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Exploration of America: The Gold Rush

This guide contains information on McKee Library's collection of resources relating to the discovery of America, including recommended books for further reading, films, research, databases, reference works, and more.

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Perspectives

Rush for Riches

In this vivid account of the birth of modern California, J.S. Holliday frames the gold rush years within the larger story of the state's transformation from the quietude of a Mexican hinterland in the 1840s to the forefront of entrepreneurial capitalism by the 1890s. No other state, no nation experienced such an adolescence of freedom and success. By 1883 California was hailed as "America, only more so." Holliday's boldly interpretive narrative has the authority and immediacy of an eyewitness account. This eminent historian recreates the masculine world of mining camps and rough cities, where both business and pleasure were conducted far from hometown eyes and conventional inhibitions. He follows gold mining's swift evolution from treasure hunt to vast industry; traces the prodigal plunder of California's virgin rivers and abundant forests; and describes improvised feats of engineering, breathtaking in their scope and execution. Holliday also conjures the ambitious, often ruthless Californians whose rush for riches rapidly changed the state: the Silver Kings of the Comstock Lode, the timber barons of the Sierra forests, the Big Four who built the first transcontinental railroad, and the lesser profit-seekers who owned steamboats, pack mules, gambling dens and bordellos--and, most important for California's future, the farmers who prospered by feeding the rapidly growing population. This wildly laissez-faire economy created California's image as a risk-taking society, unconstrained by fear of failure. The central theme of Rush for Riches is how, after decades of careless freedom, the miners were finally reined in by the farmers, and how their once mutually dependent relationship soured into hostility. This potential violence led to a dramatic courtroom decision in 1884 that shut down the mighty hydraulic mining operations--the end of California's free-for-all youthful exuberance. Unique in its format, this beautiful book offers not only a compelling narrative but also almost two hundred fifty illustrations, one hundred in full color, that richly illuminate the themes and details of the text: daguerreotypes, photographs, paintings, lithographs, sketches, and specially drawn maps. Los Angeles Times Best Nonfiction Book of 2000

Freedom's Frontier

Most histories of the Civil War era portray the struggle over slavery as a conflict that exclusively pitted North against South, free labor against slave labor, and black against white. In Freedom's Frontier, Stacey L. Smith examines the battle over slavery as it unfolded on the multiracial Pacific Coast. Despite its antislavery constitution, California was home to a dizzying array of bound and semibound labor systems: African American slavery, American Indian indenture, Latino and Chinese contract labor, and a brutal sex traffic in bound Indian and Chinese women. Using untapped legislative and court records, Smith reconstructs the lives of California's unfree workers and documents the political and legal struggles over their destiny as the nation moved through the Civil War, emancipation, and Reconstruction. Smith reveals that the state's anti-Chinese movement, forged in its struggle over unfree labor, reached eastward to transform federal Reconstruction policy and national race relations for decades to come. Throughout, she illuminates the startling ways in which the contest over slavery's fate included a western struggle that encompassed diverse labor systems and workers not easily classified as free or slave, black or white.

Roaring Camp

Historical insight is the alchemy that transforms the familiar story of the Gold Rush into something sparkling and new. The world of the Gold Rush that comes down to us through fiction and film--of unshaven men named Stumpy and Kentuck raising hell and panning for gold--is one of half-truths. In this brilliant work of social history, Susan Johnson enters the well-worked diggings of Gold Rush history and strikes a rich lode. She finds a dynamic social world in which the conventions of identity--ethnic, national, and sexual--were reshaped in surprising ways. She gives us the all-male households of the diggings, the mines where the men worked, and the fandango houses where they played. With a keen eye for character and story, Johnson restores the particular social world that issued in the Gold Rush myths we still cherish.

Land of Golden Dreams

The Huntington Library holds the most important collection of Gold Rush materials in the United States. This book, a companion piece to the Huntington exhibit of the same title, brings the Gold Rush era to life through vivid anecdotes taken from actual journal entries, newspaper articles, and letters of the period. Lavishly illustrated and well-researched, Land of Golden Dreams is accessible to both historian and lay reader alike.

A Forty-Niner from Tennessee

When Hugh Brown Heiskell set out from Tennessee for the California gold fields in 1849, he was one of thousands traveling west in search of fortune. Hugh and his cousin Tyler joined a wagon train from St. Louis and made their way across a continent that most people of the time could only imagine. What distinguishes him from other Forty-niners, however, is the captivating record he kept of that journey. This young Knoxville lawyer had a farm boy's curiosity for new vistas and wildlife, and he described what we saw with keen perception and insight. This unique book includes not only Heiskell's journal but also numerous letters to family back home. Although many Forty-niners kept diaries, Heiskell wrote in great detail to provide a more complete sense of life on the trail and the difficulties of the journey. Averaging just sixteen miles each day, his party faced challenges such as the three-day crossing of the Forty-mile Desert where they lost more than half of their oxen and wagons. Heiskell's accounts of camp life, of people encountered along the way, and of the treacherous crossing of the mountains through Carson Pass are all richly compelling. Of special interest are Heiskell's observations about Native Americans, their customs, their clothing, and their shelters. And, finally, readers will be deeply moved by the fate of the adventurers once they reached their destination. Edward M. Steel has integrated other sources with Heiskell's story to provide a broader overview of the gold rush days. His prologue introduces readers to young Heiskell's background, explains how wagon trains operated, and describes the country that the Forty-niners crossed. His careful annotations, meanwhile, shed light on specific points in the diary. Heiskell's trek was made at an important point in the history of western expansion, and his diary complements other classic accounts of that experience--notably that of Sarah Bayliss Royce, whose wagon train was encountered by Heiskell's along the way. Heiskell's diary and letters form a valuable document that will prove to be a rich resource for historians. But A Forty-niner from Tennessee is also a compelling story of adventure that invites any reader interested in this era to relive those dangerous but exciting times. The Editor:  Edward M. Steel is professor of history, emeritus, at West Virginia University. Among his other works in American history are The Speeches and Writings of Mother Jones.

Bret Harte: Prince and Pauper

A biography that charts the boom and bust of America's first celebrity author, once Mark Twain's chief rival in American literature In this first scholarly biography of Bret Harte in nearly seventy years, Axel Nissen sets out to reevaluate the life and literary career of the legendary chronicler of the California gold rush. After his sensational breakthrough in the late 1860s, Harte came to symbolize the self-made literary man. He was a Midas of the pen and a literary prince of the Gilded Age. With "The Luck of Roaring Camp," "Tennessee's Partner," and "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" he reinvented the American short story and laid the foundations for the Western. In the age of mass-circulation newspapers he became America's first worldwide celebrity author. His stories were reprinted all over the globe, and his sayings and doings were reported in the press. His handsome face adorned newspaper columns, and his image was sold as an over-the-counter souvenir. Based on extensive new sources, Nissen's biography gives a vivid account of Harte's tumultuous life from his birth in Albany, N.Y., in 1836 until his death in a sleepy English village in 1902. Exploring mysterious and previously unresearched areas, Nissen shines a bright light into the many dark corners of the life of this enigmatic nineteenth-century icon. Harte was the best-paid author of his day, but financial insolvency forced him into exile in Europe as a diplomat. For twenty years he lived in London, where he was the darling of the English aristocracy but remained apart from his wife and children. Nissen focuses on Harte's love-hate relationship with Mark Twain and examines the homoerotic element in his life and work. He also offers a satisfying account of why Harte became so famous in his own time and why in ours he has suffered a decline. Harte aroused strong and conflicting feelings in those who knew him. William Dean Howells felt he was a blithe spirit who burned his candle at both ends. Mark Twain thought him "the most contemptible, poor little soulless blatherskite that exists on the planet today." Henry Adams considered Harte one of the most brilliant men of his time. To a reviewer of an early biography he was a "fugitive from home." To the bigot aware of Harte's mixed ethnic heritage he was a "Hebrew." To the average dresser he was a fop. To the pious he was a purveyor of "moral filth." To the reader of this innovative biography Harte comes alive both as a fascinating figure and an author ripe for revival. Axel Nissen is an associate professor of American literature at the University of Oslo. In 1997 his doctoral thesis was awarded H.M. the King of Norway's Gold Medal.

Research & Reference