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Now available in one volume, the major placer locations of the Sierra Nevada, taken from the original publications of that region. Complete with maps and descriptive text.

An environmental History of California during the Gold Rush Between 1849 and 1874 almost $1 billion in gold was mined in California. With little available capital or labor, here's how: high-pressure water cannons washed hillsides into sluices that used mercury to trap gold but let the soil wash away; eventually more than three times the amount of earth moved to make way for the Panama Canal entered California's rivers, leaving behind twenty tons of mercury every mile—rivers overflowed their banks and valleys were flooded, the land poisoned. In the rush to wealth, the same chain of foreseeable consequences reduced California's forests and grasslands. Not since William Cronon's Nature's Metropolis has a historian so skillfully applied John Muir's insight—"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe"—to the telling of the history of the American West. Beautifully told, this is western environmental history at its finest.

This edition has all new maps and an added chapter on the Kern River area. Good introduction to the gold bearing areas. Authentic and interesting reading for any gold seeker or history buff. Illustrated.

Gold districts of California

California’s Calaveras County—made famous by Mark Twain and his celebrated Jumping Frog—is the focus of this comprehensive study of Mother Lode mining. Most histories of the California Mother Lode have focused on the mines around the American and Yuba Rivers. However, the “Southern Mines”—those centered around Calaveras County in the central Sierra—were also important in the development of California’s mineral wealth. Calaveras Gold offers a detailed and meticulously researched history of mining and its economic impact in this region from the first discoveries in the 1840s until the present. Mining in Calaveras County covered the full spectrum of technology from the earliest placer efforts through drift and hydraulic mining to advanced hard-rock industrial mining. Subsidiary industries such as agriculture, transportation, lumbering, and water supply, as well as a complex social and political structure, developed around the mines. The authors examine the roles of race, gender, and class in this frontier society; the generation and distribution of capital; and the impact of the mines on the development of political and cultural institutions. They also look at the impact of mining on the Native American population, the realities of day-to-day life in the mining camps, the development of agriculture and commerce, the occurrence of crime and violence, and the cosmopolitan nature of the population. Calaveras County mining continued well into the twentieth century, and the authors examine the ways that mining practices changed as the ores were depleted and how the communities evolved from mining camps into permanent towns with new economic foundations and directions. Mining is no longer the basis of Calaveras’s economy, but memories of the great days of the Mother Lode still attract tourists who bring a new form of wealth to the region.

Edward Gould Buffum (1820-1867), a New York journalist, came to California as an officer in the 7th Regiment of N.Y. Volunteers during the Mexican War. He stayed on to seek gold and edit a California newspaper before returning east to become Paris correspondent of the New York Herald. Six months in the gold mines (1850) is Buffum's vivid account of his regiment's voyage west in 1846 to help secure California for the United States. He describes his discharge from the army in Monterey and his subsequent adventures as a gold seeker, sailing up the Sacramento to reach the Sierra Nevadas above Sutter's Fort. He describes prospecting along the Bear and Yuba Rivers, Weber Creek, and Middle and South Forks of the American River, Foster's Bar, and Weaver's Creek, 1848-1849. He concludes with the story of his work for Alta California in San Francisco and the growth of San Francisco.

This book is the chronological history of the gold rush and gold discoveries from 1848 through 1875, as viewed and reported by the newspapers and miners, on what was called the Northern Mines area of California's Mother Lode Gold Belt. The Northern Mines was that area north of the Cosumnes River, which included Placerville on northward. It included the region containing the South, Middle and North forks of the American River, the Bear River, the South, Middle and North forks of the Yuba River, and the South, Middle and North forks of the Feather River, plus all the other branches and tributaries that ran into the named forks and rivers. This book contains as many newspaper articles that could be found relating to the gold rush days. In using the newspaper articles from the golden era as printed, with their dates, this reveals just when the "New Diggings" as they were called, were found; where they were being made; how rich some of the diggings were; what type of diggings they were; the names of some of the prospectors who found some of the diggings or who were at the diggings and what they were taking out. There are tales of how some of the diggings were found and why some of them received the names they did. The overall purpose of this book is to give a full picture of exactly what was happening to as many different named diggings, locations, camps, and towns that came up in the Northern Mines area, and to give an account of events over at least a certain length of time, exactly as it was reported. To determine from just where each newspaper article within this book comes from, each of the newspaper articles used has first, the date on which it appeared in the newspaper, followed in parentheses by the name of the newspaper from which that particular article was obtained from.