Roughing it in Gold Country


Book Description

"Roughing It in Gold Country" covers nearly sixty-five years of traveling from the southernmost boundaries of the Mother Lode to the north near the Yuba Gap. From the age of sixteen William S. Pierson built on a fascination for the bright yellow metal of the Mother Lode. It happened while he attended Sequoia High School during the Great Depression, while providing for himself by harvesting hay in Mountain City, Nevada, delivering groceries around Tahoe City, and working in a gold mine. He has explored for new treasures from the depths of many mine shafts from Death Valley to the Yuba Gap, from the highest in elevation, the Old Kentucky Mine, to the oldest continuously running gold mine in California, the Sixteen-to-One in Alleghany, California. Writing in a rich and prosaic style, the author describes the fascination for gold that bestows upon its seekers a lifelong desire for its possession.







The California Gold Country


Book Description

The saga of the early prospectors and all the others who made their mark during the Gold Rush. This historical visitor's guide includes recommended routes along Highway 49, dubbed the Mother Lode Highway, and many historical and full-color photos.




Exterminate Them


Book Description

Popular media depict miners as a rough-and-tumble lot who diligently worked the placers along scenic rushing rivers while living in roaring mining camps in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Trafzer and Hyer destroy this mythic image by offering a collection of original newspaper articles that describe in detail the murder, rape, and enslavement perpetrated by those who participated in the infamous gold rush. "It is a mercy to the Red Devils," wrote an editor of the Chico Courier, "to exterminate them." Newspaper accounts of the era depict both the barbarity and the nobility in human nature, but while some protested the inhumane treatment of Native Americans, they were not able to end the violence. Native Americans fought back, resisting the invasion, but they could not stop the tide of white miners and settlers. They became "strangers in a stolen land."




The Age of Gold


Book Description

From the two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, bestselling historian, and author of Our First Civil War—the epic story of the California Gold Rush, “a fine, robust telling of one of the greatest adventure stories in history" (David McCullough, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of John Adams). The California Gold Rush inspired a new American dream—the “dream of instant wealth, won by audacity and good luck.” The discovery of gold on the American River in 1848 triggered the most astonishing mass movement of peoples since the Crusades. It drew fortune-seekers from the ends of the earth, accelerated America’s imperial expansion, and exacerbated the tensions that exploded in the Civil War. H.W. Brands tells his epic story from multiple perspectives: of adventurers John and Jessie Fremont, entrepreneur Leland Stanford, and the wry observer Samuel Clemens—side by side with prospectors, soldiers, and scoundrels. He imparts a visceral sense of the distances they traveled, the suffering they endured, and the fortunes they made and lost. Impressive in its scholarship and overflowing with life, The Age of Gold is history in the grand traditions of Stephen Ambrose and David McCullough.




Roughing It by Mark Twain


Book Description

The celebrated author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn mixes fact and fiction in a rousing travelogue that serves as "a portrait of the artist as a young adventurer."* In 1861, young Mark Twain found himself adrift as a newcomer in the Wild West, working as a civil servant, silver prospector, mill worker, and finally a reporter and traveling lecturer. Roughing It is the hilarious record of those early years traveling from Nevada to California to Hawaii, as Twain tried his luck at anything and everything--and usually failed. Twain's encounters with tarantulas and donkeys, vigilantes and volcanoes, even Brigham Young, the Mormon leader, come to life with his inimitable mixture of reporting, social satire, and rollicking tall tales.




The World Rushed In


Book Description

When The World Rushed In was first published in 1981, the Washington Post predicted, “It seems unlikely that anyone will write a more comprehensive book about the Gold Rush.” Twenty years later, no one has emerged to contradict that judgment, and the book has gained recognition as a classic. As the San Francisco Examiner noted, “It is not often that a work of history can be said to supplant every book on the same subject that has gone before it.” Through the diary and letters of William Swain--augmented by interpolations from more than five hundred other gold seekers and by letters sent to Swain from his wife and brother back home--the complete cycle of the gold rush is recreated: the overland migration of over thirty thousand men, the struggle to “strike it rich” in the mining camps of the Sierra Nevadas, and the return home through the jungles of the Isthmus of Panama. In a new preface, the author reappraises our continuing fascination with the “gold rush experience” as a defining epoch in western--indeed, American--history.




Three Years in California [1846-1849]


Book Description

Walter Colton (1797-1851) of Vermont had a career as clergyman and journalist before sailing to California as naval chaplain of the Congress. In July 1846, Commodore Stockton named him alcalde of Monterey, a post to which he was elected a few months later. He remained in California until 1849, using his time to found the state's first newspaper and building its first schoolhouse. Three years in California (1850) contains Colton's memoirs of that period, including descriptions of the U.S. military occupation of California, social life and customs of Monterey, discovery of gold and firsthand impressions of the Sonora mining camp in the Southern Mines, visits to Stockton and San José, John Charles Frémont, the Constitutional Convention of 1849, and California missions.




Roughing It


Book Description

o Includes all 304 first-edition illustrations by True Williams, Edward F. Mullen, and others o Provides the first and only text that adheres to the author's wishes in details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, restored from original sources. o Features expert annotation, specially prepared maps, facsimile manuscript pages, and other supplementary documents o Reproduces the text and notes of the Mark Twain Project's 1993 edition, winner of the Modern Language Association Prize for a "Distinguished Scholarly Edition" Mark Twain's humorous account of his six years in Nevada, San Francisco, and the Sandwich Islands is a patchwork of personal anecdotes and tall tales, many of them told in the "vigorous new vernacular" of the West. Selling seventy five thousand copies within a year of its publication in 1872, Roughing It was greeted as a work of "wild, preposterous invention and sublime exaggeration" whose satiric humor made "pretension and false dignity ridiculous." Meticulously restored from a variety of original sources, the text is the first to adhere to the author's wishes in thousands of details of wording, spelling, and punctuation, and includes all of the 304 first-edition illustrations. With its comprehensive and illuminating notes and supplementary materials, which include detailed maps tracing Mark Twain's western travels, this Mark Twain Library Roughing It must be considered the standard edition for readers and students of Mark Twain.




Moon Sacramento & the Gold Country


Book Description

Sacramento resident and Gold Country native Christopher Arns shares tips on how to best enjoy the sights (and some of the best weather in the country). Using his extensive knowledge of the area, Arns provides original trip ideas to help visitors make the most of their time, including Sacramento on Wheels, Wine Country Road Trip, and Gold Country Adventure. From a visit to Apple Hill or an afternoon at Fairytale Town to dirt biking and kayaking through breathtaking scenery, Moon Sacramento & the Gold Country gives travelers the tools they need to create a more personal and memorable experience.