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Monthly Archives: May 2011
Gambling in the Gold Rush
Mark Twain first heard the story of Jim Smiley and his jumping frog in the Angels Hotel. Smiley would bet on anything every time he could, and in Smiley Twain captured the passion that powered the California Gold Rush—the deeply … Continue reading
Posted in Gold rush entertainment
Tagged California gold rush, Faro, Gamble, Gambling, gold rush, Hangtown Creek, John Putnam, Monte, Poker
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How the early 49ers mined gold
The first miners needed only a shovel and a flat pan to find great quantities of gold along the rivers that flowed westward from the Sierra Nevada Mountains. But more gold could be processed using devices like a rocker, a … Continue reading
Posted in Gold discoveries
Tagged Amador, California gold rush, gold rush, monitor, rocker, Sierra Nevada, Sutter Creek
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The origin of California’s gold
Millions of years ago, underneath today’s California, molten hot magma containing a large amount of gold forced its way toward the surface through fissures in the hard quartz rock, cooling before it spewed out in a volcanic eruption. In some … Continue reading
Posted in Before the gold, Gold discoveries
Tagged California gold rush, Mining, Quartz, Shasta, Vein, Whitney
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San Francisco’s mother of civil rights
Mary Ellen Pleasant learned about business as a bonded servant to a Nantucket Quaker storekeeper. Later she worked with the Underground Railroad, often stealing slaves and smuggling them north. Then in 1850 she went to New Orleans where she became … Continue reading
Gold rush women, the soiled doves
Belle Ryan, a preacher’s daughter, provided the most beautiful girls to wealthy San Francisco gentlemen from her place on Dupont Street—Grant Street today. In 1855 while at the American Theater with her lover, the gambler Charles Cora, William Richardson, the … Continue reading
Two notable gold rush black men
James Beckwourth joined the Rocky Mountain Fur Company in 1826 and spent years as a trapper and mountain man. He lived with Crow Indians, took a Crow wife, and rose to be an important chief. In 1844 James was trading … Continue reading
Posted in Noted gold rush people
Tagged California gold rush, Donner Pass, gold rush, Mariposa, Marysville, Pyramid, Pyramid Lake, Sacramento
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Mark Twain in California
In 1861, with his brother Orion, Samuel Clemens set out for the west. They traveled by stagecoach across the prairie and the Rocky Mountains, visited Salt Lake City and then went on to the new silver mines around Virginia City, … Continue reading
The Chinese, Unwelcome in America
Guest post by Lloyd Lofthouse The first major wave of Chinese immigrants came to the US after the California gold rush of 1849. Then in 1882, The Chinese Exclusion Act formalized an ugly American prejudice. In fact, there are still … Continue reading
Posted in Noted gold rush people
Tagged California gold rush, Chinese, Chinese in America, gold rush
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Bret Harte in California
He was born Francis Brett Hart in Albany, New York on August 25, 1836. His father soon changed the spelling of the family name to Harte and the young Francis changed the spelling of his middle name, which he preferred, … Continue reading
