Gold Rush Stories: 49 Tales of Seekers, Scoundrels, Loss, and Luck
By
This volume explores the deeply human stories of the California Gold Rush generation, drawing out all the brutality, tragedy, humor, and prosperity as lived by those who experienced it. In less than ten years, more than 300,000 people made the journey to California, some from as far away as Chile and China. Many of them were dreamers seeking a better life, like Mifflin Wistar Gibbs, who eventually became the first African American judge, and Eliza Farnham, an early feminist who founded California’s first association to advocate for women’s civil rights. Still others were eccentrics—perhaps none more so than San Francisco’s self-styled king, Norton I, Emperor of the United States. As Gold Rush Stories relates the social tumult of the world rushing in, so too does it unearth the environmental consequences of the influx, including the destructive flood of yellow ooze (known as “slickens”) produced by the widespread and relentless practice of hydraulic mining. In the hands of a native son of the Sierra, these stories and dozens more reveal the surprising and untold complexities of the Gold Rush.
Published in collaboration with Sierra College Press.
Reviews
“This fascinating book offers readers something new. Gary Noy brings together, appropriately enough, 49 tales drawn from familiar and unfamiliar sources, each rich with something compelling and memorable.... A satisfying representation of California’s Gold Rush, complex, unruly, appalling, uplifting, and, as we come to understand, ultimately never quite what we thought it was.” Terry Beers, Professor of English and American Literature, Santa Clara University
“What a remarkable collection! An original and lively look at all the usual suspects, plus bears, weather, women, Joaquín, disappointment and dissipation, a veritable glory hole of highly polished nuggets from life on the frontier. Exhaustively researched and highly entertaining.” JoAnn Levy, author of They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush
“Gary Noy’s collection of standalone, standout nonfiction stories of the Gold Rush underscores once again the continuing role of this epoch as a catalyst for good writing. Again and again, we Californians return to this era to rediscover the breeder-reactor of literary energy set in motion by the first decade of American California. Noy has the ability to make old stories seem new and new stories seem like they have always been part of the Gold Rush canon.” Kevin Starr, professor of history at the University of Southern California; California State Librarian emeritus; and author of the multivolume Americans and the California Dream
“Seamlessly fuses academic rigor, original reporting and emotional intensity into one meditation on an era.... If the task of the historian is to be faithful to lost truths, then Noy's latest exploration succeeds on every level, and does so in a way that will keep readers wanting to dig deeper into the past.” Scott Thomas Anderson, Sierra Lodestar
“Excitement, surprise, and revelation in every chapter.” Goldfields Books
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