.
In spring 1849 a prospector visiting
friends in San Francisco told all who would
listen that he had taken twenty ounces of gold out of his claim in eight
days of digging. Another fellow who caught the fever remembered his excitement:
“Piles of gold rose up before me at every step!” He saw himself in a great
marble mansion, with slaves to wait upon him and beautiful young women
competing for his love.
The
news of rich gold strikes soon swept San Francisco and the nearly deserted
streets appeared “as if an epidemic had swept the little town.” Doctors forgot
their patients and headed for the gold fields. Patients followed if they were
healthy enough. The town council canceled its next meeting and “headed for the
hills.” Sailors abandoned ships in the harbor. Even captains left their vessels
to rot. U.S. soldiers deserted, too, and officers sent to find them never
returned to their posts. (Army records indicate that 716 officers and men out
of 1,290 soon disappeared.) Farmers left crops in the fields and cows roamed
free, eating what they pleased. Ministers, students, unhappy husbands and happy
ones, a few good women, and others not so good, gamblers, and criminals of
every kind left for the mines to dig for gold or carry on their trades.
Abandoned ships fill San Francisco Bay. |
No
wonder they were crazy with gold fever. A claim on Feather River yielded 273
pounds of gold in seven weeks. A boy named Davenport took 77 ounces from his
claim one day ($94,556) and 90 the next ($110,520. It was said a cook in one of
the mining camps cut open a chicken and found a half-ounce nugget the bird had
pecked at and swallowed. One prospector dug down and hit a rich pocket of gold
dust and nugges, enough to fill a towel. He decided he had probably taken all
he could from his claim and “sold out” to a fellow named Lorenzo Soto. Soto
took out 52 pounds of gold from the same claim in eight days.
Chino
Tirador took so much gold out of his claim that he could barely carry it. He
then began selling gold for two silver ollars an ounce—a very poor price
indeed, The next day, Tirador discovered that other men had been working his
claim at night. So he bought a bottle of whiskey and launched a career as a
professional gambler. According to one California history, “By ten o’clock that
night he was both penniless and drunk.”
Soon
the fever spread across the nation. On September 20, 1848, the Baltimore Sun and other papers “back East” began
reporting on the incredible gold discoveries. President James K. Polk soon announced
to Congress that rich deposits of gold had indeed been discovered in
California. Men and women were now frantic to reach California and fought to
gain places on ships heading in that direction. Others could hardly wait until
spring in 1849 to set off by wagon. Half the men in Oregon gave up whatever
they were doing and headed south to the diggings. Prospectors from as far away
as Chile, China and Great Britain joined the rush. Soon trails and oceans were
covered with dreamers headed for the Pacific shores.
A woman weeps as a loved one heads West, bound for California. |
Thousands
never made it. They died in storms at sea or from disease or attacks by Native
Americans along the trails. One three-year-old fell out of a wagon and under
the wheels and was crushed. Four others died on the trail when an oak tree
split in a storm and a great limb fell atop their tent.
As
always, luck shined on some and not on others.
In
those days, before television, movies and the internet allowed people to “see”
the world, the circus was a popular form of entertainment. The most amazing
experience of all was to buy a ticked and see an elephant. Now, people headed
for California told friends and relatives they were “going to see the elephant.”
In the
gold fields new towns sprang up overnight and grew rapidly. It is estimated
that 90% of the population of these towns was male. Drinking, gambling and
fighting filled the social calendar. Gamblers often got rich by cheating miners
at cards and other games of chance. One prostitute claimed she had earned
$50,000, equal to several million dollars today. Good women were rare. So one
groom charged other miners $5 simply to attend his wedding and see his young
bride. Theaters and dance halls sprang up in all the towns. A play which
included an actual female of good face and figure—or even not so good a face
and figure—was sure to sell a fortune in tickets. A female singer could expect
thunderous applause and a shower of presents after any concert.
Even
the town names tells us something about this strange new land. Some of the
best: Hangtown (where miners hanged three claim jumpers from a tree), Slapjack
(slang for “pancakes”), Whiskey, Hoodoo, Muletown, Chicken Thief Flat, You Bet,
Jacksass and Pinchemtight.
Prices
for food and equipment were always high. So most miners never really got rich.
Those who made only enough in the “diggings” to apy expenses called their work
“mining for beans.” One husband
returned home from his claim after several weeks. He was happy to have a few
ounces of gold. But while he was gone his wife had made more money just by
doing laundry for men in the camp.
Headed for the gold fields, filled with hope. |
Leaving the gold fields, flat busted. |
*
One of these days I’m going to
get around to writing up the Gold Rush in a more detailed story for students.
I have a reading almost ready
on the Silver Rush of 1859, in Nevada. And I do sell
materials at TpT, if you’re interested.
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