When James Wilson Marshall's "eye was caught with the glimpse of something shining in the bottom of the ditch" at Coloma 158 years ago, he not only set off a worldwide rush to California but also touched off the greatest writing and artistic frenzy in our nation's history. Newspapers, guidebooks, maps, diaries, and letters all spread the word about a land where golden dreams could be realized. Artists through paintings and illustrations for books and newspapers gave visual meaning to this new El Dorado.

Having worked for 3 institutions that emphasize California history, I am convinced more than ever that the California Gold Rush stands as the most compelling event in our state's lustrous history. As one person noted from Missouri, suffering from a rabid case of gold fever, "All creation appeared to be in an uproar - nothing like had been seen since the Israelites left old Egypt." John Haskell Kemble, one of our greatest maritime historians noted: "There is no way of being sure, but the migration to California in 1849 and the early 1850s may have been recorded by more participants than any other mass movement in human history." And as Carl Wheat, the distinguished map historian of the Gold Rush and Transmississippi West, points out, that the Gold Rush in terms of printer's ink has seldom been matched.

And, for variety and appeal, this Visuvian event in our history cannot be beat. When I see the constant and never ending stream of new publications on the subject; the numbers of letters and diaries that continue to be discovered, I have no doubt that Jim Marshall's great find continues to live on with anyone who has the collector's bug or wants to relive those turbulent and rambunctious days of 49. Virtually every book and paper show I go to has Gold Rush books, letters, and pictures and the prices keep going up and up. Instead of gold nuggets we now have books and pictures about gold nuggets fetching the most astonishing prices on EBay and places like John Hardy's Gold Rush Book Fair in Grass Valley. It seems that there is indeed gold in them thar books.

Perhaps this should not be surprising as the Gold Rush was such an incredible pageant filled with so many human interest stories, enveloped with so much mythology, and recorded with so much amazing documentation, that it will forever seduce the collector, librarian, curator, and historian. I heard its siren call; resisted thinking the subject had been beaten to death, and then succumbed. I have no doubt that the Gold Rush has an attraction that will always be with us. Henry Bigler, one of those at Coloma on that fateful day in 1848 said, "I had gold badly on the brain." I think it is safe to say that many of us still seem to have gold badly on the brain.

The Gold Rush stands as California' and Nevada City's defining event and for this reason, cannot be ignored. The Gold Rush marked the beginnings of America's and the world's fascination with California. Its golden dreams became the American dream. It helped to reshape the world at a time when revolutions from China to Europe upset the status quo. It is interesting to remember that Marshall discovered gold the same year Karl Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto. California, with its gold, offered hope to the world and, in reaction, Marx wrote in 1849, "The dreams of gold had replaced the dreams of socialism." An English guidebook from the same year said that even if there is no gold in California gold go there anyway, your life will improve.

As J. S. Holliday loves to point out, the Gold Rush marked a brief era in our history when no one said no. The Forty-niners were away from their ministers, rabbis and priests, away from the watchful eyes of their mothers and wives, away from the stern stares of their fathers, away from government regulators, away from the hum drum life plowing fields, or shoveling coal or minding a shop. In short, there was no one to tell them "no, you can't do that." Furthermore, the discovery took place at a time when the government was helpless to control events. Even the soldiers and sailors deserted. The yellow nuggets were there for the grabbing.

This unparalleled freedom did have a down side that has been the emphasis of more recent studies. A place without rules and a throwaway society resulted in much violence especially for the native Californians and recklessness when it came to the environment. Get it while the getting is good was the only rule that applied.

But, how can you blame young, vigorous men from wanting to take a chance on Kaliforny when U. S. government reports appeared in the newspapers around the globe with words like these:

Gold is to be found in almost every locality, on the lands, on the mountains, in valleys, in rocks and streams, in rivers, gullies and holes, in fact almost everywhere, that the extent of the gold region may safely be estimated at not less than 500 miles by 150 and is capable of employing 200,000 individuals for centuries to come.

And came they did. This was at a time when a skilled worker earned $300 dollars a year and, as they were told, they could make that in a day in California.

As I worked on my Gold Rush book of eyewitness accounts I became more and more captivated by the words of the gold rushers. Their words became my pile of gold. Each time I read one of these journals or letters I had that same sense of discovery that Marshall did. Sometimes my heart would thump. I would say to myself, this is really good reading! Their words glittered! Many possessed exceptional powers of description, the ability to express complex philosophical thoughts, and the gift to record what they saw with drama, emotion, and, on occasion, with humor. For me their words became the irresistible magnet. Take, for example, how James H. Carson of old Tuleburg better known today as Stockton recalled his case of gold fever. Upon hearing of the discovery of gold in the foothills of the Sierra, Carson, then an army sergeant stationed at Monterey, deserted his post and wrote:

"A frenzy seized by soul: unbidden, my legs performed some entirely new movements of polka steps . . . Piles of gold rose before me at every step; castles of marble, dazzling the eye with their rich appliances; thousands of slaves bowing to my beck and call; myriads of fair virgins contending with each other for my love-were among the fancies of my fervid imagination. The Rothschilds, Girards, and Astors appeared to me but poor people.
One hour after I became thus affected, I was mounted on an old mule, armed with a wash hand basin, fire shovel, a piece of square iron pointed at one end, a blanket, a rifle, a few yards of jerked beef, and going at high pressure mule speed for the diggins."

[How can you resist words like that?] I also want to share with you the magic that seemed to surround hunting for gold during those heady early days. The touch of King Midas was very much in evidence and helped create a folklore and history that provided inspiration for authors for generations to come including Bret Harte with his The Luck of Roaring Camp, Mark Twain with his very first book, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County.

Major William Downie of Downieville fame, in his classic book, Hunting for Gold, wrote: "While we were camped on Jersey Flat, we caught a monster salmon, weighing nearly fourteen pounds. We boiled the fish in the camp kettle, and afterwards, when we examined the water, we found gold at the bottom of it."

Dolly Bates, who wrote one of the finest travel books about California, visited Downieville in the Northern Mines and provided the following description of the astonishing scene at a woman's boarding house:

One day, as she was sweeping her floor, which, by the way, was nothing but earth, she saw something glitter. Upon examination, it proved to be a lump of gold. She searched further, and found the earth was full of particles of gold. She immediately summoned her friend. They removed the table, benches, and stove. Upon the last-named utensil a dinner was in progress; but who would think of preparing a dinner even if it were near the dinner hours, should they find themselves in possession of such rich diggings . . . . That day they took from the kitchen floor, as she termed its, $500, most in lumps.

(Today that would have been worth over $8,000).

Elizabeth Gunn of Sonora tells us of the wonderful effect of rain. Writing to her mother on the day after Christmas in 1851, Elizabeth remarked that "You would be surprised to see men in rubber coats, with umbrellas, picking up the gold which is washed out of the earth by the rain. You probably have seen in the Herald the account of a man who, after a rain, stubbed his toe against a stone and found gold in the quartz worth $800." [This was better than hitting the lottery].

Our friend, James Carson, writing for the San Joaquin Republican in 1852, contributed further to the lore of the diggings. He tells the tale of a miner's funeral in 1848 officiated by a preacher who had drunk rather too generously to the soul of the departed.

Carson reported that the parson had been praying some ten minutes, when some of those mourners kneeling around the grave commenced examining the dirt that had been dug up, and found it to be (as they expressed it) "Lousy with gold." This discovery, not surprisingly, created much excitement. The tipsy preacher tentatively opened one eye and exclaimed: "Boy, what's that? Gold, by God, and the richest kind o' diggins. The congregation are dismissed.' And away he scud' for his pan.

Suffice it to say that poor George [B--- ] was not buried there, but taken from his rich hole, and a grave made for him high up the mountain's side."
Some amazing products were sold to gullible Argonauts. Take, for example, "California Gold Grease," which sold for $10.00 a tin. Once you located a likely hill of gold, you striped naked, rubbed the gold grease over your body, and then rolled down the hill, and only the gold would stick to your body. It reminds me of that earlier tale of the gilded man named El Dorado.

Despite the electricity of their words and the amazing luck associated with these discoveries, what I admire most about the Argonauts is that they kept diaries and wrote letters under incredibly difficult physical circumstances. There were no cell phones, text messaging services, or emails. H. M. T. Powell, the author of that great book called The Santa Fe Trail, provides us with a wonderful word picture with his diary entry for April 15, 1851, "Hands, blistered, arms and ankles skinned, and sore all over; back almost broke. Very hot at work. In a perfect bath of perspiration all the time and at the same time my feet were cold from standing in the water." And yet he still had the energy to make a diary entry with that blistered hand and skinned arm probably by the light of a camp fire.

You can visualize him when he scrawled into his diary on April 23, 1851: "Peck, peck, dig, dig, shovel, shovel all day! . . .I [am] almost dead with fatigue and still we are not down to the Gold earth." A week later, on April 30th, an exhausted Powell made this entry: "Have determined to abandon mining. I find I cannot stand it. I ache in ever fiber of my frame."

It is our good fortune that the Gold Rush took place when many people did keep journals and wrote detailed letters. Because this was such a remarkable affair, the journal keepers made sure their leather-bound books survived; and back home, the recipients of letters from the gold fields prized them as a bridge across thousands of miles. Families and friends read and reread these letters. When the mail arrived in the gold camps, every miner anxiously hoped a letter from a spouse or parent awaited them. Homesick and tired, these letters gave them strength and comfort. A short time ago, we received as a donation an 1851 letter from a Henry Sterling Bloom from Downieville in reply to his wife's letter. With this letter was a small sheet of paper bordered in silk that contained three braids of hair of his children, and each was identified (Edith, Hilda and Gray). Obviously touched, Bloom wrote, "I thank you for those braids of hair and oh! How vividly it called to my heart my lovely wife and children AND, may heaven bless you."

Another miner was so homesick that he paid money to see a woman holding a baby. Bret Harte in his immortal story The Luck of Roaring Camp, wrote movingly how the presence of an orphaned baby made rough men take baths, boil their shirts, and watch their language.

Bayard Taylor, a journalist and author of the best known Gold Rush book, Eldorado or Adventures in the Path of Empire, gave us a memorable account of the importance of mail from home. Writing in 1849, Taylor noted the anxiety created when steamers arrived in San Francisco without bringing mail and that locals became so anxious that they planned a riot or as he politely put it: an "indignation meeting" at Portsmouth Square. "Finally, on the last day of October, the Panama came in, bringing the mails for July, August, and September all at once! Thirty-seven mail-bags were hauled up to the little Post Office that night, and the eight clerks were astounded by the receipt of forty-five thousand letters."

Californians eager to learn of national and hometown news prized newspapers imported from the states and Europe almost as much as letters. Bayard Taylor tells us about a man who had just arrived in San Francisco from New York with a load of 1,500 newspapers and sold them all for a dollar a piece within two hours. Taylor, seeing this, went back to his valise and sold his newspapers at "a gain of just four thousand per cent!"

The topic of the lack of women and their civilizing effect, however, was a frequent topic of concern. Perhaps the most bizarre account of making-due appears in John M. Letts' California Illustrated: "At a certain point in the mineral regions, part of a lady's hat was discovered, which caused so much excitement and joy, that it was immediately decided to have a ball in honor of the event. "In the exact spot was driven a stick, five feet high, on the top of which was placed the hat, and around it was wrapped a flannel blanket. It was made to represent as nearly as possible a female form. The miners then passed out invitations and over 300 celebrants appeared, each with a bottle of brandy." Inspired by a simple female hat, the ball lasted two days, at the end of which time the ground was surveyed into town-lots, and called Auburn.

Luzena Stanley Wilson, in her beautiful recollection, described a ball right here in Nevada City where there were twelve ladies and about three hundred men. To cope with the shortage of the fair sex, "a number of the men tied handkerchiefs around their arms and airily assumed the character of ball-room belles." She happlily reported, "Every lady was overwhelmed with attention."

Perhaps it is no accident that the most famous play about the Gold Rush was called "A Live Woman in the Mines." Note how the title stressed the word "Live." [Written by Alonzo Delano.]

One thing to keep in mind, when these men did write home, there was a certain amount of self-censorship, not wishing to reveal everything they did. When it came to drinking, gambling, and yes, whoring, it was always "look at what the other guy is doing." Many who wrote of the gambling saloons said they entered merely as observers and never took a chance at the faro or monte tables or drank whiskey. Charles Ross Parke, for example, in his diary self-righteously wrote: "During all this excitement and apparent chance to get rich, I never made a single bet or took a chance." In Contrast, Alonzo Delano of nearby Grass Valley, better known as Old Block, modestly noted, "I haven't got to drinking, stealing, or gambling yet, but expect to commence in a day or two."

The authors of the great classic, The Annals of San Francisco set the record straight:

[The gambling halls] were accordingly crowded with a motley crew, who drank, swore, and gamed to their hearts' content. Everybody did so. Gambling was a peculiar feature at this time. It was the amusement the grand occupation of many classes -- apparently the life and soul of the place.

It is also important to point out that the letter writers and journal keepers did point out the ugliness of this cauldron of chaos, and many reflecting the values and isolation of America in the 1840s, were filled with prejudice against other races and people and described the native Americans, Chinese, and Mexicans and even the French and Germans in less than complimentary manner. Connecticut "Nutmeggers" looked down their noses on Georgia crackers and visa versa. Missourians were favorite targets and derisively referred to as "Yellow bellies" or "Greybacks."

The Gold Rush, after all, was our nation's first large scale non-military encounter with other nations and people. Many Americans had never before been outside their county much less a place thousands of miles away. New Yorkers for the first time were encountering the steaming jungles of the Isthmus of Panama and landing at exotic ports in Brazil, Chile, Peru and Mexico. And when they got here they met an incredibly diverse population. As our first governor, Peter Burnett, noted in 1850, "What we have here in our midst is a mixed mass of human beings from every part of the wide earth, of different habits, manners, customs, and opinions, all, however, impelled onward by the same feverish desire of fortune-making." Dame Shirley, arguably the most eloquent of all Gold Rush writers, summed it up best in one of her 1852 letters published in the Pioneer:

You will hear in the same day the lofty melody of the Spanish language, the piquant polish of the French . . . the silver, changing clearness of the Italian, the harsh gargle of the German, the hissing precision of the English, [and] the liquid sweetness of the Kanaka . . .

Published books, had a profound effect on those contemplating a trip to this golden land and they flooded the market packed with some absolutely breathtaking descriptions of life in the diggings. Bayard Taylor's Eldorado stands as my favorite followed closely by John David Borthwick's Three years in California, and William Shaw's Golden Dreams and Waking Realities.

In writing my bibliography, I examined and summarized over 700 titles. Along the way, some titles caught my eye more than others and here are some of my choicest works:

Best title: "I Hear the Hogs in My Kitchen" by Mary Ballou.

Best opening line of a Gold Rush book appears in Chauncey Canfield's brilliantly told account The Diary of a Forty-Niner: "The pork I bought in town last night is the stinkenest salt junk ever brought around the Horn." I might point out that even though this was a work of fiction some historians still cite it in their footnotes as an actual eyewitness account.

The best ONE-LINER was written by that great Gold Rush artist, John David Borthwick. While in San Francisco, he observed: "People lived more there in a week than they would in a year in most other places." This could easily apply to all the roaring camps and towns of California.

Hinton Helper's book, The Land of Gold. Reality versus Fiction, is famous for bashing California but it also has the Best Quote of them all: "I have seen purer liquors, better segars, finer tobacco, truer guns and pistols, larger dirks and bowie knives, and prettier courtesans here, than in any other place I have every visited; and it is my unbiased opinion that California can and does furnish the best bad things that are obtainable in America."

The Most Unusual Author's Name. The Gold Rush produced a fine series of satirical works authored by the likes of Jeremiah Saddlebags, Alfred Crowquill, Abraham Krakenfuss, J. Stirling Coyne, Ralph Raven, Long Tom, Jonathan Swapwell, S. C. Peppergrass, F. A. Hot-Korn, and Tom Plump but the one that took the cake for me was the author of Aurifodina. This is the first novel about the Gold Rush and the author's name on the title page is Cantell L. Bigly. I never thought anything about this until I saw the copy at the Huntington Library. It was inscribed Can Tell A Big Lie, George W. Peck.

The Best Name for a Mining Company: The Grand Auriferous, Stultiferous, Assiniferous Californian Bamboozle Company. As bibliographer Wright Howes wrote, this no doubt represented "A wail from the victim of a fraudulent California mining project." A close second though was "The Great Doo and Diddle Gold, Silver, Copper, and Brass, Smash, Dash, & Crash Company." The company's holdings were located in the "Moschetto and Torpedo Districts" of California.

The Most Improbable Guidebook: Aerial Navigation: The Practicability of Traveling Pleasantly and Safely from New-York to California in Three Days, Fully Demonstrated, with a Full Description of a Perfect Aerial Locomotive by Rufus Porter, Editor of the Scientific American. 1849.

Artists, of course, could not resist poking fun at the gold fever. My favorite illustration was published by Nathan Currier and bears the title "The Way They Go to California." In this 1849 lithograph, Currier pokes fun at Rufus Porter's guidebook. Currier depicts a crowded wharf where eager gold seekers are madly falling into the water trying to catch a California bound ship. The scene in the sky above, though, would have made Jules Verne proud as it demonstrates how people would do virtually anything to beat their fellow man to the banks of the Sacramento. On one side, it shows a Mr. Golightly straddling a rocket happily zooming off to "Kaliforny." On the other side, Currier drew Rufus Porter's aerial locomotive that promised to take you to California in three days for only $30, and a man parachuting from the craft which makes him the first sky-diver associated with California history. Another print was entitled the "Grand Patent India - Rubber Aerial Railway to California" which consisted on a giant rubber band that was stretched as far as it would go, and when a man cut it with an axe, it would fling its passengers across the continent to the banks of the Sacramento.

MUSIC

In documenting these flush times, we cannot overlook music as demonstrated by the remarkable examples of sheet music with songs like the California Quick Step, the Gold Fever Gallop, and California Polka. To walk down a street in a mining camp like Red Dog, Gough Eye, Murderer's Bar, or Jackass Gulch at night in 1850 must have been extraordinary just for the sound affects alone. Benjamin Avery upon seeing this area for the first time called wrote: "At night the tents shone through the pines like great transparencies, and the sound of laughter, shouting, fiddling, and singing . . .. It was a wild, wonderful scene." Owners of the great gambling saloons seemingly spared no expense in creating a heady atmosphere even though the structure itself was no more than a large tent. Music was a great enticement, and all kinds of bands and varieties of instruments could be found. Gambling saloon musicians made upwards to an ounce of gold per performance. According to the Marysville directory for 1856, "Musical talent commanded the most Utopian prices. Any amateur that could torture horse hair and cat-gut into any consecutive sounds reasonably endurable, found the gambling saloon a much more remunerative field for his labor, than the richest laden placer or gulch." A Swiss lady, playing an organ grinder in the gambling saloons, made $4,000 in a few short months.

Out in the wilderness and in the camps, however, the miners experienced a less sophisticated, but more spontaneous, form of musical entertainment. Luther Schaeffer, throughout his diary, paints a memorable picture. Around camp fires or in their tents and log cabins, gold hunters would engage in singing hymns or favorite songs depending on their country or place of origin. Homesick miners became teary eyed when hearing familiar songs. This singing would sometimes counteract the screams, firing of guns, and other hideous noises that emanated from the camps. At the jumping town of Rough and Ready, one Argonaut noted how a group of Frenchmen pitched their tents nearby, and when plied with liquor, "would make the woods re-echo with their French songs and boisterous merriment." On a hill above old Hangtown, a man played the Star Spangled Banner with his bugle every evening. I can't imagine the emotions that would inspire as the notes bounced off the mountains.

Schaeffer, in search of better prospects, moved to Grass Valley and took with him his music. In April 1851, he recalled how this casual camp fire singing inspired one of his companions to propose putting on a concert for the benefit of Grass Valley. With grand enthusiasm, these rough miners plunged into their work. Lacking a printing press, they wrote out their programs and posted them throughout the town, advertising: "Great Vocal and Instrumental Concert by the Grass Valley Minstrels. Cards of admission only 50 cents. The choicest gems from the most popular operas will be performed." Ladies, of course, did not have to pay.

On a Monday evening, April 7, 1851, before a packed house, the Grass Valley Minstrels gave their one and only concert. The minstrels consisted of two professional musicians, a dentist, a banker, and Schaeffer. It began inauspiciously as Schaeffer, going on-stage, tripped and fell causing an embarrassing domino effect. After much laughter, the musicians regained their composure and played and sang away. "The violin shrieked," he recalled, "the guitar was out of tune; the hideous bones rattled; the abominable triangle gave forth about as sweet music as a tin-pan, and the flute chimed in." When the curtain finally rang down, a thunderous applause rewarded them. Schaeffer, with justifiable pride, noted that their concert was long remembered in the Grass Valley area.

After you leave this theater tonight and return to your happy homes or like me to the Red Castle Inn, think about the experience of Stephen Massett, the great Gold Rush composer and vocalist, when he secured a room at the brand new gold rush hotel.

I think mine was the corner bunk [individual rooms were unheard of back then] The heat was insufferable, mosquitoes buzzing about, and with their slow though sure attendants, fleas and bed-bugs came in myriads to greet and congratulate me on my arrival. Scratching and itching, itching and scratching, kept me pretty well awake all night; and then the stifled smell-the noise inside and out-the swearing and snoring of the occupants, the barking of dogs, the leavings of numberless trains of mules and donkeys outside, the cries of children, rendered the scene perfect pandemonium-and to crown the whole, just as I had managed to drop off into a doze, I felt a heavy bump came up against the slender board that screened me from the street-when to my astonishment the head of a big ox presented itself, and with its cold and moist snout commenced rubbing against my knees!As you remember the Forty-Niners, I hope that you will agree that James Marshall's discovery produced not only treasure in the form of golden nuggets but also treasure in the form of words, pictures, and music.

I will conclude with my favorite passage from those rambunctious days. It is the best happy ending experienced by a gold seeker. It appeared in a guidebook by Edwin Bryant in which he quoted a newspaper account from the Boston Chronotype:
A man had returned to California with gold to the amount of 64,000 dollars, which he deposited in one of the mints. He took off his old threadbare unmentionables and was about to throw them away, but his wife (good prudent woman) laid hold of them, and, with a trifling effort, took 23,000 dollars - worth of gold-dust out of them.
Dame Shirley, upon leaving the gold country lamented: "My heart is heavy at the thought of departing forever from this place. I like this wild and barbarous life; I leave it with regret."

--Gary Kurutz, Nevada City, April 21 2006. Used by permission of the author.