John Whistman started the first stage company in California in the fall of 1849. It ran over the old Spanish Mission Trail between San Francisco and San Jose. Using whatever wagons he could find and a motley collection of horses and mules his service was poor and almost stopped completely during the winter rains. He sold the stage line in the summer of 1850 to Warren Hall and Jared Crandall, experienced stage operators who immediately began to improve service. With regular departures, hardy … [Read more...]
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 rooted desire of man for quick, easy wealth. Starting from the first traveling grog shops at Sutter Creek to the bawdy pleasure palaces of San Francisco’s Barbary Coast alcohol, gambling and women with loose romantic affections were intrinsically interwoven. Miners often … [Read more...]
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, Nevada. Here Clemens first tried his hand at prospecting but soon wound up working for the Territorial Enterprise where he first used the pen name by which he is remembered to this day, Mark Twain. In 1864 he moved to San Francisco and met such writers as Bret Harte, … [Read more...]
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, to Bret. In 1849 his formal schooling ended at age 13 and by 1854 young Bret had arrived in California by steamship. He made his way to the Southern mines in 1855, just after most of the easy placer gold had been found and the gold rush was beginning to unwind. He wandered around … [Read more...]
Chinese in the Gold Rush
Of all the diverse peoples that poured into California after the discovery of gold, none stood out more than the Chinese. Radically different in dress, language and culture these new men were first welcomed because of their willingness to work hard for low wages at any task presented them. John McDougall, the 2nd Governor of California, described them as “one of the most worthy of our newly adopted citizens.” At the start of 1849 only 54 Chinese were in California. By 1852 there were nearly … [Read more...]
Books in the gold rush
Books in the gold rush were as rare as women were, and maybe more so. The miners valued any reading matter they could get. Books were passed from man to man and camp to camp and read and reread until the pages literally fell apart. Men would sit beside the fire in their cabins at night and read aloud. Others would gather around to listen. Aside from gambling and drinking there wasn’t much nightlife in the early gold country anyway and a good book was a prized possession that brought joy and … [Read more...]
Famous gold rush men, Armour, Studebaker, and Strauss
California, from the discovery of gold to statehood, remained wild, lawless and free. Opportunities abounded, a pure free market, unregulated and unrestrained. The class distinctions of the east coast evaporated. Women earned huge sums of money from simple domestic chores that would be impossible to make elsewhere. And for men with skill, vision, and talent there were no limits to what they could do. One such man, Philip Danford Armour, one of eight children from a farm in Stockbridge, … [Read more...]
Gold Rush 49ers, tragedy at Donner Pass
High in the Sierra Nevada Mountains the emigrants came upon the remains of several log cabins deep in a thick grove of fir trees to the left of the trail just east of Truckee Lake. Shreds of dresses and other clothes, scraps of iron, and many bones, broken to extract every edible taste of marrow, were strewn about. Tree stumps, felled to build the cabins, towered 12 feet above the ground, the depth of the snow pack when the trees had been cut. The 49ers noted the melancholy gloominess of a place … [Read more...]
Gold Rush 49ers, the Truckee River
After the Humboldt Sink the gold rush emigrants could head south along the trail the Mormons had pioneered in 1848 or they could continue west to the Truckee River and cross the Sierra at Donner Pass. Either way they had to cross the dreaded 40-mile Desert. This was the worst stretch of road yet faced, without grass or water for most of the way and blisteringly hot during the days, but there was a hot water spring about half way to the Truckee. They traveled at night and by morning came … [Read more...]
Gold Rush 49ers, the Bear River divide
Emigrants who expected Fort Bridger to be like Forts Laramie or Kearney were disappointed. “It’s built of poles and dabbed with mud; it is a shabby concern,” said one visitor. Built in 1843 by the famous frontiersman Jim Bridger to sell supplies to the wagon trains and trade with the Indians, the fort did offer much welcome fresh water, shade trees and grass along Black’s Fork of the Green River. Shoshone braves from a nearby village could be seen riding horses atop the nearby bluffs. But … [Read more...]
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