Author: Julie Ferris
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780753452189
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 36

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Book Description
Presents a look at the sites and society that existed in San Francisco during the time of the Gold Rush in the 1850s.

Author: H. W. Brands
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307481220
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 594

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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.

Author: Judy Monroe
Publisher: Capstone
ISBN: 9780736810982
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
Follows the development of the gold rush in California starting in the 1840's. Examines its effects on the economic, social, and political development of the area from early times through statehood and into the modern day.

Author: Sylvia Alden Roberts
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595524923
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 162

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Book Description
Did you know that an estimated 5,000 blacks were an early and integral part of the California Gold Rush? Did you know that black history in California precedes Gold Rush history by some 300 years? Did you know that in California during the Gold Rush, blacks created one of the wealthiest, most culturally advanced, most politically active communities in the nation? Few people are aware of the intriguing, dynamic often wholly inspirational stories of African American argonauts, from backgrounds as diverse as those of their less sturdy- complexioned peers. Defying strict California fugitive slave laws and an unforgiving court testimony ban in a state that declared itself free, black men and women combined skill, ambition and courage and rose to meet that daunting challenge with dignity, determination and even a certain elan, leaving behind a legacy that has gone starkly under-reported. Mainstream history tends to contribute to the illusion that African Americans were all but absent from the California Gold Rush experience. This remarkable book, illustrated with dozens of photos, offers definitive contradiction to that illusion and opens a door that leads the reader into a forgotten world long shrouded behind the shadowy curtains of time."

Author: Malcolm J. Rohrbough
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520922077
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 388

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Book Description
On the morning of January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold in California. The news spread across the continent, launching hundreds of ships and hitching a thousand prairie schooners filled with adventurers in search of heretofore unimagined wealth. Those who joined the procession—soon called 49ers—included the wealthy and the poor from every state and territory, including slaves brought by their owners. In numbers, they represented the greatest mass migration in the history of the Republic. In this first comprehensive history of the Gold Rush, Malcolm J. Rohrbough demonstrates that in its far-reaching repercussions, it was the most significant event in the first half of the nineteenth century. No other series of events between the Louisiana Purchase and the Civil War produced such a vast movement of people; called into question basic values of marriage, family, work, wealth, and leisure; led to so many varied consequences; and left such vivid memories among its participants. Through extensive research in diaries, letters, and other archival sources, Rohrbough uncovers the personal dilemmas and confusion that the Gold Rush brought. His engaging narrative depicts the complexity of human motivation behind the event and reveals the effects of the Gold Rush as it spread outward in ever-widening circles to touch the lives of families and communities everywhere in the United States. For those who joined the 49ers, the decision to go raised questions about marital obligations and family responsibilities. For those men—and women, whose experiences of being left behind have been largely ignored until now—who remained on the farm or in the shop, the absences of tens of thousands of men over a period of years had a profound impact, reshaping a thousand communities across the breadth of the American nation.

Author: Mark A. Eifler
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317910214
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 223

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Book Description
In January of 1848, James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. For a year afterward, news of this discovery spread outward from California and started a mass migration to the gold fields. Thousands of people from the East Coast aspiring to start new lives in California financed their journey West on the assumption that they would be able to find wealth. Some were successful, many were not, but they all permanently changed the face of the American West. In this text, Mark Eifler examines the experiences of the miners, demonstrates how the gold rush affected the United States, and traces the development of California and the American West in the second half of the nineteenth century. This migration dramatically shifted transportation systems in the US, led to a more powerful federal role in the West, and brought about mining regulation that lasted well into the twentieth century. Primary sources from the era and web materials help readers comprehend what it was like for these nineteenth-century Americans who gambled everything on the pursuit of gold.

Author: Rosalyn Schanzer
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 9781426300400
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 52

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Book Description
The author uses lighthearted illustrations and excerpts from letters, journals, and newspaper articles to relate the story of the California Gold Rush of 1848. Full color.

Author: Malcolm J. Rohrbough
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 030018140X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
The California Gold Rush attracted 300,000 gold seekers in the mid-1800s, and it is the story of 30,000 Frenchman who came by sea that is told in The Rush to Gold. This is the first book to give an international focus to this pivotal time.

Author: Susan Lee Johnson
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 9780393320992
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 468

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Book Description
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.

Author: John Walton Caughey
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520027633
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

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Book Description