Contested Eden

Contested Eden PDF Author: Ramón A. Gutiérrez
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520920554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Celebrating the 150th birthday of the state of California offers the opportunity to reexamine the founding of modern California, from the earliest days through the Gold Rush and up to 1870. In this four-volume series, published in association with the California Historical Society, leading scholars offer a contemporary perspective on such issues as the evolution of a distinctive California culture, the interaction between people and the natural environment, the ways in which California's development affected the United States and the world, and the legacy of cultural and ethnic diversity in the state. California before the Gold Rush, the first California Sesquicentennial volume, combines topics of interest to scholars and general readers alike. The essays investigate traditional historical subjects and also explore such areas as environmental science, women's history, and Indian history. Authored by distinguished scholars in their respective fields, each essay contains excellent summary bibliographies of leading works on pertinent topics. This volume also features an extraordinary full-color photographic essay on the artistic record of the conquest of California by Europeans, as well as over seventy black-and-white photographs, some never before published.

Contested Eden

Contested Eden PDF Author: Ramón A. Gutiérrez
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520920554
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 407

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Book Description
Celebrating the 150th birthday of the state of California offers the opportunity to reexamine the founding of modern California, from the earliest days through the Gold Rush and up to 1870. In this four-volume series, published in association with the California Historical Society, leading scholars offer a contemporary perspective on such issues as the evolution of a distinctive California culture, the interaction between people and the natural environment, the ways in which California's development affected the United States and the world, and the legacy of cultural and ethnic diversity in the state. California before the Gold Rush, the first California Sesquicentennial volume, combines topics of interest to scholars and general readers alike. The essays investigate traditional historical subjects and also explore such areas as environmental science, women's history, and Indian history. Authored by distinguished scholars in their respective fields, each essay contains excellent summary bibliographies of leading works on pertinent topics. This volume also features an extraordinary full-color photographic essay on the artistic record of the conquest of California by Europeans, as well as over seventy black-and-white photographs, some never before published.

A World Transformed

A World Transformed PDF Author: Joshua Paddison
Publisher: Heyday
ISBN:
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 380

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Book Description
California changed dramatically in the years between the founding of the first mission in 1769 and the 1848 gold rush. These eleven eyewitness accounts vividly describe the first European land expedition into an unknown territory; the spread of the missions; the rule of Spain and then Mexico; the rise and fall of California's Russian colony; the emergence of rancho culture; the semi-feudal empires of Vallejo and Sutter; and the arrival of Anglo-Americans as ship-deserters, settlers, traders, and ultimately -- perhaps inevitably -- the masters of California.

With Golden Visions Bright Before Them

With Golden Visions Bright Before Them PDF Author: Will Bagley
Publisher: Overland West Series
ISBN: 9780806142845
Category : California
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
The story of America's westward migration is a powerful blend of fact and fable. Over the course of three decades, almost a million eager fortune-hunters, pioneers, and visionaries transformed the face of a continent- and displaced its previous inhabitants. The people who made the long and perilous journey over the Oregon and California trails drove this swift and astonishing change. In "Overland West: the story of the Oregon and California Trails," the four volumes of the set tell the sweeping saga of how this 'road across the Plains' transformed the American West and became an enduring part of its legacy. -- from Book Jacket

Gold Rush Capitalists

Gold Rush Capitalists PDF Author: Mark A. Eifler
Publisher: UNM Press
ISBN: 9780826328229
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 306

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Book Description
Examines the interaction of capitalism and community in the founding of the gold rush city of Sacramento, and of the clashes between miners and city founders.

The Sutter Family and the Origins of Gold-Rush Sacramento

The Sutter Family and the Origins of Gold-Rush Sacramento PDF Author: John Augustus Sutter
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 9780806134932
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
John A. Sutter (1803-1880) could have become one of the richest men in California when gold was found on his property. Instead he lost his vast land holdings on the Sacramento and Feather Rivers and eventually left California penniless. Sutter always claimed to be the victim of charlatans, but he bore considerable responsibility for his downfall. He had amassed huge debts before the gold discovery and added even more afterward. In the rough dealings of frontier capitalism in gold rush California, Sutter was easy prey. Soon after the gold discovery, Sutter’s eldest son, John Jr., (1826-1897) arrived, but soon moved south to Mexico. Hoping to obtain compensation for the land that he and his father had lost, John, Jr., returned to California in 1855 to give his lawyer a thorough statement cataloging how both Sutters were swindled. This extensive document describes the dirty deals of the first great gold rush in the western United States. Sutter’s statement has not been available for sixty years. Editor Allan R. Ottley reproduced and annotated this statement, providing a full biographical context and offering an appendix, bibliography, and index. Albert L. Hurtado’s introduction updates the book, originally published in 1942.

Gold!

Gold! PDF Author: Fred Rosen
Publisher: Open Road Media
ISBN: 1504024486
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
A riveting true account of gold rush fever in mid-nineteenth-century America, rich with the thrilling exploits of daring fortune seekers and dangerous outlaws America was never the same after January 24, 1848. It was on that day that a carpenter named James Marshall discovered a tiny nugget of gold while building a sawmill at Sutter’s Fort, just east of Sacramento, California. Marshall’s find ignited a fever the nation had never known before, drawing people from all over the country to the West Coast with high hopes of getting rich quick. Over the next six years, three hundred thousand prospectors raced to the California gold fields to make their fortunes, leaving their lands and families behind in order to chase a dream of easy wealth, but all too often encountering a reality of lawlessness, disease, cruelty, and death. A former columnist for the New York Times, author Fred Rosen takes readers back to the seminal moment when the American dream exploded. Chock full of fascinating details, unforgettable characters, and shocking real-life events, the captivating true story of the California gold rush brings an era of unparalleled change to breathtaking life. Rosen’s enthralling history of the gold rush of 1848 demonstrates how this golden ideal was supplanted by a culture of selfishness and greed that endures in America to this very day.

The Age of Gold

The Age of Gold PDF 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.

Art of the Gold Rush

Art of the Gold Rush PDF Author: Janice T. Driesbach
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520214323
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 166

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Book Description
"Art of the Gold Rush" features drawings and oil paintings of images of the scenery, people, and activity surrounding the 80,000 travelers to California in search of golden nuggets.

Gold Rush Girl

Gold Rush Girl PDF Author: Avi
Publisher: Candlewick Press
ISBN: 1536211826
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Newbery Medalist Avi brings us mud-caked, tent-filled San Francisco in 1848 with a willful heroine who goes on an unintended — and perilous — adventure to save her brother. Victoria Blaisdell longs for independence and adventure, and she yearns to accompany her father as he sails west in search of real gold! But it is 1848, and Tory isn’t even allowed to go to school, much less travel all the way from Rhode Island to California. Determined to take control of her own destiny, Tory stows away on the ship. Though San Francisco is frenzied and full of wild and dangerous men, Tory finds freedom and friendship there. Until one day, when Father is in the gold fields, her younger brother, Jacob, is kidnapped. And so Tory is spurred on a treacherous search for him in Rotten Row, a part of San Francisco Bay crowded with hundreds of abandoned ships. Beloved storyteller Avi is at the top of his form as he ushers us back to an extraordinary time of hope and risk, brought to life by a heroine readers will cheer for. Spot-on details and high suspense make this a vivid, absorbing historical adventure.

The World Rushed In

The World Rushed In PDF Author: J. S. Holliday
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
ISBN: 0806181214
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 577

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Book Description
When The World Rushed In was first published in 1981, the Washington Post predicted, “It seems unlikely that anyone will write a more comprehensive book about the Gold Rush.” Twenty years later, no one has emerged to contradict that judgment, and the book has gained recognition as a classic. As the San Francisco Examiner noted, “It is not often that a work of history can be said to supplant every book on the same subject that has gone before it.” Through the diary and letters of William Swain--augmented by interpolations from more than five hundred other gold seekers and by letters sent to Swain from his wife and brother back home--the complete cycle of the gold rush is recreated: the overland migration of over thirty thousand men, the struggle to “strike it rich” in the mining camps of the Sierra Nevadas, and the return home through the jungles of the Isthmus of Panama. In a new preface, the author reappraises our continuing fascination with the “gold rush experience” as a defining epoch in western--indeed, American--history.