1. Diary of Henry William Bigler, January 24, 1848, Society of California Pioneers, San Francisco.

2. Quoted in California Heritage: An Anthology of History and Literature , ed. and comp. John and LaRee Caughey (Itasca, Ill.: F. E. Peacock Publishers, 1971), 191.

3. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California , vol. 6 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1886), 33-35. See also the discussion in James J. Rawls, "Gold Diggers: Indian Miners in the California Gold Rush," California Historical Quarterly 40 (Spring 1976): 28-45.

4. Rodman W. Patti, The California Gold Discovery: Sources, Documents, Accounts, and Memoirs Relating to the Discovery of Gold at Sutter's Mill (Georgetown, Calif.: Talisman Press, 1966), 18.

5. See John McPhee, Assembling California (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1993).

6. An excerpt appears in Caughey, California Heritage , 49-50.

7. John Francis Bannon, Robert Ryal Miller, and Peter Masten Dunne, Latin America (Encino, Calif.: Glencoe Press, 2977), 170-71.

8. See Ralph P. Bieber, "California Gold Mania," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 35 (June 1948): 3-28.

9. Quoted in Caughey, California Heritage , 195.

10. Rawls, "Gold Diggers," 31.

11. Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 50.

12. See Edwin A. Beilharz and Carlos U. Lopez, We Were 49ers! Chilean Accounts of the California Gold Rush (Pasadena, Calif.: Ward Ritchie Press, 1976), and Jay Monaghan, Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973).

13. James J. Rawls and Walton Bean, California: An Interpretive History , 7th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), 130.

14. Erwin G. Gudde, California Place Names: The Origin and Etymology of Current Geographical Names (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 161. See also John E. Baur, "When Royalty Came to California," California History 67 (December 1988): 244-65.

15. See Jay Monaghan, Australians and the Gold Rush: California and Down Under, 1849-1854 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), and David Goodman, Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).

16. Sucheng Chan, Asian Californians (San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser, 1991), 5-6, 27-28. See also Rodman W. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848-1880 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 35.

17. Rawls and Bean, California , 141. See also Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).

18. Louis B. Wright, Culture on the Moving Frontier (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 1955), 128.

19. Quoted in Oscar Lewis, Sea Routes to the Gold Fields: The Migration by Water to California in 1849-1852 (New York: Ballantine Books, 1971), 64.

20. David Morris Potter, ed., Trail to California: The Overland Journal of Vincent Geiger and Wakeman Bryarly (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 231.

21. Quoted in JoAnn Levy, They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992), 17.

22. Robert W. Carter, "'Sometimes When I Hear the Winds Sigh': Mortality on the Overland Trail," California History 74 (Summer 1995): 146, 152, 155.

23. Quoted in ibid., 155.

24. Thomas D. Clark, ed., Off at Sunrise: The Overland Journal of Charles Glass Gray (San Marino, Calif.: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1976), 154, 157.

25. Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (1947; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 345.

26. Ibid., 349; Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 3.

27. Andrew Rolle, California: A History (New York: Thomas Crowell, 1969), 229-30.

28. "Bill of Fare," 1849, Wells Fargo Bank History Room, San Francisco.

29. Rawls and Bean, California , 101.

30. Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe, The Shirley Letters: Being Letters Written in 1851-1852 from the California Mines (Berkeley, Calif.: Heyday Books, 1998), 113.

31. Lewis, Sea Routes to the Gold Fields , 229.

32. Rolle, California , 225; Rawls and Bean, California , 103.

33. An 1868 edition of the Songster is in the California State Archives, Sacramento. See also Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter, eds., The Songs of the Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), 155.

34. Sherburne F. Cook, "The American Invasion, 1848-1870," in his The Conflict Between the California Indian and White Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976), 5-13, 111. See also James J. Rawls, Indians of California: The Changing Image (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1984), 171-202.

35. San Francisco Alta California (April 26, 1849), quoted in Rawls, Indians of California , 177.

36. Silas Weston, Four Months in the Mines of California: Or, Life in the Mountains (Providence, R.I.: Benjamin T. Albro, 1854), 8-10, quoted in Rawls, Indians of California , 178.

37. Quoted in Pitt, Decline of the Californios , 60.

38. Rawls and Bean, California , 130, 135-36.

39. Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 283.

40. Josiah Royce, California, from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco: A Study of American Character (1886; reprint, New York: Knopf, 1948), 175.

41. J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), quoted in James J. Rawls, "Great Expectations: William Swain, J. S. Holliday & The World Rushed In ," California History 41 (Fall 1982): 167.

42. See the discussion in Paul, California Gold , 334-35, and John Walton Caughey, The California Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 288-89; originally published as Gold Is the Cornerstone .

43. M. Guy Bishop, ed., "'Many Wanted to Know Which Was Mr. Bigler: Henry Bigler's Account of the 1898 California Golden Jubilee," California History 49 (Fall 1990): 284-92.

44. Charles Howard Shinn, Mining Camps: A Study of American Frontier Government (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), 105, 125, 176.

45. Quoted in Kevin Starr, Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973), 156, 162.

46. Paul, California Gold , 337, 341.

47. Caughey, California Gold Rush , 293.

48. Ralph Mann, "Frontier Opportunity and the New Social History," Pacific Historical Review 53 (November 1984): 463-91, and also his "The Decade After the Gold Rush: Social Structure in Grass Valley and Nevada City, California, 1850-1860," Pacific Historical Review 46 (November 1972): 484-504.

49. David Rich Lewis, "Argonauts and the Overland Trail Experience: Method and Theory," Western Historical Quarterly 16 (July 1985): 285-306.

50. See, for instance, Julie Roy Jeffrey, Frontier Women: The Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-1880 (New York: Hill &Wang, 1979); Joan M. Jensen and Darlis Miller, "The Gentle Tamers Revisited: New Approaches to the History of Women in the American West," Pacific Historical Review 49 (May 1980): 173-212; Sandra L. Myers, ed., Ho for California! Women's Overland Diaries from the Huntington Library (San Marino: Henry E. Huntington Library and Art Gallery, 1980); Sandra L. Myers, Westering Women and the Frontier Experience 1800-1915 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1982); Linda Peavy and Ursula Smith, Women in Waiting in the Westward Movement (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994); Glenda Riley, "Women on the Panama Trail to California, 1849-1869," Pacific Historical Review 55 (November 1986): 531-48.

51. Levy, They Saw the Elephant , 91-107.

52. Jacqueline Baker Barnhart, The Fair but Frail: Prostitution in San Francisco, 1849-1900 (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1986), 25-39. Similar conclusions appear in Marion S. Goldman, Gold Diggers and Silver Miners: Prostitutes and Social Life on the Comstock Lode (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1981).

53. San Francisco Alta California (September 23, 1851), quoted in Paul, California Gold , 66.

1. Dianne Newell, Technology on the Frontier: Mining in Old Ontario (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1986), 148.

2. Peter J. Hugill, World Trade since 1431: Geography, Technology, and Capitalism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), xix.

3. Lynn White, Jr., "The Historical Roots of Our Ecological Crisis," Science 155 (March 10, 1967): 1203-7.

4. Newell, Technology on the Frontier, 13 .

5. Otis Young, Western Mining: An Informal Account of Precious-Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, and Milling on the American Frontier from Spanish Times to 1893 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 55-58.

6. Newell, Technology on the Frontier , 1-2.

7. H.J. Habakkuk, American and British Technology in the Nineteenth Century: The Search for Labour-saving Inventions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), 96-97.

8. Thomas A. Bailey, A Diplomatic History of the American People , 3rd ed. (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1946), 859.

9. Doris M. Wright, "The Making of Cosmopolitan California: An Analysis of Immigration, 1848-1870," California Historical Society Quarterly 20 (1941): 73-74.

10. Jermone O. Steffen, "The Mining Frontiers of California and Australia: A Study in Comparative Political Change and Continuity," Pacific Historical Review 52 (1983): 428-40.

11. Habakkuk, American and British Technology , 220.

12. John F. Kasson, Civilizing the Machine: Technology and Republican Values in America, 1776-1900 (New York: Viking Press, 1976), 46-47.

13. Nathan L. White, "The Interrelationship between the Gold Mining Period in Sierra County, California, and the Development of the Sierra County Lumber Industry" (M.A. thesis, University of the Pacific, 1961), 76-89.

14. These achievements were regarded as unmitigated triumphs by nineteenth-century historians such as Hubert H. Bancroft and John Hittell. Modern scholars are more distant, more objective, and more critical in evaluating the consequences. See, for example, works by Donald Worster, Malcolm Rohrbough, Richard White, Carlos Schwantes, and Patricia Limerick.

15. Edwin T. Layton, "Mirror Image Twins: The Communities of Science and Technology in 19th Century America," Technology and Culture 12 (1971): 573; John B. Rae, "The 'Know-how' Tradition: Technology in American History," Technology and Culture 1 (1960): 141; Young, Western Mining , 79-80; Terry S. Reynolds, "The Engineer in 19th Century America,'' in The Engineer in America: A Historical Anthology from Technology and Culture , ed. Terry S. Reynolds (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 7-8.

16. J. Ross Browne, "Report of J. Ross Browne on the Mineral Resources of the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains," in U.S. Treasury Dept., Reports on the Mineral Resources of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868), 8-9.

17. Rossiter W. Raymond, "Metallurgical Processes," in Statistics of Mines and Mining in the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains , part 5 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1870), 727; Browne, "Report," 8-9.

18. Browne, "Report," 8.

19. Raymond, "Metallurgical Processes," 727.

20. Ibid.

21. Newell, Technology on the Frontier , 148. Donald Macleod found similar circumstances in Nova Scotia, where mine promoters and engineers by the 1880s "generally sought to acquire new mill technology soon after its first appearance, normally copied it in part only, took indigenous needs into account in implementing it, and modified it extensively to meet local requirements." Donald Macleod, "Miners, Mining Men and Mining Reform: Changing the Technology of Nova Scotian Gold Mines and Collieries, 1858 to 1910" (Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto, 1981), 229.

22. Joseph Libbey Folsom, A Letter of Captain J. L. Folsom Reporting on Conditions in California in 1848 (San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1944), 11-12; Henry De Groot, "Six Months in '49," Overland Monthly , 1st set., 14 (1875): 316; Henry W. Bigler, Bigler's Chronicle of the West; The Conquest of California, Discovery of Gold, and Mormon Settlement as Reflected in Henry William Bigler's Diaries , ed. Erwin G. Gudde (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1962), 98-99, 108; Thomas A. Rickard, Man and Metals. A History of Mining in Relation to the Development of Civilization vol. 2 (1932; New York: Arno Press, 1974), 729; John W. Caughey, Gold Is the Cornerstone (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1948), 12-13, 26.

23. Philip R. May, Origins of Hydraulic Mining in California (Oakland: Holmes Book Co., 1970), 35-36.

24. Browne, "Report," 118-19; Young, Western Mining , 55-66.

25. Young, Western Mining , 91-98.

26. Georgius Agricola, De re Metallica , trans. Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover (1912; first Latin edition, 1556; reprint, New York: Dover, 1950), 156-57; Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (1947; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967), 111-13; Young, Western Mining , 109.

27. Jacques A. Moerenhout, The Inside Story of the Gold Rush , trans. Abraham P. Nasatir, Special Publication 8 (1848; San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1935), 22.

28. Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 60-67.

29. Randall Rohe, "Chinese River Mining in the West," Montana 46 (Autumn 1996): 17.

30. Excerpt from correspondence to New Orleans Crescent City , datelined Monterey, Calif., August 26, 1848, in J. Quinn Thornton, Oregon and California in 1848 (New York, 1849), 312-15; The Miners' Own Book, Containing Correct Illustrations and Descriptions of the Various Modes of California Mining , introduction by Rodman W. Paul (1858; San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1949), 28-29; Moerenhout, Inside Story of the Gold Rush , 17-18.

31. Randall Rohe, "Chinese Small-Scale Mining in the American West 1848-1900" (paper delivered at the eighth annual conference, Mining History Association, Houghton, Michigan, June 6, 1997).

32. Michael Ostrogorsky, "The Influence of Technology on Social Typology and Change in the Western American Mining Frontier" (Ph.D. diss., University of Idaho, 1993), 21-23.

33. William Blake, "The Mechanical Appliances of Mining," in Statistics of Mines and Mining in the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains , part 4 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1870), 602; Young, Western Mining , 114; Rohe, "Chinese River Mining in the West," 14-15; Robert Temple, The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989), 56-57.

34. Richard F. Epstein, Old Mok [Mokelumne Hill]: The Story of a Gold Camp (San Francisco: Dry Bones Press, 1995), 73.

35. Blake, "Mechanical Appliances of Mining," 600-602; Rohe, "Chinese River Mining in the West," 14-15; Young, Western Mining , 114, 271.

36. Rossiter W. Raymond, "Condition of the Mining Industry—California," in Statistics of Mines and Mining in the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1873), 40-44; Edward B. Preston, "California Gold Mill Practices," California State Mining Bureau Bulletin 6 (September 1895): 31.

37. John S. Hittell, Mining in the Pacific States of North America (San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft and Co., 1861), 37.

38. Newell, Technology on the Frontier , 142.

39. Raymond, "Metallurgical Processes," 727.

40. See, for example, May, Origins of Hydraulic Mining in California , 16-20; Young, Western Mining , 129.

41. For the conflicting claims of local origin, see Charles Waldeyer, "Treatment of Gold-bearing Ores in California," in Statistics of Mines and Mining in the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1873), 390n; Paul, California Gold , 152; May, Origins of Hydraulic Mining in California , 45-46.

42. Newell, Technology on the Frontier , 18.

43. Paul, California Gold , 147-50.

44. Ibid., 147-51.

45. May, Origins of Hydraulic Mining in California , 29-31.

46. Paul, California Gold , 153-54; May, Origins of Hydraulic Mining in California , 45. Matteson made another significant contribution to the mining industry in 1860 by devising a hydraulic derrick to lift heavy boulders (ibid., 50).

47. Randall Rohe, "Hydraulicking in the American West: The Development and Diffusion of a Mining Technique," Montana 35 (1985): 20-24; Paul, California Gold , 293-94.

48. Robert L. Kelley, Gold vs. Grain: The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in California's Sacramento Valley (Glendale, Calif.: A. H. Clark, 1959).

49. Donald Worster, "Hydraulic Society in California: An Ecological Interpretation," Agricultural History 56 (1982): 503-15.

50. Paul, California Gold , 130-32.

51. Thomas Allsop, California and Its Gold Mines, Being a Series of Recent Communications from the Mining Districts, Upon the Present Condition and Future Prospects of Quartz Mining . . . (London: Goombridge & Sons, 1853), 85.

52. Raymond, "Condition of the Mining Industry," 19.

53. Paul, California Gold , 132.

54. Ibid., 132-33.

55. Richard E. Lingenfelter, The Hardrock Miners: A History of the Mining Labor Movement in the American West, 1863-1893 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 83-90; John Rowe, The Hard-Rock Men: Cornish Immigrants and the North American Mining Frontier (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1974), 120-24.

56. Larry D. Lankton, "The Machine under the Garden: Rock Drills Arrive at the Lake Superior Copper Mines, 1868-1883," Technology and Culture 24 (January 1983): 13-34; Raymond, "Condition of the Mining Industry," 41-43; Blake, "Mechanical Appliances of Mining," 557-69; Young, Western Mining , 206-11.

57. Rowe, The Hard-Rock Men , 285-86.

58. Ibid., 118-20.

59. G. F. Deetken [Dutken], "Treatment of Gold-Bearing Ores in California," in Statistics of Mines and Mining in the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains , chap. 11 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1873), 323; J. G. Player-Frowd, Six Months in California (London: Longmans, Green, 1872), 104.

60. Newell, Technology on the Frontier , 45.

61. W. E. Gill, October 29, 1852, quoted in Rowe, The Hard-Rock Men , 109-10.

62. Excerpt from the London Morning Journal , November 1871, in printed letter from "Miner," Keweenaw County, Michigan, October 9, 1872, as quoted in Raymond, "The Burleigh Drill," in Statistics of Mines and Mining in the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1873), 488.

63. For problems with Spanish "rat-hole" mining, see Young, Western Mining , 79-83.

64. Ibid., 55.

65. Ibid., 71-72; Thomas Egleston, The Metallurgy of Silver, Gold, and Mercury in the United States , vol. 2 (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1890), 458-59.

66. Browne, "Report," 8; Blake, "Mechanical Appliances of Mining," 683.

67. Agricola, De re Metallica , translator's note, p. 281.

68. Young, Western Mining , 71-72.

69. Edmund Newton, D. B. Gregg, and McHenry Mosier, "Operations at the Haile Gold Mine, Kershaw, S.C.," U.S. Bureau of Mines Information Circular 7111 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, May 1940), 2; Paul, California Gold , 132-33, 136-37.

70. Rowe, The Hard-Rock Men , 118-20. Dianne Newell, in her study of frontier Ontario, pointed out that Cornish stamps originated in Saxony and were introduced to Cornwall in the seventeenth century, long before coming to California. See Newell, Technology on the Frontier , 25.

71. Guido Kustel, Nevada and California Processes of Silver and Gold Extraction for General Use and Especially for the Mining Public of California and Nevada (London: Trubner & Co.; San Francisco: Frank D. Carlton, 1868), 66-71; Paul, California Gold , 136-37; Young, Western Mining , 195-98.

72. Blake, "Mechanical Appliances of Mining," 647; Young, Western Mining , 195; Newell, Technology on the Frontier , 26; Risdon Iron and Locomotive Works, Gold Milling Machinery Catalog No. 12 (San Francisco: Risdon Iron Works, 1903).

73. Blake, "Mechanical Appliances of Mining," 657; Rossiter W. Raymond, "Mining Machinery," in Statistics of Mines and Mining in the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains , chap. 19 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1873), 475; Paul, California Gold , 136-37.

74. Egleston, The Metallurgy of Silver, Gold, and Mercury , vol. 2, 439.

75. Kustel, Nevada and California Processes , 85-86.

76. Lynn R. Bailey, Supplying the Mining World: The Mining Equipment Manufacturers of San Francisco, 1850-1900 (Tucson: Westernlore Press, 1996), vii-viii, 20, 28-29.

77. Blake, "Mechanical Appliances of Mining," 472, 657; Ostrogorsky, "Influence of Technology," 80-82, 103.

78. Dana Harmon, "Stamp Milling of Free Gold Ores," reprinted from Journal of the Association of Engineering Societies 25 (December 1900): 9.

79. Clark C. Spence, Mining Engineers & the American West: The Lace-boot Brigade, 1849-1933 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 25, 70-71.

80. Paul, California Gold , 302-3.

81. Ibid., 302-6.

82. Ibid., 306-7.

83. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California , vol. 7 ( The Works oaf Hubert Howe Bancroft , vol. 24) (1888; reprint, Santa Barbara: Wallace Hebberd, 1970), 644.

84. U.S. Dept. of the Interior, "The United States Geological Survey: Its Origin, Development, Organization, and Operations," USGS Bulletin 227 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1904), 10-11.

85. Bancroft, History of California , vol. 7, 643-44.

86. Ibid.; Paul, California Gold , 308-9.

87. Egleston, The Metallurgy of Silver, Gold, and Mercury , vol. 2, 544-47.

88. Paul, California Gold , 310.

89. Ibid., 195-96.

1. Marian V. Sears, Mining Stock Exchanges, 1869-1930 (Missoula: University of Montana Press, 1973).

2. See for example, Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California , vol. 6 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1888), 120; see also 120-21, n. 16, and 144, n. 1.

3. Such sources are discussed in Maureen A. Jung, "Documenting Nineteenth-Century Quartz Mining in Northern California," American Archivist 53 (Summer 1990): 406-18.

4. Maureen A. Jung, "The Comstocks and the California Mining Economy, 1848-1900" (Ph.D. diss., Department of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1988).

5. See for example, Joseph S. Davis, Essays in the Earlier History of American Corporations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1917), and Oscar Handlin and Mary Handlin, "Origins of the American Business Corporation," Journal of Economic History 5 (May 1945): 1-23.

6. Clark C. Spence, The Sinews of American Capitalism: An Economic History (New York: Hill and Wang, 1964), 134. See also Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985), 177-201, 511-31.

7. Alfred D. Chandler, The Visible Hand: The Managerial Revolution in American Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 36.

8. Shaw Livermore, Early American Land Companies: Their Influence on Corporate Development (New York: Octagon Books, 1966), 296.

9. Friedman, A History of American Law , 190-91.

10. Gerald D. Nash, "Government and Business Relations: A Case Study in State Regulation of Corporate Securities," Business History Review 38 (Summer 1964): 141-62.

11. Spence, Sinews of American Capitalism , 134.

12. William C. Kessler, "Incorporation in New England: A Statistical Study, 1800-1875," Journal of Economic History 8 (May 1948): 47- The six states include Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont.

13. New York Herald , January 24,1849.

14. Ibid., January 29, 1849.

15. Recorded by Perseverance Mining Company member Samuel Upham in his Notes on a Voyage to California Via Cape Horn, Together with Scenes in El Dorado in the Years 1849-50 (Philadelphia: Samuel Upham, 1878), 105.

16. On the joint-stock companies, see Octavius T. Howe, The Argonauts of '49 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1923); R. W. G. Vail, Bibliographical Notes on Certain Eastern Mining Companies of the California Gold Rush, 1849-1850 (Princeton: Bibliographical Society of America, 1949).

17. Joseph W. Ellison, "The Mineral Land Question in California, 1848-1866," Southwestern Historical Quarterly 30 (July 1926): 9-15. See also John Walton Caughey, The California Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 229-31.

18. Charles H. Shinn, Mining Camps: A Study in American Frontier Government (1884; New York: Knopf, 1948), 224.

19. Upham, Notes on a Voyage , 307.

20. Theodore H. Hittell, History of California , vol. 3 (San Francisco: Stone and Company, 1879), 174.

21. Howard L. Scamehorn, ed., The Buckeye Rovers in the Gold Rush (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1965), 116.

22. Josiah Royce, California, from the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco: A Study of American Character (1886; New York: Knopf, 1948), 217.

23. J. D. Borthwick, Three Years in California (New York: The Book League of America, 1929), 347.

24. These estimates of miners' wages are developed in Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1947), 120. Bancroft's estimates are quite similar, though slightly lower for 1852; History of California , vol. 6, n. 5, P. 639.

25. Paul, California Gold , 121.

26. Scamehorn, Buckeye Rovers , 133-34.

27. For detailed description from a careful observer and mining company president, see Daniel B. Woods, Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings (New York: Arno Press, 1973). On pp. 144-48, he presents articles of agreement for the Hart's Bar Draining and Mining Company, organized in May 1851 as a joint-stock company; and notes that such "mining associations enjoy all the privileges and immunities of corporate bodies."

28. Felix P. Wierzbicki, California as It Is & as It May Be, Or a Guide to the Gold Region , ed. George D. Lyman (1849; reprint, San Francisco: Rare Americana Series, 1933), 34. This was the first book written in English published in California.

29. Edwin F. Bean, comp., History and Directory of Nevada County (Nevada City: Daily Gazetteer Book and Job Office, 1867), 149.

30. Records of Incorporation, vols. A and B, 1850-1859, California State Archives, Sacramento.

31. Ibid., vol. A, 1.

32. Ibid., vol. A, 2.

33. Bancroft, History of California ) 666.

34. It was common practice for a banker to serve as a mining corporations treasurer.

35. California Express , November 12, 1851.

36. Grass Valley Gold Mining Company, Charter (New York: Printing Office, 1852).

37. John Cumming, ed., The Gold Rush Letters of Dr. James Delavan from California to the Adrian, Michigan, Expositor, 1850-1856 (Mount Pleasant, Mich.: Cumming Press, 1976), viii.

38. Delavan's book, published by H. Long and Brother, was advertised in the New York Tribune on March 1, 1850, its author identified only as "One Who Knows." See also Carl I. Wheat, "The Rocky-Bar Mining Company: An Episode in Early Western Promotion and Finance," California Historical Society Quarterly 12 (March 1933): 65-77. Appended to this article is a complete copy of the 1850 stock "Circular" Delavan wrote to promote the Rocky-Bar Mining Company.

39. Manhattan Quartz Mining Company; Facts Concerning Quartz and Quartz Mining: Together with the Charter (New York: W. L. Burroughs, 1852), 24

40. Leland Hamilton Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (New York: Knopf, 1927), 46.

41. The story of the Comstock Lode is told by many. See, for example, Eliot Lord, Comstock Mines and Miners (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Geological Survey, 1883); Grant H. Smith, "History of the Comstock Lode, 1850-1920," University of Nevada Bulletin 37 (July 1943); Charles Howard Shinn, The Story of the Mine as Illustrated by the Great Comstock Lode of Nevada (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1980); and George D. Lyman, Ralston's Ring (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1937) and also his The Saga of the Comstock Lode: Boom Days in Virginia City (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1934).

42. Smith points out that 20 percent of the production on the Comstock Lode through 1866 was spent in litigation; "History of the Comstock Lode," 61.

43. Lord, Comstock Mines , 73.

44. Smith, "History of the Comstock Lode," 16.

45. Ira B. Cross, Financing an Empire: A History of Banking in California (San Francisco: S.J. Clarke, 1927), 238.

46. John Wallin Carlson, "History of the San Francisco Mining Exchange" (M.A. thesis, Department of Economics, University of California, Berkeley, 1941), 6. See also Clyde Garfield Chenoweth, "The San Francisco Stock Exchange and Its History" (Ph.D. diss., Department of Economics, Stanford, 1941). For the recollections of a stock exchange member, see Joseph L. King, History of the San Francisco Stock and Exchange Board (San Francisco: Joseph L. King, 1910).

47. Sears, Mining Stock Exchanges , 10.

48. San Francisco Mining and Scientific Press , January 30, 1864, 74.

49. Cross, Financing an Empire , 238.

50. John S. Hittell, A History of the City of San Francisco and Incidentally of California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1878), 340.

51. Ibid., 333.

52. Shinn, Story of the Mine , 144-45.

53. February 16, 1863.

54. Quoted in Shinn, Story of the Mine , 145.

55. Cross, Financing an Empire , 398; Cecil Gage Tilton, William Chapman Ralston, Courageous Builder (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1935), 135; Paul, California Gold , 185-86.

56. Lord, Comstock Mines , 246-47; Shinn, Story of the Mine , 164-65; Smith, "History of the Comstock Lode," 49-51, 180-81. Although Smith states that both Ralston and Sharon remained in the background while others served on corporate boards and carried out their bidding, an examination of articles of incorporation and annual reports from the companies reveals that Ralston served as treasurer of the Gould & Curry Silver Mining Company in 1860, 1861, and from 1865 to 1872. During the same period, he was also treasurer of the Ophir and Savage mines. In 1869, Sharon was treasurer of the Belcher mine; he also served as a trustee of the Consolidated Imperial Silver Mining Company from 1868 to 1872, while the Bank of California was listed as its treasurer. While complete lists of corporate officers for all the Comstock mines no longer exist, those that remain show that both men occupied key positions within these corporations.

57. Smith, "History of the Comstock Lode," 50-51.

58. Hittell, History of the City of San Francisco , 343.

59. See for example, Oscar Lewis, Silver Kings: The Lives and Times of Mackay, Fair, Flood, and O'Brien, Lords of the Nevada Comstock Lode (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1986).

60. The San Francisco Bulletin noted on May 7, 1872, that ''the excitement in mining stocks and mining claims during the past few months has been without a precedent in the history of our mines. Mining incorporations have been multiplied like the leaves of autumn. . . . Yet it is noteworthy that out of 150 claims offered to the public through the stock boards, only four are paying dividends."

61. Lord, Comstock Mines , chaps. 14, 15; Smith, "History of the Comstock Lode," chaps. 11, 13, 14; Lyman, Ralston's Ring , chap. 22; and Lewis, Silver Kings .

62. Lewis, Silver Kings , 247-48; Lord, Comstock Mines , 330. See also Squire P. Dewey, "The Bonanza Mines of Nevada: Gross Frauds in Management Exposed," pamphlet reprinted in Speculation in Gold and Silver Mining Stocks (1879; reprint, New York: Arno Press, 1970), 61.

63. Assembly Committee on Corporations, "Majority Report," in California Legislature, Appendix to the Journals of the Senate and Assembly , vol. 4 (Sacramento: State Printing Office, 1878), 8.

64. See for example, Chandler, The Visible Hand .

I would like to thank Jeffrey Stine for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

1. Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception (New York: Current Books, 1949), 26-29.

2. The best, and most recent, overview of the historiography on the California Gold Rush is in Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 295-300.

3. For a good assessment of these traditional sources on the history of the Gold Rush, see ibid., 300-304.

4. Ibid., 298.

5. Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947).

6. Ralph Mann, After the Gold Rush: Society in Grass Valley and Nevada City, California, 1849-1870 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982). Also offering new insights into the California Gold Rush is the recently published book by Walter T. Durham, Volunteer Forty-Niners: Tennesseans and the California Gold Rush (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 1997).

7. Paul, California Gold , 43, and Rodman W. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848-1880 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 16.

8. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Seventh Census of the United States, 1850 , vol. 1, p. 976. Unfortunately, and partly because of the upheaval caused by the Gold Rush, the 1850 census is not fully reliable. For a discussion of this problem, see Paul, California Gold , 23-25. Likewise, the California state census of 1852 is flawed in some respects. See Dennis E. Harris, "The California Census of 1852: A Note of Caution and Encouragement," Pacific Historian 28 (Summer 1984): 59-64.

9. U.S. Bureau of the Census, Eighth Census of the United States, 1860 , vol. 1, p. 35-Unlike in 1850, the table of occupations did not confine itself to enumerating only employed men, but, as will be shown later in this essay, few women were miners.

10. While the southern gold rashes of the earlier nineteenth century paled by contrast to the California Gold Rush, comparisons between the two are interesting and instructive, and there is a growing historical literature on the southern gold rush. See Otis E. Young, "The Southern Gold Rush, 1828-1836," The Journal of Southern History 48 (August 1982): 373-92. See also David Williams, The Georgia Gold Rush: Twenty-Niners, Cherokees, and Gold Fever (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993). This book contains a useful bibliography. On gold-rush migrants from Chile and Peru, see Jay Monaghan, Chile, Peru, and the California Gold Rush of 1849 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973). The gold-rush emigration and experience of people from the Mexican province of Sonora is discussed in M. Colette Standart, "The Sonoran Migration to California, 1848-1856: A Study in Prejudice," Southern California Historical Quarterly 58 (Fall 1976): 333-57. On emigration from Cornwall and the Cornish in America, see John Rowe, The Hard-Rock Men: Cornish Immigrants and the North American Mining Frontier (Liverpool: University of Liverpool Press, 1974).

11. Rowe, The Hard-Rock Miners , 96.

12. See David Douglas Clinton, "Laboring for the Golden Dream: Labor in Gold Rush San Francisco" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1991), 73-74, 180-81. For data on wage comparisons, see U.S. Department of Labor, History of Wages in the United States from Colonial Times to 1928 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1934). See also Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 2-3.

13. David Goodman, Gold Seeking: Victoria anal California in the 1850s (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994).

14. See Susan Lee Johnson, "'The Gold She Gathered': Difference, Domination, and California's Southern Mines, 1848-1853" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1993); see chap. 2 for analysis of the factors spurring emigration from both within and without the United States. She cautions historians (p. 100) not to be too deterministic about the factors that in particular impelled migration from the eastern United States.

15. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 41.

16. Estimates of the cost of the journey vary considerably. In part this reflects inadequate data, and also the fact that the cost of passage varied enormously according to the date and circumstances of travel. In addition, it is not always clear whether estimates included food for the passage and the cost of capital equipment and other supplies necessary for mining. In general, the costs of the voyage by sea declined after 1848-49.

17. On forming joint-stock companies and using families' funds to finance the migration, see Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 39-45. For a detailed discussion of the formation of joint-stock companies to finance the voyage by sea, see James P. Delgado, To California By Sea: A Maritime History of the California Gold Rush (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990).

18. Goodman, Gold Seeking .

19. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 1.

20. Ibid.

21. Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 2.

22. Quoted in Goodman, Gold Seeking , 28.

23. Quoted in J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 370.

24. Ibid.

25. Johnson, "The Gold She Gathered," 292. The historical literature has not examined this issue in very great detail and we shall probably never know what proportion came to the diggings as unfree laborers of some kind. The sporadic evidence would seem to indicate that a relatively small number were unfree laborers. If, however, one includes wage laborers in one's definition of "unfree," the proportion becomes somewhat larger.

26. Rudolph M. Lapp, Afro-Americans in California (San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser, 1987), 4-6. See also Rudolph M. Lapp, Blacks in Gold Rush California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977).

27. Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1970), 54; Tomas Almaquer, Racial Fault Lines: The Historic Origins of White Supremacy in California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 69. On the bringing of unfree labor from Latin America to the Gold Rush, see Monaghan, Chile, Peru and the California Gold Rush , 53, 61, 109, 127, 131.

28. Ping Chiu, Chinese Labor in California: A Economic Study (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967), 12. On the forces that impelled Chinese emigration to the United States there are many works, but see Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986); June Mei, "Socioeconomic Origins of Emigration: Guangdong to California, 1850-1882," in Labor Immigration Under Capitalism: Asian Workers in the United States Before World War II , ed. Lucie Cheng and Edna Bonacich (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984); and Yong Chen, "The Internal Origins of Chinese Emigration to California Reconsidered," Western Historical Quarterly 28 (Winter 1997): 521-46.

29. Paul, California Gold , 43.

30. See Chan, This Bittersweet Soil , 21. Chan defines emigrants who obtained passage to the United States via the credit-ticket system as "semifree."

31. Elmer Sandmeyer, "The Bases of Anti-Chinese Sentiment," in Racism in California , ed. Roger Daniels and Spencer C. Olin, Jr. (New York: Macmillan, 1972), 80.

32. David V. DuFault, "The Chinese in the Mining Camps of California: 1848-1870," Southern California Quarterly 41 (Summer 1959): 155-70. James J. Rawls and Walton Bean, California: An Interpretive History (New York: McGraw Hill, 1993), 126.

33. Pitt, Decline of the Californios , 56.

34. This argument was made powerfully and convincingly in Alexander Saxton's book, The Indispensable Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971). It was a position adopted by many subsequent California historians, especially of the labor movement. More recent work views racism and the development of a white working-class consciousness as by no means exclusively a California phenomenon. To cite but two of the works: David R. Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1991), and Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America (London: Verso, 1990).

35. We still lack a definitive explanation of why Chinese miners were expelled from some communities but not others. In some towns the expulsion took place in the early 1850s, but in others attempts were not made until the 1870s. On the persistence and role of the Chinese in California and western mining see Randall E. Rohe, "After the Gold Rush: Chinese Mining in the Far West, 1850-1890," Montana: The Magazine of Western History 32 (Summer 1982): 2-19, and also his "Chinese River Mining in the West," Montana.' The Magazine of Western History 46 (Autumn 1996): 14-29. On strong anti-Chinese sentiment in California mining communities during the 1870s, see Richard E. Lingenfelter, The Hardrock Miners: A History of the Mining Labor Movement in the American West, 1863-1893 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), and Mann, After the Gold Rush .

36. See Richard Henry Morefield, "Mexicans in the California Mines, 1848-53," Southern California Quarterly 35 (March 1956): 37-46. Also very useful on nativism and racism in the Southern Mines is Johnson, "The Gold She Gathered."

37. On the first foreign miners' tax, see Richard H. Peterson, "The Foreign Miners' Tax of 1850 and Mexicans in California: Exploitation or Expulsion?" Pacific Historian 20 (Summer 1976): 265-71.

38. On Native Americans in the Gold Rush, see James J. Rawls, "Gold Diggers: Indian Miners in the California Gold Rush," California Historical Quarterly 55 (Spring 1976): 28-42; Albert L. Hurtado, Indian Survival on the California Frontier (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); and George Harwood Phillips, Indians and Indian Agents: The Origins of the Reservation System in California, 1849-1852 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), esp. chap. 3.

39. Hurtado, Indian Survival , 117. For a breakdown of the Indian population by mining county in 1852, see 111.

40. Louise A. K. S. Clappe, The Shirley Letters: Being Letters Written in 1851-1852 from the California Mines (Salt Lake City: Peregrine Smith, 1970), 123.

41. Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 152.

42. Ibid.

43. Ibid.

44. Quoted in ibid., 19.

45. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 26.

46. For descriptions of hard labor in the mines see Paul, California Gold , 56: Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 26; Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 137-39; and Holliday, The World Rushed In , 395-97.

47. Quoted in Holliday, The World Rushed In , 360.

48. Paul, California Gold , 113-14.

49. Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 94.

50. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 98.

51. See Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 9, 180-81. In her book A Mine of Her Own: Women Prospectors in the American West, 1850-1950 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997), Sally Zanjani searches out examples of women miners but with a notable lack of success in California. Using manuscript census data, Ralph Mann found that in 1860 only one women in Grass Valley and one in Nevada City described her occupation as "miner," and none did in 1870; After the Gold Rush , 244. One of the more recent works on women in the Gold Rush, with a useful bibliography, is JoAnn Levy, They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1992).

52. Sucheng Chan argues, on the basis of good evidence, that a substantial majority of Chinese women in rural northern counties in 1860 and 1870 were prostitutes; This Bittersweet Soil , 389.

53. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 108-15, 244.

54. William Swain is the principle subject and writer in Holliday's The World Rushed In .

55. Joseph R. Conlin, Bacon, Beans, and Galantines: Food and Foodways on the Western Mining Frontier (Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 1986), 107. This book contains much information about diet and eating in gold-rush California and on the western mining frontier in general.

56. Paul, California Gold , 87. See also Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 142-44.

57. Paul, California Gold , 72-75, and Mann, After The Gold Rush , 15-17.

58. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 240. It is possible, however, that residents of boardinghouses were more likely to be undercounted by the census enumerator.

59. Paul, California Gold , 317-18.

60. A point stressed by Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 182-83, and Mann, After the Gold Rush , 191-92.

61. Mark Aldrich, Safety First: Technology, Labor, and Business in the Building of American Work Salty, 1870-1939 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 2. See also Alan Derickson, Workers' Health, Workers' Democracy: The Western Miners' Struggle, 1891-1925 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988). Not until long after the gold-rush era (1848-1870) did the state and federal government begin to compile records of accidents in the mining industry and other occupations.

62. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 227

63. Ibid., 262.

64. See ibid., 212, 266.

65. Paul, California Gold , 120.

66. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 84-85. The unequal distribution of wealth was not unique to mining towns or counties. In his study of wealth distribution in twenty-six northern California counties, Robert Burchell found some variation but, in general, a very skewed distribution of wealth. Robert A. Burchell, "Opportunity and the Frontier: Wealth-Holding in Twenty-Six Northern California Counties, 1848-1880," Western Historical Quarterly 18 (April 1987): 177-96.

67. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 106.

68. Ibid., 230.

69. Paul, California Gold , 60-64.

70. Ibid., 127.

71. Ibid., 129.

72. Ibid., 164.

73. Ibid., 166.

74. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 29.

75. San Francisco capital seems to have been slow and reluctant to invest in the California gold mines until at least the late 1860s. For a discussion of this, see Paul, California Gold , 296-302.

76. Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 201.

77. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 26.

78. Rohrbough, Days of Gold , 202.

79. Paul, California Gold , 145.

80. Ibid., 143-44.

81. Calculated from the U.S. Bureau of the Census, Ninth Census of the United States, 1870 , vol. 3, Statistics of the Wealth and Industry of the United States , 760. The usually reliable Rodman Paul deprecates the importance of quartz mining in the 1860s and uncharacteristically does not provide good supporting evidence.

82. Paul, California Gold , 260.

83. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 139-50.

84. References in the secondary literature are very rare. Mann mentions only one instance of a strike in Grass Valley or Nevada City; After the Gold Rush , 91. It is, of course, possible that many small strikes were not recorded, or if recorded in such places as newspapers, have not been gleaned by researchers. In his book California Gold , Paul claims (p. 324) that in the latter half of the 1850s "there had been many so-called 'strikes.'" But he provides no evidence or citations to support this assertion.

85. Lingenfelter, The Hardrock Miners; Mark Wyman, Hard Rock Epic: Western Miners and the Industrial Revolution, 1860-1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979); and Ronald C. Brown, Hard-Rock Miners: The Intermountain West, 1860-1920 (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1979).

86. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 86.

87. Lingenfelter provides a good account of this strike and several other subsequent ones in his book The Hardrock Miners (pp. 81-103). Mann, After the Gold Rush (pp. 183-94) also provides an account of the strike. Mann states that while the strike began in Nevada City "both the strike and the Sinophobia centered in Grass Valley" (p. 183).

88. Mann, After the Gold Rush , 142.

89. Lingenfelter, Hardrock Miners , 88.

90. See ibid. for a good account. Paul, California Gold , also provides useful narratives of some of the major strikes of this period (pp. 325-33).

91. Lingenfelter, Hardrock Miners , 100.

92. Ibid., 103.

93. Wyman, Hard Rock Epic , 224.

94. Ibid., 224-25.

95. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 92.

96. Paul, California Gold , 333.

1. Theodore H. Hittell, The Adventures of James Capen Adams (New York: Charles Scribner, 1911). "Grizzly" Adams roamed around California in gold-rush times. This volume is based on interviews with Hittell. Although Adams was known for tall tales, his accounts of wildlife have most often proved reliable.

2. Walter Fry and Toby Whyte, Big Trees (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1930), 10-11,17-23. Fry and Whyte wrote of the experiences of Hale Tharp, who was the first European encountered by the Potwisha Indians along the Kaweah River. He established a ranch in the Three Rivers area and was one of the first to visit the "Big Tree" ( Sequoiadendron giganteum ) forests in what is now Sequoia-Kings Canyon National Park.

3. Joan Halifax, The Fruitful Darkness (San Francisco: Harper San Francisco, 1993), 97-98. Semu Huaute's description was told to Joan Halifax.

4. Joseph Grinnell, J. S. Dixon, and J. M. Linsdale, Fur Bearing Mammals of California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1937), 68-94. Although the two volumes of this work are primarily a natural history and biological account of the larger mammals sought by fur traders, they are also a source of historical information on the distribution, abundance, and behavior of the larger species of furbearers.

5. Grinnell et al., Fur Bearing Mammals , 5-10.

6. W.H. Ellison, The Life and Adventures of George Nidever (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1936).

7. Raymond F. Dasmann, California's Changing Environment (San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser, 1981), 15.

8. Grinnell et al., Fur Bearing Mammals , 10.

9. Dale R. McCullough, The Tule Elk, Its History, Behavior and Ecology , University of California Publications in Zoology, vol. 88 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), 17-27.

10. Richard H. Dana, Jr., Two Years Before the Mast (New York: Harper and Bros., 1840; New York: Doubleday, 1949), 76.

11. Herbert Eugene Bolton, Font's Complete Diary: A Chronicle of the Founding of San Francisco (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1933), 361, 382; Bolton translates Father Pedro Font's Diary of an Expedition to Monterey by Way of the Colorado River, 1775-1776 .

12. Rockwell D. Hunt, John Bidwell, Prince of California Pioneers (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1942), 76.

13. T. S. Van Dyke, "The Deer and Elk of the Pacific Coast," in Theodore Roosevelt et al., The Deer Family (New York: Macmillan, 1902).

14. Lee T. Burcham, California Rangeland (Sacramento: California Division of Forestry, 1957).

15. George W. Hendry, "The Adobe Brick as an Historical Source," Agricultural History 4 (July 1931): 110-22.

16. Hunt, John Bidwell , 76.

17. Herbert Bashford and Harr Wagner, A Man Unafraid, The Story of John Charles Fremont (San Francisco: Harr Wagner Publishers, 1977), 132-33.

18. John Muir, My First Summer in the Sierra (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1911), 54-55.

19. William H. Brewer, Up and Down California in 1860-1864 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1974), 508.

20. Ralph Mann, After the Gold Rush: Society in Grass Valley and Nevada City, California, 1849-1870 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1982), 137.

21. Fry and Whyte, Big Trees , 18-23.

22. C. Raymond Clar, California Government and Forestry (Sacramento: California Division of Forestry, 1959), 8, 16, 30, 64.

23. Charles Nordhoff, California . . . for Travellers and Settlers (Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, Centennial Printing, 1873-1973), 95, 100-102.

24. Brewer, Up and Down California , 243.

25. Ralph J. Roske, Everyman's Eden: A History of California (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 410-12.

1. Lawrence C. Becker, Property Rights: Philosophic Foundations (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977); William B. Scott, In Pursuit of Happiness: American Conceptions of Property from the Seventeenth to the Twentieth Century (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977); Ellen Frankel Paul, Property Rights and Eminent Domain (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Books, 1987); Andrew Reeve, Property (Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1986); Richard Schlatter, Private Property: The History of An Idea (London: G. Allen & Unwin, 1951).

2. W. C. Jones, ed., Commentaries on the Laws of England , vol. 1 (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney, 1916), 240.

3. Ernest S. Osgood, The Day of the Cattleman (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1929), 182-83.

4. On early claims associations or clubs, see Allan G. Bogue, "The Iowa Claim Clubs: Symbol and Substance," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45 (September 1958): 231-53; Paul Wallace Gates, History of Public Land Law Development (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1968), 152-63; and Benjamin Hibbard, A History of the Public Land Policies (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1965), 198-208.

5. James E. Wright, The Galena Lead District: Federal Policy and Practice, 1824-1847 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1966).

6. Roy M. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage: The Public Domain, 1776-1970 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976), 151. Also see Robert W. Swenson, "Legal Aspects of Mineral Resources Exploitation," in Gates, History of Public Land Law Development , 701-2; and Curtis H. Lindley, A Treatise on the American Law Relating to Mines and Mineral Lands , vol. 1 (San Francisco: Bancroft-Whitney, 1914), 66-67.

7. The Richard Mason quote is as reprinted in John F. Davis, Historical Sketch of the Mining Law in California (Los Angeles: Commercial Printing House, 1902), 12. Also see Neal Harlow, California Conquered: War and Peace on the Pacific, 1846-1850 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982), 45-47, 297; Joseph Ellison, California and the Nation, 1850-1869: A Study of the Relations of a Frontier Community with the Federal Government (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1927), 55-57.

8. For an excellent discussion of the differences between Anglo-American and Hispanic law in pre-gold-rush California, see David J. Langum, Law and Community on the Mexican California Frontier: Anglo-American Expatriates and the Clash of Legal Traditions, 1821-1846 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1987). Also see Michael C. Meyer, Water in the Hispanic Southwest: A Social and Legal History, 1550-1850 (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1984).

9. Samuel C. Wiel, "Public Policy in Western Water Decisions," California Law Review 1 (November 1912): 13-13, and Charles W. McCurdy, "Stephen J. Field and Public Land Law Development in California, 1850-1866: A Case Study of Judicial Resource Allocation in Nineteenth-Century America," Law and Society Review 10 (Fall 1975): 264.

10. For example, in June 1830, the lead miners of Dubuque, Iowa, gathered and appointed a five-man committee to draft a mining code. See Davis, Historical Sketch of the Mining Law in California , 18.

11. On the mining codes, see Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947), 210-39; John Walton Caughey, The California Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), 228-29; J. Ross Browne, Resources of the Pacific Slope (New York: D. Appleton, 1869), 235-47; Gregory Yale, Legal Titles to Mining Claims and Water Rights in California, Under the Mining Laws of Congress of July, 1866 (San Francisco: A. Roman, 1867), 73-88; Charles J. Hughes, "The Evolution of Mining Law," in Report of the Twenty-Fourth Annual Meeting of the American Bar Association Held at Denver, Colorado, August 21, 22, and 23, 1901 (Philadelphia: Dando Printing and Publishing, 1901), 330-31.

12. The quote is from "Report on Civil and Common Law," February 27, 1850, in California Reports , 1850, 588-89.

13. Jennison v. Kirk , 98 U.S. 453 (1878), at 457. Many cases decided by the California Supreme Court agreed with Stephen J. Field's interpretation of mining camp law. In particular, see '49 and '56 Quartz Mining Co ., 15 Cal. 152 (1860), at 161, and Morton v. Solambo , 26 Ca]. 527 (1864), at 532-33.

14. Hicks v. Bell , 3 Cal. 220 (1853); Stephen J. Field, Personal Reminiscences of Early Days in California, With Other Sketches (Washington, D.C.: Privately printed, 1893), 59, 90, 154-55; Ellison, California and the Nation, 1850-1869 , 67-69.

15. Congressional Globe , 32nd Cong., 1st sess., 1851, appendix, p. 4.

16. For discussion of the Julian bill, see Congressional Globe , 38th Cong., 2nd sess., House, February 9, 1865, pp. 684-87. Also see Swenson, "Legal Aspects of Mineral Resources Exploitation," in Gates, History of Public Land Law Development , 714-17; and Yale, Legal Titles to Mining Claims and Water Rights , 10.

17. Sparrow v. Strong , 70 U.S. 49 (1865).

18. The quote is as reprinted in Davis, Historical Sketch of the Mining Law in California , 13. Also see Russell Elliott, Servant of Power: A Political Biography of Senator William M. Stewart (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1983), 49-55.

19. Albert Hart, Mining Statutes of the United States, California and Nevada (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1877); Paul, California Gold , 231-32; Rodman W. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848-1880 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 171-72.

20. George Black, Report on the Middle Yuba Canal and Eureka Lake Canal, Nevada County, California (San Francisco: Towne & Bacon Printers, 1864), 30 (quote); Philip Ross May, Origins of Hydraulic Mining in California (Oakland: Holmes Book Co., 1970), 22; Rossiter W. Raymond, Mining Industry of the States and Territories of the Rocky Mountains (New York: J. B. Ford, 1874), 68.

21. Robert L. Kelley, Gold vs. Grain: The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in California's Central Valley (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1959), 45-46.

22. Benjamin Silliman, Reports on the Blue Tent Consolidated Hydraulic Gold Mines of California, Limited: Situate on the South Yuba River, Nevada County, California (London: D. P. Croke, 1873), 23 (quote), 37.

23. The best survey of the hydraulic mining controversy in California is still Robert Kelley's Gold vs. Grain . For a more recent summary see Duane A. Smith, Mining America: The Industry and the Environment, 1800-1980 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1987), 67-74.

24. On hydraulic mining and flood control in the nineteenth century, see Robert Kelley, Battling the Inland Sea: American Political Culture, Public Policy, & the Sacramento Valley, 1850-1986 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 67-246.

25. Woodruff v. North Bloomfield Gravel Mining Co. , 18 Fed. 753 (1884), at p. 807.

26. Kelley, Gold vs. Grain , 229-42; Donald J. Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the West, 1850-1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 162-75.

27. Paul, California Gold , 237-38; Lindley, Treatise on the American Law Relating to Mines and Mineral Lands , vol. 1, 111-12.

28. Otis E. Young, Western Mining: An Informal Account of Precious-Metals Prospecting, Placering, Lode Mining, and Milling on the American Frontier from Spanish Times to 1893 (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), 229.

29. Clark C. Spence, "Western Mining," in Historians and the American West , ed. Michael P. Malone (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 107.

30. On the nature of riparian rights, see John Norton Pomeroy, A Treatise on the Law of Water Rights (St. Paul: West Publishing, 1887), and Joseph K. Angell, A Treatise on the Law of Watercourses (Boston: Little, Brown, 1877). Also see Theodore Steinberg, Nature Incorporated: Industrialization and the Waters of New England (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), and Morton Horwitz, The Transformation of American Law, 1780-1860 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977).

31. Charles H. Shinn, Land Laws of Mining Districts (Baltimore: N. Murray, 1884), 21, 56-58; Jane Bissell Grabhorn, A California Gold Rush Miscellany (San Francisco: Grabhorn Press, 1934), facing p. 34; John S. Hittell, Mining in the Pacific States of North America (San Francisco: H. H. Bancroft and Co., 1861), 192-95; Tenth Census of the United States , vol. 14 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1885), 286, 291, 297; Hughes, "The Evolution of Mining Law," 329; John Heckendorn and W. A. Wilson, Miners & Business Men's Directory for the Year Commencing January 1 ^st , 1856 (Columbia, Calif.: Clipper Office, 1856), 9. For a case study of one extended conflict over water rights see Donald J. Pisani, "The Origins of Western Water Law," California History 70 (Fall 1991): 242-57, 324-25.

32. As quoted in Donald J. Pisani, To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy, 1848-1902 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 21.

33. Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness , 30-53; Pisani, To Reclaim a Divided West , 11-32; Douglas R. Littlefield, "Water Rights During the California Gold Rush: Conflicts over Economic Points of View," Western Historical Quarterly 14 (October 1983): 415-34.

34. For an excellent recent survey of the development of water rights in nineteenth-century California see Norris Hundley, Jr., The Great Thirst: Californians and Water, 1770s-1990s (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 63-118.

35. See, for example, Creighton v. Evans , 53 Cal. 55 (1878); Pope v. Kinman , 54 Cal. 5 (1879); and Anaheim Water Company v. Semi-Tropic Water Company , 64 Cal. 185 (1883). On water conflicts in the San Joaquin Valley during the 1870s, 1880s, and later, see Arthur Maass and Raymond L. Anderson, . . . and the Desert Shall Rejoice: Conflict, Growth, and Justice in Arid Environments (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1978), 157-274.

36. Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness , 209-49.

37. For an overview of these two systems of water law, see Robert Dunbar, Forging New Rights in Western Waters (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 59-85.

38. As quoted in Donald J. Pisani, Water, Land, & Law in the West: The Limits of Public Policy, 1850-1920 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996), 12.

39. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 169.

40. Robbins, Our Landed Heritage , 144.

41. Shinn, Land Laws of Mining Districts , 7.

42. Josiah Royce, California, form the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco: A Study of American Character (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1886). Also see Robert V. Hine Josiah Royce: From Grass Valley to Harvard (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1992).

43. Paul, California Gold , 214-15, 218, 223.

44. Hittell, Mining in the Pacific States , 212.

45. Fitzgerald v. Urton , 5 Cal. 308 (1855), at 309.

46. Harry N. Scheiber and Charles W. McCurdy, "Eminent-Domain Law and Western Agriculture, 1849-1900," Agricultural History 49 (January 1975): 112-30; McCurdy, "Stephen J. Field and Public Land Law Development in California, 1850-1866," 246, 250-51.

47. Anon., "Wants and Advantages of California," Overland Monthly 8 (April 1872): 338-47.

48. William Henry Ellison, A Self-Governing Dominion: California, 1849-1860 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), 167-91; Yale, Legal Titles to Mining Claims and Water Rights , 89-98.

49. Smith, Mining America , 3, 6, 23.

1. Edward Blair, Leadville: Colorado's Magic City (Boulder: Pruett, 1980), 6, 7, 12, and 56. In the past generation, mining historiography has come of age. It has evolved from primarily general studies of local interest to well-researched studies of state, regional, national, and finally a start has been made on international histories. Topics and themes have matured and are as unlimited as was, and is, mining's impact. A group of well-trained, enthusiastic young scholars has emerged to "prospect" the veins of mining history. The formation of the Mining History Association, preservation efforts, and new interest within the mining industry have also stirred research and writing. The result of this effort can be seen in the notes that follow.

2. For a fascinating look at mining archaeology, preservation, and history, see Death Valley to Deadwood: Kennecott to Cripple Creek (San Francisco: National Park Service, 1990). This collection of the proceedings of the 1989 Historic Mining Conference at Death Valley National Monument also contains an excellent bibliography of western mining history.

3. Clark C. Spence, The Northern Gold Fleet: Twentieth-Century Gold Dredging in Alaska (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1996), 11.

4. Jay Monaghan, Australians and the Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 223; see also chap. 12.

5. Rodman W. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West 1848-1880 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 19-29; Georgius Agricola (Georg Bauer), De re Metallica , trans. Herbert and Lou Henry Hoover (New York: Dover, 1950), vi-xv. William S. Greever, The Bonanza West (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1963; reprint, Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1990), 46-54.

6. Charles Howard Shinn, Mining Camps (reprint, New York Harper Torchbooks, 1965), 292; see also 290-95.

7. Richard A. Dwyer and Richard E. Lingenfelter, The Songs of the Gold Rush (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1964), 80.

8. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 38-39; Daniel E Marshall, "Rickard Revisited: Native 'Participation' in the Gold Discoveries of British Columbia" (unpublished paper presented at the 1996 Mining History Conference).

9. For a summary of the Comstock, see Greever, Bonanza West , Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , Dan De Quille, The Big Bonanza (originally published in 1876, numerous reprints), and H. Grant Smith, The History of the Comstock Lode (reprint, Reno: University of Nevada, 1980).

10. Smith, History of the Comstock Lode , 289. Robert W. Cherny, "City Commercial, City Beautiful, City Practical," California History 73 (Winter 1994/95): 297-300.

11. De Quille, Big Bonanza , chaps. 1-13; Smith, History of the Comstock , 19, 23-24, 37-38.

12. Smith, History of the Comstock , 30-31; Greever, Bonanza West , chaps. 4, 5.

13. Mark Twain, Roughing It (Hartford: American Publishing, 1872), 304.

14. Rossiter W. Raymond, Statistics of Mines and Mining (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1876), 471-73,475-89, 505-17; Doreen Chaky, "John Henry v. Charles Burleigh's Drill," Mining History Journal (1994): 104-7; Otis E. Young, Jr., Western Mining (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1970), chaps. 4, 5.

15. Edgar M. Kahn, Andrew Smith Hallidie (San Francisco, 1953), 10-11, 13. Hallidie is most famous for the San Francisco cable car system. Engineering & Mining Journal , June 20, 1871, p. 385, and August 22, 1903, p. 269. Otis E. Young, Jr., Black Powder and Hand Steel (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1976), 108-12.

16. David J. St. Clair, "New Almaden and California Quicksilver in the Pacific Rim Economy," California History 73 (Winter 1994/95): 279-80, 291-94.

17. Rodman W. Paul, ed., A Victorian Gentlewoman in the Far West (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1972), 11-13, 130, 186, chap. 12. For New Almaden, see Rossiter W. Raymond, Statistics of Mines and Mining (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1874), 379-81; Rossiter Raymond, Statistics of Mines and Mining (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1877), 458-59; J. Ross Browne and James W. Taylor, Reports upon the Mineral Resources (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1867), 178-86; St. Clair, "New Almaden and California Quicksilver," 278-95.

18. J. H. Curle, The Gold Mines of the World (New York: Engineering and Mining Journal, 1905), 249. Curle concluded by saying "the young Englishman, who has as high a character, and as good brains—but a bad training—wonders why he is being passed over." See also Clark Spence, Mining Engineers & The American West (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), 127.

19. Underground Latrines for Mines (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1916), 12-14.

20. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 64-67.

21. Watson Parker, Deadwood: The Golden Years (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 110-12. For the impact of other California mining men, see Richard H. Peterson's two books, The Bonanza Kings (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1977), and Bonanza Rich (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1991).

22. Smith, History of the Comstock Lode , 48-51; Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 76-79; Greever, Bonanza West , 124-30.

23. Smith, History of the Comstock Lode , 262-63.

24. Greever, Bonanza West , 117-20; Smith, History of the Comstock Lode , 107-15.

25. W. Turrentine Jackson, Treasure Hill (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1963), 151-52; Stanley W. Paher, Nevada Ghost Towns & Mining Camps (Berkeley: Howell-North, 1970), 166-72, 181-85; Russell R. Elliott, History of Nevada (Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 1973), 102-3, 105-7.

26. Russell R. Elliott, Nevada's Twentieth-Century Mining Boom (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1966), 299-302; Ronald H. Limbaugh, "Making the Most of Experience," The Mining History Journal (1994): 9-13. See also Sally Zanjani, Goldfield: The Last Gold Rush on the Western Frontier (Athens, Ohio: Swallow Press/Ohio University Press, 1992).

27. See Duane A. Smith, Colorado Mining (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1977), chaps. 1, 2; Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 111-14.

28. Thomas Marshall, ed., Early Records of Gilpin County, Colorado 1859-1861 (Boulder: W. R. Robinson, 1920), 10-16; Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 172-73; Rossiter Raymond, Statistics of Mines and Mining (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1872), 502, see also chap. 18. Charles W. Miller, Jr., Stake Your Claim! (Tucson: Westernlore Press, 1991), chaps. 2, 4; Russell R. Elliott, Servant of Power (Reno: University of Nevada Press, 1983), 55, 67-69; The Continuing Vitality of the General Mining Law (Denver: Colorado Mining Association, 1989), 2-17.

29. Marshall, Early Records of Gilpin County , 22; Carl Ubbelohde et al., A Colorado History , 7th ed. (Boulder: Pruett, 1995), 190-91.

30. Rodman W. Paul, "Colorado as a Pioneer of Science in the Mining West," Mississippi Valley Historical Review (June 1960): 34-50.

31. Stanley Dempsey and James E. Fell, Jr., Mining the Summit (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1986), 116-25; Duane A. Smith, Horace Tabor (reprint, Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1989), 118-19, 144-45; Bruce A. Woodward, Diamonds in the Salt (Boulder: Pruett Press, 1967), 22, 23, 29, 86; Clark Spence, "I Was a Stranger and Ye Took Me In," Montana Magazine (Winter 1994): 43-53; Joseph E. King, A Mine to Make a Mine (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1977), 91-97, 113-14.

32. Isaac Marcosson, Anaconda (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1957), 35-40; Watson Parker, Gold in the Black Hills (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1966), 196-97; Greever, Bonanza West , 239-40, 307-8; Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 147, 180, 185-86. For a less successful Black Hills operation, see David A. Wolff, "Mining Ground on the Fringe," Mining History Journal (1995): 15-26.

33. See Clark C. Spence, British Investments and the American Mining Frontier, 1860-1901 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1958), and W. Turrentine Jackson, The Enterprising Scots (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968).

34. J. Ross Browne, Report on the Mineral Resources of the States and Territories West of the Rocky Mountains (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1868), 517, 518-19, 522-23, 532; Merle W. Wells, Gold Camps and Silver Cities (Moscow, Idaho: Bureau of Mines, 1983), 1-24; Julia Conway Welch, Gold to Ghost Town (Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1982), 9-20. See also Ronald C. Brown, Hard-Rock Miners (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 1979). For women's contributions see Sally Zanjani, A Mine of Her Own (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1997).

35. Jeremy Mouat, Roaring Days (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1995), chaps. 1-3; Veronika Pellowski, Silver, Lead & Hell (Sandon: Prospector's Pick Publishing, 1992), 11-20; Duane A. Smith, "The Vulture Mine," Arizona and the West (Autumn 1972): 231-35; John Fahey, Hecla (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1990), 3-15.

36. Clark C. Spence, The Conrey Placer Mining Company (Helena: Montana Historical Society Press, 1989), 3-11; Spence, Northern Gold Fleet , 1-12.

37. Arthur Lakes, Jr., "Gold Dredging Practice in Placers of Breckenridge, Colorado," Mining Science 59 (January 12, 1909): 28; Spence, Northern Gold Fleet , 10-11.

38. Robert Service, The Best oaf Robert Service (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1953), 56.

39. Robert Kelley, Gold vs. Grain: The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in California's Central Valley (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1959), 57-58, 76, 240-42; Duane A. Smith, Mining America (reprint, Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1993), 67-72.

40. Smith, Mining America , 74-75; also chaps. 3, 4, 5.

41. Browne and Taylor, Reports upon the Mineral Resources , 13-36. See also Browne, Report of the Mineral Resources , 12.

42. Shinn, Mining Camps , 294-95. See also, for example, Rodman W. Paul, California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 334-41, chaps. 6, 16, 18; Laurie F. Maffly-Kipp, Religion and Society in Frontier California (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994), 184-85; Duane A. Smith, Rocky Mountain Mining Camps (reprint, Niwot: University Press of Colorado, 1992), chaps. 2, 14.

1. An unidentified Boston newspaper and Reuben Lovejoy are quoted in George H. Baker, "Records of a California Journey," Quarterly of the Society of California Pioneers 7 (December 1930): 218, 220.

2. George H. Baker, "Records of a California Residence," Quarterly of the Society of California Pioneers 8 (March 1931): 46-47, 48.

3. Joseph Schafer, ed., California Letters of Lucius Fairchild (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1931), 34. The story of the farmer, which has appeared in various versions over the years, is taken from Time-Life Books, The Forty-niners (New York: Time-Life Books, 1974), 80. Numerous examples of how the Argonauts used the phrase can be found in the Foreword to John Phillip Reid, Law for the Elephant: Property and Social Behavior on the Overland Trail (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1980), ix-x.

4. John D. Unruh, Jr., The Plains Across: The Overland Emigrants and the Trans-Mississippi West, 1840-60 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1979), 409. For Bruffs diary, richly illustrated with his drawings, most of which are at the Huntington Library, see Georgia Willis Read and Ruth Gaines, eds., Gold Rush: The Journals, Drawings, and Other Papers off Goldsborough Bruff , 2 vols. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944).

5. John Hovey, "Journal of a Voyage from Newburyport, Mass. To San Francisco, Cal., in the Brig Charlott[e]," January 23, 1849, Huntington Library. I have introduced punctuation into the passage for the benefit of the reader.

6. Charles Nahl to his father and stepmother, Sacramento, February 3, 1852, quoted in Moreland L. Stevens, Charles Christian Nahl, Artist of the Gold Rush, 1818-1878 (Sacramento: E. B. Crocker Art Gallery, 1976), 34.

7. Bayard Taylor, Eldorado, or, Adventures in the Path of Empire , 2 vols. (New York: George P. Putnam, 1850), vol. 1, 114.

8. Frank Marryat, Mountains and Molehills: or, Recollections of a Burnt Journal (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1855), 42, 45.

9. Read and Gaines, Gold Rush , vol. 2, 671.

10. William Rich Hutton, Glances at California, 1847-1853 (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1942), 11. Hutton's drawings and watercolors, together with his diaries and letters, are at the Huntington Library.

11. William McIlvaine, Jr., Sketches of Scenery and Notes of Personal Adventure, in California and Mexico (Philadelphia: Smith & Peters, Printers, 1850), 19; New York Daily Tribune , June 22, 1849.

12. Carl I. Wheat, ed., The Shirley Letters from the California Mines, 1851-1852 (New York: Knopf, 1949), 136. In November 1852, seven months after she wrote the letter quoted from, Dame Shirley noted that the thirteen men of the American Fluming Company, which had turned a branch of the Feather River out of its bed, had been rewarded with $41.70 in gold dust for their summer's labor.

13. Enos Christman, One Man's Gold: The Letters & Journals of a Forty-Niner , ed. Florence Morrow Christman (New York: Whittlesey House, 1930), 276. Dragoon Gulch was located near the mining town of Sonora.

14. Schafer, California Letters of Lucius Fairchild , 71; Christman, One Man's Gold , 179

15. William Swain and David Dewolf are quoted in J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 329, 353; A. P. Nasatir, A French Journalist in the California Gold Rush: The Letters of Etienne Derbec (Georgetown, Calif.: Talisman Press, 1964), 121.

16. Carolyn Hale Russ, ed., The Log of a Forty-Niner (Boston: B. J. Brimmer, 1923), 180.

1. Population figures are from Andrew Rolle, California: A History (Arlington Heights, Ill.: Harlan Davidson, 1987), 2, 146, 166, 241.

2. Robert Cleland and Osgood Hardy, The March of Industry (San Francisco: Powell, 1929), 36.

3. Ibid., I.

4. The Californian , May 29, 1848.

5. John S. Hittell, The Resources of California (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1879), 186.

6. Cleland and Hardy, March of Industry , 36.

7. Rolle, California , 166.

8. U.S. Department of Commerce, Historical Statistics of the United States: Colonial Times to 1970 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1975), 25.

9. John S. Hittell, The Resources of California (San Francisco: A. Roman, 1862), 304.

10. Hittell, Resources of California (1879), 183-84.

11. Ibid.

12. Ibid.

13. Ibid.

14. Ibid., 184.

15. Rolle, California , 229.

16. Earl Pomeroy, The Pacific Slope (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1965), 111.

17. Ibid., 112.

18. Ibid., 113.

19. William A. Bullough, Richard J. Orsi, and Richard B. Rice, The Elusive Eden: A New History of California (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996), 279. The role of energy shortages in deterring the development of California industry has been discussed in James C. Williams, Energy and the Making of Modern California (Akron, Ohio: University of Akron Press, 1997).

20. Cleland and Hardy, March of Industry , 134.

21. Rolle, California , 229.

22. W. H. Hutchinson, California: Two Centuries of Man, Land, and Growth in the Golden State (Palo Alto, Calif.: American West Publishing, 1969), 207.

23. Cleland and Hardy, March of Industry , 134.

24. Ibid., 133-34.

25. Gerald D. Nash, "Stages of California's Economic Growth, 1870-1970: An Interpretation," in Essays and Assays: California History Reappraised , ed. George H. Knoles (Los Angeles: Ward Ritchie Press, 1973), 39-53.

26. John W. Caughey, California: A Remarkable State's Life History (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 202.

27. Carey McWilliams, California: The Great Exception (New York: A. A. Wyn, 1949), 216.

28. Ibid.

29. Ibid., 214.

30. Census data refers to U.S. Census of Manufacturers , taken in 1850, 1860, and 1880. There was no census of manufacturing in 1870. However, manufacturing data is found in the 1870 U.S. Population Census .

31. U.S. Census of Manufacturers (1880), xii.

32. John S. Hittell, The Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast of North America (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1882), 524.

33. California Division of Mines, Geologic Guidebook of the San Francisco Bay Counties , Bulletin 154 (San Francisco: Division of Mines, 1951), 235, 238.

34. Hittell, Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast , 572-75.

35. Ibid., 435. The following discussion is from this source.

36. Ibid., 436.

37. For a discussion of private coinage in California, see Edgar H. Adams, Private Gold Coinage of California, 1849-55: Its History and Its Issues (Brooklyn: Edgar H. Adams, 1913).

38. Rodman W. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West, 1848-1880 (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), 31-32.

39. Hittell, Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast , 520-22.

40. This discussion is drawn from Bullough, Orsi, and Rice, Elusive Eden , 196. Gold dredging is also discussed in Lewis E. Aubury, Gold Dredging in California , California State Mining Bulletin No. 57 (Sacramento: California State Printing, 1910).

41. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 33.

42. Hittell, Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast , 657.

43. Ibid., 709.

44. Ibid., 707.

45. Ibid., 521.

46. Ibid., 657.

47. Ibid., 660.

48. Ibid., 658.

49. U.S. Population Census, 1870 , 760. The figures immediately following on steam engines are from this source (pp. 496-98)

50. Paul, Mining Frontiers of the Far West , 31.

51. Ibid., 31-32. The following discussion is from this source as well.

52. U.S. Census of Manufacturers (1880), xxi.

53. Nathan Rosenberg, "Technological Change in the Machine Tool Industry, 1840-1910," The Journal of Economic History 22 (December 1963): 414-43.

54. Hittell, Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast , 653.

55. Hutchinson, California , 218-19.

56. Hittell, Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast , 425-26, 668.

57. Ruth Teiser, "The Charleston: An Industrial Milestone," California Historical Society Quarterly 25 (March 1946): 39-52. The following discussion of the Union Iron Works is drawn from this source, as well as from Richard H. Dillon, Iron Men (San Francisco: Candela Press, 1984).

58. Hittell, Commerce and Industries of the Pacific Coast , 659.

59. For a similar observation about California agricultural implement producers, see McWilliams, California , 224.

60. Ibid., 221.

61. For a discussion of New Almaden and California quicksilver see David J. St. Clair, "New Almaden and California Quicksilver in the Pacific Rim Economy," California History 73 (Winter 1994/95): 278-95; Jimmie Schneider, Quicksilver: The Complete History of Santa Clara County's New Almaden Mine (San Jose, Calif.: Zella Schneider, 1992); David J. St. Clair, "California Quicksilver in the Pacific Rim Economy," in Studies in the Economic History of the Pacific Rim , ed. Sally M. Miller, A. J. H. Latham, and Dennis O. Flynn (London: Routledge, 1998), 210-33

1. The most recent and thorough survey of these debates appears in Larry Schweikart, "U.S. Commercial Banking: A Historiographical Survey," Business History Review 65 (Autumn 1991): 606-61, as well as his introduction to The Encyclopedia of American Business History and Biography: Banking and Finance to 1913 (New York: Facts on File and Bruccoli Clark Layman, 1991). Also see Benjamin J. Klebaner, American Commercial Banking: A History (Boston: Twayne, 1990), and Larry Schweikart, Banking in the American South from the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987).

2. See Timothy Hubbard and Lewis Davids, Banking in Midamerica (Washington, D.C.: Public Affairs Press, 1969), and R. S. Cole, "Early History of Money and Banking in Missouri" (M.A. thesis, University of Missouri, 1906).

3. For example, the experience of the antebellum North Carolina banks, in Schweikart, Banking in the American South , passim.

4. Earling A. Erickson, "Money and Banking in a 'Bankless' State: Iowa, 1846-1857," Business History Review 43 (Summer 1969): 171-91; Larry Schweikart, "Arkansas Antebellum Banks," Southern Studies , 26 (Fall 1987): 188-201; Joseph M. Grant and Lawrence L. Crum, The Development of State Chartered Banking in Texas (Austin: University of Texas, Bureau of Business Research, 1978).

5. Robert Glass Cleland, From Wilderness to Empire: A History of California, 1542-1900 (New York: Knopf, 1944), 240.

6. Lynne Pierson Doti and Larry Schweikart, California Bankers, 1848-1993 (New York: Guinn, 1994), 9.

7. Richard Henry Dana, Two Years Before the Mast (New York: A. L. Butt, 1840), passim.

8. Lewis E. Davids, " 'Fur' Money and Banking in the West," Journal of the West (April 1984): 7-10.

9. Dana, Two Years Before the Mast , 9.

10. Ira R. Cross, Financing an Empire: History of Banking in California , 4 vols. (Chicago: S.J. Clarke, 1927), vol. 1, 22.

11. William Heath Davis, Seventy-five Years in California , ed. Harold A. Small, 3rd ed. (San Francisco: John Howell Books, 1967).

12. Lynne Pierson Doti and Larry Schweikart, Banking in the American West: From the Gold Rush to Deregulation (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1991), 10.

13. Thomas Senior Berry, Early California: Gold, Prices, Trade (Virginia: The Bostwick Press, 1984), 78.

14. Robert J. Chandler, ''Integrity Amid Tumult: Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Gold Rush Banking," California History 70 (Fall 1991): 261. For the growth of San Francisco, in general, see Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846-1856: From Hamlet to City (1973; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), as well as J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981), 316-17.

15. See Cross, Financing an Empire , vol. 1, 125-27.

16. The Smithsonian Museum of American History displays the Polk Collection of California's privately minted coins from many of those businesses.

17. Cross, Financing an Empire , 44.

18. See Fred R. Marckhoff, "The Development of Currency and Banking in California," The Coin Collectors' Journal 15 (May-June 1948), and Benjamin Cooper Wright, Banking in California, 1849-1910 (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker, 1910), 15.

19. Cross, Financing an Empire , vol. 1, 41.

20. Ibid., 90.

21. Wells Fargo History Department, "Historical Highlights," pamphlet published by Wells Fargo Bank, 1982, 5.

22. Ibid.

23. W. Turrentine Jackson, "Wells Fargo: Symbol of the Wild West?" Western Historical Quarterly 3 (April 1972): 179-96. Also see his many articles on Wells Fargo, including "A New Look at Wells Fargo, Stagecoaches, and the Pony Express," California Historical Society Quarterly 45 (1966): 291-324; "Stages, Mails and Express in Southern California: The Role of Wells, Fargo & Co. in the Pre-Railroad Era," California Historical Society Quarterly 56 (1974): 233-72; "Wells Fargo Staging Over the Sierras," California Historical Society Quarterly 44 (1970): 99-133; and "Wells Fargo's Pony Expresses," Journal of the West 11 (1972): 412-17.

24. Lynne Pierson Doti, "D. O. Mills," in Schweikart, Encyclopedia of American Business History , 316-20.

25. These and other unorthodox methods of protecting money and valuables are discussed in Pierson Doti and Schweikart, Banking in the American West , 1-37, and Larry Schweikart, A History of Banking in Arizona (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 1982), chaps. 1-2, passim.

26. Pierson Doti and Schweikart, Banking in the American West , 39.

27. Neill Compton Wilson, 400 California Street: The Story of the Bank of California, National Association, and Its First too Years in the Financial Development of the Pacific Coast (San Francisco: Bank of California, 1964), 26, 29; Dwight L. Clarke, William Tecumseh Sherman: Gold Rush Banker (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1969), 18. Sherman's building, unlike his business, survives today.

28. A good discussion of bank architecture appears in Christopher Nelson, "Bank Architecture in the West," Journal of the West 23 (April 1984): 77-87. See also "Bank Architecture in New York," Bankers Magazine , February 1855, for an appreciation of how well in tune with recent developments on the subject California bankers were, and Philip Sawyer, "The Planning of Bank Buildings," The Architectural Review 12 (1905): 24-31, for the rationale behind the floor layout of the banks.

29. These changes are detailed in Cross, Financing an Empire , vol. 1, 86-89.

30. Ibid., 52.

31. Ibid., 58-61. Also see Pierson Doti and Schweikart, Banking in the American West , 39.

32. J. Ross Browne, "Report on the Debates of the Convention of California on the Formation of the Constitution in September and October, 1849" (Washington, D.C., 1850), 108-36. Also see David Alan Johnson, Founding the Far West: California, Oregon and Nevada, 1840-1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992), 122-25.

33. By that time, the evidence on free banking in Scotland was abundant, but the experiments in the United States were still ongoing. See Lawrence H. White, Free Banking in Britain: Theory, Experience, and Debate, 1800-1845 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1984); "Scottish Banking and the Legal Restrictions Theory: A Closer Look," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 22 (November 1990): 526-36, and, with George Selgin, "The Evolution of a Free Banking System," Economic Inquiry 25 (July 1987): 439-58; as well as Donald R. Wells and L. S. Scruggs, ''Historical Insights into the Deregulation of Banking," CATO Journal 5 (Winter 1986): 899-910. Several states had used general incorporation laws to establish "free banks" that had limited liability but that relied on bond deposit with the secretary of state to ensure that noteholders were reimbursed if an unscrupulous owner left town with the banks capital. Several articles by Arthur J. Rolnick and Warren Weber show that the culprit in most free bank failures was faulty drafting of the laws that did not specify market value of bonds, only par value, making it possible for an unscrupulous owner to take advantage of plunges in the prices of bonds the bank had on reserve with the secretary of state. See their "Banking Instability and Regulation in the U.S. Free Banking Era," Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review (Summer 1985): 2-9; "Free Banking, Wildcat Banking, and Shinplasters," Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Quarterly Review (Fall 1982): 10-19; "New Evidence on the Free Banking Era," American Economic Review (Fall 1981): 1-17; "Inherent Instability in Banking; the Free Bank Experience," CATO Journal 5 (December 1983): 1080-91; "The Causes of Free Bank Failures," Journal of Monetary Economics 14 (November 1984): 267-91; and "Explaining the Demand for Free Bank Notes," Journal of Monetary Economics 21 (January 1988): 47-71. Others have challenged elements of their hypothesis, but the structure still remains intact. See Kenneth Ng, "Free Banking Laws and Barriers to Entry in Banking, 1838-1860," Journal of Economic History 48 (December 1988): 877-89; Hugh Rockoff, "Lessons from the American Experience with Free Banking," Cambridge, Mass.: National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper No. 9, Series on Historical Factors in Long-Run Growth, 1989; Andrew Economopolous, "Free Bank Failures in New York and Wisconsin: A Portfolio Analysis," Explorations in Economic History 27 (October 1990): 421-41, "The Free Banking Period: A Period of Deregulation?" New York Economic Review 17 (1987): 24-31, "Illinois Free Banking Experience," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking 20 (May 1988): 249-64, and his "The Impact of Reserve Requirements on Free Bank Failures," Atlantic Economic Journal 14 (December 1986): 76-84.

34. Quoted in Cross, Financing an Empire , 101.

35. Ibid., 183.

36. Ibid., 177.

37. Clarke, William Tecumseh Sherman , 17.

38. Ibid., 69-70.

39. Cecil G. Tilton, William Chapman Ralston: Courageous Builder (Boston: Christopher Publishing House, 1935); David Lavender, Nothing Seemed Impossible: William C. Ralston and Early San Francisco (Palo Alto, Calif.: American West Publishing Co., 1975); and Lynne Pierson Doti, "William Chapman Ralston," in Schweikart, Encyclopedia of American Business History , 398-408.

40. Pierson Doti, "D. O. Mills," 316-20.

41. James Joseph Hunter, Partners in Progress, 1864-1950: A Brief History of the Bank of California N.A. & of the Region It Has Served for 85 Years (New York: Newcomen Society in North America, 1950).

42. George D. Lyman, Ralston's Ring: California Plunders the Comstock Lode (New York: Scribner's, 1937), 56.

43. For material on the southern branch banking system, and branching in general, see Schweikart, Banking in the American South ; Charles Calomiris and Larry Schweikart, "The Panic of 1857: Origins, Transmission, and Containment," Journal of Economic History 51 (December 1991): 807-34, and their "Was the South Backward? North-South Differences in Antebellum Banking during Normalcy and Crisis," Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Working Paper, 1988; John Martin Chapman and Ray B. Westerfield, Branch Banking, Its Historical and Theoretical Position in America and Abroad (New York: Harper and Row, 1942); Gary C. Gilbert and William Longbrake, "The Effects of Branching by Financial Institutions on Competition Productive Efficiency and Stability: An Examination of the Evidence,'' Journal of Bank Research 4 (Winter 1974): 298-307; Paul M. Horwitz and Bernard Schull, "The Impact of Branch Banking on Bank Performance," The National Banking Review 11 (December 1974): 143-89; Shirley Donald Southworth, Branch Banking in the United States (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1928); and Eugene N. White, The Regulation and Rearm of the American Banking System, 1900-1929 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983).

44. Material on Hellman appears in Robert Cleland and Frank Putnam, Isaias Hellman and the Farmers' and Merchants' Bank (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1965), and Michael Konig, "Isaias W. Hellman," in Schweikart, Encyclopedia of American Business History , 249-60.

45. Walton Bean, California: An Interpretive History (New York: McGraw Hill, 1968), 205.

46. Lynne Pierson Doti, Banking in an Unregulated Environment: California, 1878-1905 (New York: Garland, 1995), 35.

47. Ibid.

48. See Lavender, Nothing Seemed Impossible , 170.

49. Wright, Banking in California , 51.

50. For a social-choice interpretation of the gold banks, see Robert L. Greenfield and Hugh Rockoff, "Yellowbacks Out West and Greenbacks Back East: Social-Choice Dimensions of Monetary Reform," Southern Economic Journal 62 (April 1996): 902-15.

51. For an assessment of the relative ineffectiveness of branching in some other states during the 1920s, see Charles Calomiris, "Is Deposit Insurance Necessary? A Historical Perspective," Journal of Economic History 50 (June 1990): 283-295, and his "Deposit Insurance: Lessons from the Record," Economic Perspectives (May-June 1989): 10-30. Also see Larry Schweikart, "A New Perspective on George Wingfield and Nevada Banking, 1920-1933," Nevada Historical Quarterly 35 (Winter 1992): 162-76.

1. Ellen Liebman, California Farmland: A History of Large Agricultural Landholdings (Totowa, N.J.: Roman and Allanheld, 1983), 1-28; Lawrence J. Jelinek, Harvest Empire: A History of California Agriculture , 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser, 1982), 23-38; Richard J. Orsi, comp., A List of References for the History of Agriculture in California (Davis, Calif.: Agricultural History Center, 1974); Rodman W. Paul, "The Beginnings of Agriculture in California: Innovation vs. Continuity," California Historical Quarterly 52 (1973): 16-27; Ralph J. Roske, Everyman's Eden: A History of California (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 391-412; Paul W. Gates, ed., California Ranchos and Farms, 1846-1862, Including the Letters of John Quincy Adams Warren of 1861 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin Press, 1967); Osgood Hardy, "Agricultural Changes in California, 1860—1900," in American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, Proceedings (1929): 216-30; Robert Glass Cleland and Os-good Hardy, March of Industry (Los Angeles: Powell, 1929), 36-130; and E. J. Wickson, Rural California (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 60-207.

2. James M. Jensen, "Cattle Drives from the Ranchos to the Gold Fields of California," Arizona and the West 2 (1960): 341-52.

3. L.T. Burcham, California Range Land: An Historico-Ecological Study of the Range Resource of California , University of California Center for Archaelogical Research at Davis, Publication No. 7 (Davis, 1982), 118—61.

4. Albert Camarillo, Chicanos in a Changing Society from Mexican Pueblos to American Barrios in Santa Barbara and Southern California, 1848-1930 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1979), 33-52, and Leonard Pitt, The Decline of the Californios: A Social History of the Spanish-Speaking Californians, 1846-1890 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966), 83-129.

5. Richard B. Rice, William A. Bullough, and Richard J. Orsi, The Elusive Eden: A New History of California (New York: Knopf, 1988), 204-13, and John Caughey with Norris Hundleyley, Jr., California: History of a Remarkable State , 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1982), 135-38.

6. John S. Hittell, The Resources of California (San Francisco: A. Roman, 1863), 453-61; Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California , vol. 6: 1848-1859 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1888), 529-81; Josiah Royce, California, From the Conquest in 1846 to the Second Vigilance Committee in San Francisco (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, 1892), 466-501; Robert Glass Cleland, The Cattle on a Thousand Hills: Southern California, 1850-1870 (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1941), 46-71; Pitt, Decline of the Californios , 83-119, 282-84; and John W. Caughey, California:A Remarkable State's Life History , 3rd ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970), 242-55.

7. Paul W. Gates, "Adjudication of Spanish-Mexican Land Claims in California," Huntington Library Quarterly 21 (1958): 213-36; Gates, "California's Embattled Settlers," California Historical Society Quarterly 41 (1962): 99-130; and Gates, "Pre-Henry George Land Warfare in California," California Historical Society Quarterly 46 (1967): 121-48.

8. Robert Glass Cleland, The Irvine Ranch , 3rd ed. (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1978), passim; Theodore Saloutos, "The Immigrant in Pacific Coast Agriculture, 1880-1940," in Agriculture in the Development of the Far West , ed. James H. Shideler (Washington: Agricultural History Society, 1975), 182-201; and John W. Caughey, "Don Benito Wilson," Huntington Library Quarterly 2 (1939): 285-300.

9. Paul W. Gates, "Public Land Disposal in California," Agricultural History 44 (1975): 158-78.

10. Donald J. Pisani, From the Family Farm to Agribusiness: The Irrigation Crusade in California and the Wst, 1850-1931 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 1-77.

11. Excerpts from Chapman's letter to the San Francisco Evening Bulletin are reprinted in Gerald D. Nash, "Henry George Reexamined: William S. Chapman's Views on Land Speculation in Nineteenth Century California," Agricultural History 33 (1959): 133-37; the letter appears on pp. 135-37. Also see Nash, "Problems and Projects in the History of Nineteenth Century California Land Policy," Atrizona and the West 2 (1960): 327-40.

12. Edward F. Treadwell, The Cattle King: A Dramatized Biography (New York: Macmillan, 1931), 59.

13. Robert L. Kelley, Gold vs. Grain: The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in California's Sacramento Valley (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1959), 57-84.

14. For a discussion of Chinese farmers, see Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860-1910 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), 79-105; and Ping Chiu, Chinese Labor in California, 1850-1880: An Economic Study (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963), 67-88.

15. Vincent P. Carosso, The California Wine Industry, 1830-1895: A Study of the Formative Years (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 38-48, and Joan M. Donohue, "Agoston Haraszthy: A Study in Creativity," California Historical Society Quarterly 48 (1969): 153-63.

16. Caughey, California , 201-2.

1. The only general history of California transportation is Rockwell Dennis Hunt and William Sheffield Ament, Oxcart to Airplane (Los Angeles: Powell, 1929); it is engagingly written but thinly documented. H. Wilbur Hoffman, Sagas of Old Western Travel and Transport (San Diego: Howell-North, 1980), is well illustrated, readable, accurate, and enlivened with invented conversations; its scope is broader in time and space than this essay, but gold-rush California is included. Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California, 7 vols. (1886-1890; reprint, Santa Barbara: Wallace Hebberd, 1970), weaves gold-rush transportation through other material in vols. 6 and 7; the only good index is Everett Gordon Hager and Anna Marie Hager, The Zamorano Index to 'History of California" by Hubert Howe Bancroft , 2 vols. (Los Angeles: University of Southern California, 1985). James D. Hart, Companion to California , rev. ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), is encyclopedic. Topical maps accompanied by well-researched text are in Warren A. Beck and Inez D. Haase, Historical Atlas of California (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1974). R. N. Preston, Early California Atlas Northern Edition and Early California Atlas Southern Edition (Portland: Binford and Mort, 1974) enable the reader to trace wagon roads and stagecoach routes with a magnifying glass, eyestrain, and some imagination.

2. T.H. Watkins, "The Revoloidal Spindle and the Wondrous Avitor," American West 4 (February 1967), and Kenneth Johnson, Aerial California (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1961).

3. Jessie Davies Francis, An Economic and Social History of Mexican California, 1822-1846 , vol. 1: Chiefly Economic (New York: Arno Press, 1976), 509-77, 713-41; Alfred Robinson, Life in California (1846; reprint, Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, 1970), 55-60; John Bidwell, "Life in California before the Gold Discovery," Century 61 (December 1890): 171.

4. John Haskell Kemble, The Panama Route (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943; reprint, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1999), chap. 7; James P. Delgado, To California by Sea: A Maritime History of the Gold Rush (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1990), chap. 2.

5. Ibid., 166-78.

6. John Haskell Kemble, "A Hundred Years of Pacific Mail," American Neptune 10 (April 1950): 130. For a biography of Pacific Mail founder William Aspinwall, see Col. Duncan S. Somerville, The Aspinwall Empire (Mystic, Conn.: Mystic Seaport Museum, 1983).

7. Kemble, Panama Route , 53-54, 116-21, app. I.

8. Ibid., 121-24, 156-63.

9. Ibid., 147-53.

10. Ibid., 134-39.

11. Kemble, "A Hundred Years," 126-29; Kemble, Panama Route , 86-87, chap. 3; David I. Folkman, Jr., The Nicaragua Route (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1972).

12. Lack of charts increased the hazards of navigation. Spanish coastal charts were unavailable to Americans; U.S. Coast Survey charts began appearing in 1855, and the first edition of the Coast Pilot was published in 1858, but the federal government was unwilling to chart foreign coasts on the Panama route. Oscar Lewis, George Davidson: Pioneer West Coast Scientist (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1954), 48-51; Kemble, "A Hundred Years," 127, 133-34, 143-44.

13. Kemble, Panama Route , 148, 174-75,197, apps. 2, 3; Kemble, "A Hundred Years," 131 ff.; Folkman, Nicaragua Route , app. B; Oscar Osburn Winther, Express and Stagecoach Days in California (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1936), 69-70.

14. In a sense, gold-rush demand returned California to a hunter-gatherer food economy, but on an international scale. Lary M. Dilsaver, "Food Supply for the California Gold Rush," California Geographer 23 (1983).

15. Delgado, To California by Sea , 43-44; Roger W. Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846-1856: From Hamlet to City (New York: Oxford University Press, 1974), 10-11, 49, 57, 73-74, 166-69 , 172-73, 178, 181; Harold Kirker, California's Architectural Frontier (Santa Barbara: Peregrine Smith, 1973), 38-39, 79.

16. Sherwood D. Burgess, "The Forgotten Redwoods of the East Bay," California Historical Society Quarterly 30 (March 1951), and Frank M. Stanger, Sawmills in the Redwoods: Logging on the San Francisco Peninsula, 1849-1967 (San Mateo, Calif.: San Mateo County Historical Association, 1967). For North Coast lumbering, see Lynwood Carranco, Redwood Lumber Industry (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West, 1982); the gold-rush period is covered in chaps. 9, 11. Lynwood Carranco and John T. Labbe, Logging the Redwoods (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton, 1979), covers the same material but in less detail and without documentation. The Pacific Northwest furnished about 60 percent of San Francisco's lumber by 1860; two regional histories of lurebering are Thomas R. Cox, Mills and Markets : A History of the Pacific Coast Lumber Business to 1900 (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1974), and Edwin T. Co-man, Jr., and Helen M. Gibbs, Tide, Time and Timber: A Century of Pope and Talbot (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1949).

17. The dangers of the Humboldt Bar and historic efforts to tame it are described in Susan Pritchard O'Hara and Gregory Graves, Saving California's Coast (Spokane: Arthur H. Clark, 1991). For the hazards of navigating the Mendocino coast, see Karl Kortum and Roger Olmsted, "' . . . it is a dangerous looking place': Sailing Days on the Redwood Coast," California Historical Quarterly 50 (March 1971).

18. Thomas R. Cox, "Single Decks and Flat Bottoms: Building the West Coast's Lumber Fleet, 1850-1929," Journal of the West 20 (July 1981): 66-69; Coman and Gibbs, Time, Tide and Timber , 179-80; Carranco, Redwood Lumber Industry, 105 ; Kortum and Olmsted, " . . . it is a dangerous looking place," 43-45; Cox, Mills and Markets , 150-55.

19. Carl Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea (Annapolis: U.S. Naval Institute, 1930); app. 7 shows hull lines and sail plans. K. Jack Bauer, A M aritime History of the United States (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1988), 89-92; Raymond A. Rydell, Cape Horn to the Pacific (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952), 134-40, chaps. 7, 8. For crews, see Delgado, To California by Sea , 97-99; Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea , 186, 222-23; Bauer, A Maritime History , 91; Rydell, Cape Horn , 148.

20. Frances Leigh Williams, Matthew Fontaine Maury: Scientist of the Sea (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1963), chap. 10; Cutler, Greyhounds of the Sea , 108, 217-19, 243-44, 259-61.

21. The last clipper was built in 1857, and few survived more than ten years of hard sailing because the leverage of wind against masts and braces damaged their hulls; Rydell, Cape Horn , 141, n. 26. The California grain trade began in the 1860s but reached its peak in the 1880s, well after the Gold Rush; Rodman W. Paul, "The Wheat Trade between California and the United Kingdom," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45 (December 1958). Iron hulls were lighter, roomier, drier, and cheaper to insure, but America built few of them; Bauer, A Maritime History , 241-42, 256-58.

22. Early rivals for San Francisco's trade included Benicia and Vallejo; Lotchin, San Francisco, 1846-1856 , 31-39; for the growth of San Francisco's infrastructure see ibid., 41-44, 76, 236, and Delgado, To California by Sea , chap. 3. For patterns of bay and river transportation development, see Mel Scott, The San Francisco Bay Area: A Metropolis in Perspective , 2nd ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), and Joseph A. Mcgowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , 3 vols. (New York: Lewis, 1961. Also see Thor Severson, Sacramento, 1839 to 1874: An Illustrated History from Sutter's Fort to Capital City (n.p.: California Historical Society, 1973). For tonnages, Mcgowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 63-67, 74, 79-82; Severson, Sacramento, 1839 to 1874 , 169; Bancroft, History of California , vol. 7, 466.

23. Firsthand accounts of early trips upriver are in Elisha Oscar Crosby, Memoirs: Reminiscences of California and Guatemala, 1849-1864 , ed. Charles Albro Barker (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1945), 19-20; Adolphus Windeler, California Gold Rush Diary of a German Sailor , ed. W. Turrentine Jackson (Berkeley: Howell-North, 1969), 14, 28-31; Bayard Taylor, E1 Dorado, or Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850; reprint, New York: Knopf, 1949), 163. Before mining debris shoaled the rivers, ships drawing as much as ten feet could sail directly to Sacramento and Stockton, where many were recycled as improvised wharves and buildings; Severson, Sacramento, 1839 to 1874 , 50-55, 66, 75, 77, 84-87, 90-91; George P. Hammond, The Weber Era in Stockton History (Berkeley: Friends of the Bancroft Library, 1982), 94-95, 108.

24. A well-researched photographic essay with a strong text is Roger R. Olmsted, Square-Toed Packets: Scow Schooners of San Francisco Bay (Cupertino: California History Center, 1988); an introductory chapter describes the beginnings of navigation on the Sacramento River.

25. Jerry MacMullen, Paddlewheel Days in California (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1944); 19-21, 24-32, 68-71; detailed appendices list boats, river ports, and distances. See also Bancroft, History of California , vol. 7, 466.

26. MacMullen, Paddlewheel Days , 19-23; Mcgowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 303.

27. John Haskell Kemble, "The Senator," California Historical Quarterly 16 (Part 1, 1932), and also his " Chrysopolis : The Queen of the Golden River," American Neptune 2 (October 1942); MacMullen, Paddlewheel Days , 35, 51-52. For a firsthand account of a trip to Stockton, see "The Great Yo-Semite Valley,'' Hutchings' California Magazine 4 (October 1859), reprinted in Roger Olmsted, ed., Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity (Berkeley: Howell-North, 1962). A well-researched photographic essay of the upriver boats, including construction details, is Edward Galland Zelinsky and Nancy Leigh Olmsted, "Upriver Boats—When Red Bluff Was the Head of Navigation," California History 64 (Spring 1985): 86-117.

28. Zelinsky and Olmsted, "Upriver Boats," 106-8. An evocative, firsthand account of the river landings is in Captain John Leale, Recollections of a Tule Sailor (San Francisco: George Fields, 1939), 46—51 Navigation on the upper Sacramento, Mcgowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 78-81. For navigation on the San Joaquin and the lower Mokelumne, see MacMullen, Paddlewheel Days , chap. 11; app., 144-45. The silting problem was attributed to hydraulic mining; Robert Kelley, Gold vs. Grain: The Hydraulic Mining Controversy in California's Sacramento Valley (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1959) is an exhaustive political analysis; his Battling the Inland Sea: American Political Culture, Public Policy, and the Sacramento Valley, 1850-1986 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989) places the silting controversy in the broader context of ongoing attempts to control flooding.

29. A firsthand account is "Packing in the Mountains of California," Hutchings' California Magazine 1 (December 1856), reprinted in Olmsted, Scenes of Wonder . Details of the Army's adaptation of the aparejo are thoroughly illustrated in H. W. Daly, Manual of Pack Transportation (1916; reprint, Santa Monica, Calif.: Quail Ranch, 1981), chap. 7. See also McGowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 88-89, 99.

30. "Packing in the Mountains," 117.

31. A scholarly but readable work that includes regional history, road, bridge, and ferry development south from Stockton is Irene Paden and Margaret Schlichtman, The Big Oak Flat Road to Yosemite (Oakland: Holmes Book Co., 1959). An article focused on the alignments of roads radiating from Stockton and the development of ferry crossings is Thor Breton, "The Old Mariposa Road," The Far Westerner 11 (April 1966); the journal is the publication of the Stockton Corral of Westerners. The road network centered on Shasta City is in part 3 of W. H. Colby, A Century of Transportation in Shasta County, 1821-1920 (n.p.: Association for Northern California Records and Research, 1982). For Marysville and northern Sierra roads, see Ernest Wiltsee, The Pioneer Miner and the Pack Mule Express (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1931). For evolution of roads, McGowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 18, 49, 79, 101, 112. County road appropriations were sometimes minimal (Colby, Shasta County , 28-29), but Sonoma, Napa, and Alameda counties levied taxes for road construction and created a network of roads around San Francisco Bay (Scott, Bay Area , 40-41). A cut through solid rock at San Fernando Pass in Los Angeles County was financed with a mixture of public and private funds; Vernette Snyder Ripley, "San Fernando Pass and the Traffic that Went over It, Part 2," The Quarterly of the Historical Society of Southern California 29 (September-December 1947), and "Part 3," 30 (March 1948). Also see John W. Robinson, "The Taming of San Fernando Pass,'' The Branding Iron 208 (Summer 1997); the journal is published by the Los Angeles Corral of Westerners. The gold-rush wagon road network is charted in Beck and Haase, Historical Atlas of California , map 51. Contemporary photographs showing cuts, fills, and hairpin turns are in Irving Wills, "The Jerk Line Team," The Westerners Brand Book Nine (n.p.: Los Angeles Corral of Westerners, 1961). For snow-plowing, see Lyndall Baker Landauer, The Mountain Sea (Honolulu: Flying Cloud, 1996), 70, and Colby, Shasta County, 37 . For number of bridges, see Bancroft, History of California , vol. 7, 143n. For width of roads, see McGowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 48; rules of the road, 48. For tuned bells, see Wills, "Jerk Line Team," 51-52.

32. For a firsthand description of ferry construction and operation, see Samuel Ward, Sam Ward in the Gold Rush , ed. Carvel Collins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1949), 121-29. Kramer Adams, Covered Bridges of the West (Berkeley: Howell-North, 1963), 13-20, and Colby, Shasta County , 21-24, 61-62.

33. McGowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 89; Hoffman, Sagas , 46-47, 61, and Wills, "Jerk Line Team," 33, 38-46, 55. Wagon running gear is depicted with wonderful clarity in Nick Eggenhofer, Wagons, Mules and Men: How the Frontier Moved (New York: Hastings, 1961), 38-42; California freight wagons were not the Conestogas that Eggenhofer illustrates and discusses, but the wheels and running gear were constructed on the same principles.

34. For trans-Sierra emigrant roads, see George R. Stewart, California Trail: An Epic with Many Heroes (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1962); 206-7, 304-6, and map, 300; and Stewart Mitchell, "Crossing the Sierra," California Highways and Public Works 29, nos. 9-10 (1949). For a trans-Sierra road that became important in Chico's development see Anita L. Chang, The Historical Geography of the Humboldt Wagon Road (Chico: Association for Northern California Records and Research, 1992). An excellent geographical study of trans-Sierra roads is Thomas Frederick Howard, Sierra Crossing (Berkeley: University, of California Press, 1998).

35. For a thorough account of trans-Sierra road surveys, see Chester Lee White, "Surmounting the Sierra," Quarterly of the California Historical Society 7 (March 1928); Mitchell, "Crossing the Sierra," 61, has a detailed and annotated but difficult map showing how the Placerville-Lake Tahoe road evolved. In 1857, federal legislation appropriated money for three wagon roads to the California boundary: one to Honey Lake, another along the 35th parallel to the Mojave River, and a third to Yuma. For Pacific wagon road legislation, see W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West (New Haven:' Yale University Press, 1964; reprint, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979), 161-74. Tolls and freight charges, Bancroft, History of California , vol. 7, 541. Road construction is treated briefly in Francis P. Farquhar, History of the Sierra Nevada (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965), chap. 11. Farquhar's book is a good regional history; so is Landauer, Mountain Sea . See also Edward B. Scott, The Saga of Lake Tahoe (Crystal Bay: Sierra Tahoe, 1956), 364-72. The Placerville, Humboldt, and Salt Lake Telegraph Company strung its wires along the Placerville Road to reach Carson City in 1858 and Salt Lake City in 1861; for an overview of northern California telegraph construction, see McGowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 167-70.

36. Mercantilist urban rivalries stimulated road building but hindered railroad construction; see Ward McAfee, California's Railroad Era, 1850-1911 (San Marino, Calif.: Golden West, 1973), chaps. 3, 4, 5. For the Dutch Flat wagon road, see McAfee, California's Railroad Era , 61, and John Hoyt Williams, A Great and Shining Road (New York: Times Books, 1988), 59-60, 91, 135.

37. Winther, Express and Stagecoach Days is well documented and readable. His Via Western Express and Stagecoach (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1945) is a more popular treatment, without scholarly apparatus. A handsomely illustrated philatelic treatment of the gold-rush expresses is L. Coburn, Leaves of Gold (Canton: U.S. Philatelic Classics Society, 1984); Wiltsee, Pioneer Miner , has a similar focus. There is a good discussion of the one-man express companies in Winther, Express and Stagecoach Days , chap. 1. On snowshoes, see Landauer, Mountain Sea , 66-67.

38. Robert J. Chandler, "Integrity Amid Tumult: Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Gold Rush Banking," California History 70 (Fall 1991); Winther, Express and Stagecoach Days , 42-48, 51-75; for the causes and course of the panic of 1855, chap. 4. See also Edward Hungerford, Wells Fargo: Advancing the American Frontier (New York: Random House, 1949) and Noel D. Loomis, Wells Fargo: An Illustrated History (New York: Bramhall House, 1968), which is mostly text, despite the title, and well documented. For Wells Fargo first-class mail service, see Wiltsee, Pioneer Miner , chap. 9.

39. Winther, Express and Stagecoach Days , 91-96, 158-60. Captain William Banning and George Hugh Banning, Six Horses (New York: Century, 1930), 47; Harlan Boyd, Stagecoach Heyday in the San Joaquin Valley (Bakersfield: Kern County Historical Society, 1983), 16-18, 35-36, 44-46, 48; maps, xii, 17. See also McGowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 87-89, 93, and Bancroft, History of California , vol. 7, 151, and n. 46.

40. W. Turrentine Jackson, "A New Look at Wells Fargo, Stagecoaches, and the Pony Express," California Historical Society Quarterly 45 (December 1966), and also his "Wells Fargo Staging over the Sierra," California Historical Society Quarterly 49 (June 1970). These articles are in part refutations of Waddell Smith, "Stage Lines and Express Companies in California," The Far Westerner 6 (January 1965). Smith argues that Wells Fargo never operated its own stagecoaches in California and did not operate the Pony Express; Jackson is convincing.

41. LeRoy R. Hafen, The Overland Mail, 1849-1869 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1926; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1969) is a classic account that includes the ocean mail, the Butterfield Overland Mail, the Pony Express, and the complex history of the central route. Ralph Moody, Stagecoach West (n.p.: Promontory Press, 1967) is engagingly written and quotes primary sources, but needs to be read with some caution for accuracy. Another classic work is Roscoe P. Conkling and Margaret B. Conkling, The Butterfield Overland Mail, 1857-1869 , 3 vols. (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1947); vol. 3 is the atlas. The Overland's reliability reflects its interlocking directorate with Wells Fargo, which underwrote the initial cost; Jackson, "A New Look at Wells Fargo," 295-303. Omitting the dogleg to Los Angeles would have been shorter and easier, but Angelenos anxious for better service underwrote the extra expense; Ripley, "San Fernando Pass, Part 3," 43-45. A journalist's firsthand account of the first trip west on the Overland Mail is Waterman L. Ormsby, The Butterfield Overland Mail , ed. Lyle H. Wright and Josephine Bynum (San Marino, Calif.: Huntington Library, 1942).

42. Charles Outland, Stagecoaching on El Camino Real.' Los Atngeles to San Francisco, 1861-1901 (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1973) is opinionated, exhaustive, and carefully documented. Outland argues persuasively, against other sources, that there was no staging over the coast route prior to 1861, chap. 1; for development of the route, chaps. 3, 4, 5. See also Walker Tompkins, Stagecoach Days in Santa Barbara County (Santa Barbara: McNally & Loftin, West, 1982). For an account of the dangers of contemporary travel along the central coast, see J. Ross Browne, At Dangerous Journey (1862; Palo Alto: Arthur Lites, 1950). For San Diego staging see Richard F. Pourade, The Silver Dons (San Diego: Union-Tribune, 1963), 172, and also his The Glory Years (San Diego: Union Tribune, 1964), 46-49.

43. Hafen, Overland Mail , 110-13, 169-87. The Central Overland and California Pike's Peak was overextended even before it undertook the expense of the Pony Express, and was soon auctioned to stagecoaching magnate Ben Holladay (pp. 227-28). Holladay in turn sold all of his stagecoaching operations to Wells Fargo in 1866 (p. 319). For other pony expresses within California, see Jackson, "A New Look at Wells Fargo," 317.

44. Winther, Express and Stagecoach Days , 81-86. For Concord coach and mud wagon anatomy, see Eggenhofer, Wagons, Mules and Men , 145-76.

45. Banning and Banning, Six Horses , 361-73.

46. Firsthand accounts of stage travel are in "A Stage Incident," Hutchings' California Magazine 3 (July 1958), reprinted in Olmsted, Scenes of Wonder , 236; McGowan, History of the Sacramento Valley , vol. 1, 93; Winther, Express and Stagecoach Days , 83, 102-5; Banning and Banning, Six Horses , 29-30, 31-32 and n.2; and Boyd, Stagecoach Heyday , 22, 40.

47. Three good southern California regional histories that discuss transportation are Joseph S. O'Flaherty, An End and a Beginning: The South Coast and Los Atngeles, 1850-1887 (Jericho: Exposition-Lochinvar, 1972), Henry P. Silka, San Pedro: At Pictorial History (n.p.: San Pedro Bay Historical Society, 1984), and George William Beattie and Helen Truitt Beattie, Heritage of the Valley (Pasadena, Calif.: San Pasqual, 1939). The Beatties' book is a history of the San Bernardino area. For San Diego, see Pourade's Silver Dons and Glory Years . Harris Newmark, Sixty Years in Southern California , 4th ed. (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1984) is a detailed but not always accurate reminiscence first published in 1916; W. W. Robinson's informed notes are an asset to the fourth edition. Robert Glass Cleland, "Transportation in California before the Railroads, with Especial Reference to Los Angeles," Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California 11 (Part 1, 1918); Frank Rolfe, "Early Day Los Angeles: A Great Wagon Train Center," Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 35 (December 1953); and W. Turrentine Jackson, "Stages, Mails and Express in Southern California: The Role of Wells, Fargo & Co. in the Pre-Railroad Period," Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 56 (Fall 1974). Ripley, "San Fernando Pass,'' and Robinson, "Taming of San Fernando Pass," are also relevant here. Milton R. Hunter, "Via Mormon Corridor," Pacific Historical Review 8 (June 1939) puts the corridor into the larger picture of Mormon history; a firsthand account with a good introductory essay is William B. Rice, "Early Freighting on the Salt Lake-San Bernardino Trail," Pacific Historical Review 7 (1937).

48. Silka, San Pedro , 22-29, 30-31; Rolfe, "Early Day Los Angeles," 306-7. John W. Robinson, Southern California's First Railroad (Los Angeles: Dawson's Book Shop, 1978).

49. Hunter, "Via Mormon Corridor," 184, 188-92, 198-99; Rolfe, "Early Day Los Angeles," 310-13; Jackson, Wagon Roads West , 140-41; Beattie and Beattie, Heritage of the Valley , 335-37, 400.

50. Military supply routes are in Rolfe, "Early Day Los Angeles," 314-15; for the Bradshaw road, see Beattie and Beattie, Heritage of the Valley , 398-400; for more detail, see Francis J. Johnston, The Bradshaw Trail (Riverside, Calif.: Riverside Parks Department, 1987). Johnston loves his subject, but his speculations need to be treated with caution.

51. As transportation history, the camels are colorful rather than significant. For the Army's camel experiment, see Harlan D. Fowler, Camels to California (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1950); Fowler's sequel, Three Caravans to Yuma: The Untold Story of Bactrian Cameh in the West (Glendale, Calif.: Arthur H. Clark, 1980) describes the civilian experiment. See also A. A. Gray, "Camels in California," Quarterly of the California Historical Society 9 (December 1930), and Deane Robertson and Peggy Robertson, Camels in the West (Sacramento: Arcade House, 1979). For contemporary enthusiasm for camels, see "The Bactrian Camel," Hutchings' California Magazine 5 (November 1860), reprinted in Olmsted, Scenes of Wonder , 335.

52. Scott, Bay Area , 46-47, and Robert A. Ford, Red Trains in the East Bay (Glendale, Calif.: Interurbans, 1977), chaps. 1, 2.

1. Howard R. Lamar, "Coming into the Mainstream at Last: Comparative Approaches to the American West," Journal of the West 35 (October 1996): 4. The literature on the California Gold Rush is extensive. Two excellent recent works stressing social aspects include Malcolm J. Rohrbough, Days of Gold: The California Gold Rush and the American Nation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), and David Goodman, Gold Seeking: Victoria and California in the 1850s (St. Leonards, New South Wales, 1994). An older factual account is Rodman W. Paul, California Gold.' The Beginning of Mining in the Far West (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1947).

2. Inexplicably, a definitive history of the California economy or business remains to be written. More than one hundred years ago Hubert Howe Bancroft compiled much useful detail. Material in this paragraph is taken from Hubert Howe Bancroft, History of California , vol. 7 (San Francisco: The History Company, 1890), 94-97. Older useful compendia are John S. Hittell, The Resources of California (San Francisco: A. Roman, 1863), and Robert G. Cleland, The Cattle on a Thousand Hills (San Marino: Huntington Library, 1941), 157-83.

3. Bancroft, California , vol. 7,76-78; H. Brett Melendy, "One Hundred Years of the Redwood Lumber Industry," (Ph.D. diss., Stanford University, 1952), chap. 1.

4. Bancroft, California , vol. 7, 84.

5. Ibid., 79-80, 315; see also Edwin Corle, John Studebaker, An American Dream (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1948).

6. Among original sources see San Francisco Chronicle , February 11, 1872, "Our Solid Merchants: The Immense Establishment of Levi Strauss and Company," and San Francisco Bulletin , October 12, 1895, which reports on an interview with Strauss. See also Art Roth, "The Levi's Story," American Heritage (Fall 1952): 49-51 and Alvin Josephy, "Those Pants that Levi Gave Us,'' American West (July-August, 1985): 30-37; the firm was actually founded by Levi's brother-in-law, Norton B. Stern, who came to San Francisco in 1851, two years before the arrival of Strauss. See William M. Kramer and Norton B. Stern, "Levi Strauss: The Man Behind the Myth," Western States Jewish History 19 (April 1987): 257-63. On cattle, see James M. Jensen, "Cattle Drives from the Ranchos to the Gold Fields of California," Arizona and the West 2 (Winter 1960): 341-52, and Cleland, Cattle .

7. Rockwell D. Hunt, John Bidwell: Prince of California Pioneers (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1942), Norman E. Tutorow, Leland Stanford, Man of Many Careers (Menlo Park, Calif.: Pacific Coast Publishers, 1971), and David Lavender, California: Land of New Beginnings (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 159-74, 227-34.

8. E. J. Wickson, Rural California (New York: Macmillan, 1923), 208-84; Paul W. Gates, ed., California Ranchos and Farms, 1848-1862, Including the Letters of John Quincy Warren (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1967, 1-80) which has an excellent introduction that summarizes California's agricultural history; Gerald D. Nash, State Government and Economic Development: A History of Administrative Policies in California, 1850-1933 (Berkeley: Institute of Government Studies, University of California, 1964), 63-80, and for Henry Miller, see Edward F. Treadwell, The Cattle King (Fresno: Valley Publishers, 1966).

9. Rodman W. Paul, "The Wheat Trade Between California and the United Kingdom," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 45 (1958): 391-412.

10. On McCormick see William T. Hutchinson, Cyrus Hall McCormick , 2 vols. (New York: Da Capo Press, 1930-1935); also see a good general survey by Lawrence Jelinek, Harvest Empire: A History of California Agriculture (San Francisco: Boyd & Fraser, 1979).

11. E. J. Wickson, The California Fruits , 8th ed. (San Francisco: Pacific Rural Press, 1919); Vincent P. Carosso, The California Wine Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952).

12. Nash, State Government , 83-89; Ira B. Cross, Financing an Empire: A History of Banking in California , 4 vols. (Chicago: S. J. Clarke, 1927), vol. 1, 41-94; Fritz Redlich, History of American Business Leaders , 2 vols. (New York: Johnson Reprint, 1947), vol. 2, part 1, 43-66; "Banks and Banking in the Fifties: Early Legislative Prohibitions," Mercantile Trust Review of the Pacific 13 (1924): 118-28.

13. Robert J. Chandler, "Integrity Amid Tumult: Wells, Fargo & Co.'s Gold Rush Banking," California History 70 (Fall 1991): 259-77; David Lavender, Nothing Seemed Impossible: William C. Ralston and Early San Francisco (Palo Alto: American West, 1975); Dwight L. Clarke, William Tecumseh Sherman: Gold Rush Banker (San Francisco: California Historical Society, 1969); and Nash, State Government , 81-89. A recent study of California bankers and the Comstock Lode is Maureen Ann Jung, "The Comstocks and the California Mining Economy, 1848-1900. The Stock Market and the Modern Corporation" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Barbara, 1988), 31-60, 104-36.

14. Thousands of diaries have been published. Typical is George P. Hammond and Edward Howes, eds., Overland to California on the Southwestern Trail 1849, Diary of Robert Eccleston (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950). Well-written summaries of such journeys are in George R. Stewart, The California Trail: An Epic with Many Heroes (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1952), and J. S. Holliday, The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1981).

15. Roscoe P. Conkling and Mary P. Conkling, The Butterfield Overland Mail, 1857-1869 , 3 vols. (Glendale, Calif.: A. H. Clark, 1947); W. Turrentine Jackson, Wagon Roads West (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1952); and Raymond W. Settle and Mary Settle, Saddle and Spurs: The Pony Express Saga (Harrisburg: Stackpole, 1955).

16. Wesley S. Griswold, A Work of Giants: Building the First Transcontinental Railroad (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1963); Oscar Lewis, The Big Four: The Story of Huntington, Stanford, Hopkins, and Crocker, and of the Building of the Central Pacific (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1938); on Judah see Carl I. Wheat, "A Sketch of the Life of Theodore Judah," California Historical Society Quarterly 4 (September 1925): 219-71.

17. John H. Kemble, The Panama Route, 1848-1869 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1943), 1-115, 200-209; Oscar Lewis, Sea Routes to the Gold Fields (New York: A. A. Knopf, 1949), 261-82.

18. John H. Kemble, The Panama Canal The Evolution of the Isthmian Crossing (San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1965); David McCullough, The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1978).

19. Ralph J. Roske, "The World Impact of the California Gold Rush, 1849-1857," Arizona and the West 5 (1963): 199-200; Doris Wright, "The Making of Cosmopolitan California," California Historical Society Quarterly 19 (1940): 326, and ibid., 20 (1941): 66-74; Ralph Bieber, "California Gold Mania," Mississippi Valley Historical Review 35 (June 1948): 13, and Ralph Bieber, ed., Southern Trails to California in 1849 (Glendale: Arthur H. Clark, 1937), 62; James M. Guinn, "The Sonoran Migration," Historical Society of California Publications 8 (1907): 33; Richard H. More field, ''Mexicans in the California Mines, 1848-1853," California Historical Society Quarterly 35 (March 1956): 42-43.

20. Wright, "Making of Cosmopolitan California," 20: 67-68.

21. Gilbert Chinard, "The French in California," California Historical Society Quarterly 22 (1943): 295; Henry Blumenthal, "The California Societies in France, 1849-1855," Pacific Historical Review 25 (August 1956): 253-58; Abraham P. Nasatir, The French in the California Gold Rush (New York: American Society of the French Legion of Honor, 1934).

22. Roske, "World Impact," 223-25; Marcus L. Hansen, "The Revolutions of 1848 and German Emigration," Journal of Economic and Business History 2 (August 1930): 630-33; Wright, "Making of Cosmopolitan California," 20: 68-69; Andrew F. Rolle, "Italy in California," Pacific Spectator 9 (Autumn 1955): 409-11; Francesco M. Nicosia, Dorothy Miller, and Edwin McInnis, Italian Pioneers of California (San Francisco: Italian-American Chamber of Commerce of the Pacific Coast, 1960), 12-17.

23. Leland Jenks, The Migration of British Capital to 1875 (London: A. A. Knopf, 1973), 160-63, 383-84; John H. Clapham, An Economic History of Modern Britain: Free Trade and Steel, 1850-1886 , 3 vols. (Cambridge: The University Press, 1952), vol. 2, 336-37; Dean Albertson, "The Discovery of Gold in California as Viewed by New York and London," Pacific Spectator 3 (Winter 1949): 27-30.

24. Ralph Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1778-1854 (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1938), 319-25, 328, and also his The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1854-1874: Twenty Critical Years (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1953), 16; Theodore Morgan, Hawaii: A Century of Economic Change (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1948), 155-57; Roske, "World Impact," 189-94.

25. Stephen Williams, The Chinese in the California Mines, 1848-1860 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1930); Ellen R. Wood," Californians and Chinese: The First Decade" (M.A. thesis, University of California, Berkeley, 1961). For context see the old classic by Mary R. Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (New York: H. Holt, 1909), and Ping Chiu, Chinese Labor in California, 1850-1880 (Madison: State Historical Society of Wisconsin, 1963). Liping Zhu is preparing a study of the Chinese in Idaho.

26. James T. Phinney, "Gold Production and the Price Level," Quarterly Journal of Economics 47 (1933): 666-69, 678-79; Wesley C. Mitchell, Gold, Prices, and Wages (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1908); Walter B. Smith and Arthur H. Cole, Fluctuations in American Business (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), 89-90; Pierre Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, 1450-1920 (London: Humanities Press, 1976), 38, 321.

27. Victor Morgan, The Theory and Practice of Central Banking (New York: A. M. Kelley, 1965), 154; Milton Friedman and Anna J. Schwartz, Monetary History of the United States (New York: Princeton University Press, 1963), 27, 58; Wesley C. Mitchell, A History of the Greenbacks (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1903), 142-44; Thomas S. Berry, Western Prices Before 1861 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1943), and also his "Gold—But How Much?" California Historical Society Quarterly 55 (1976): 247-55; Paul, California Gold , 345-48. Historical Statistics of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1960), 346.

28. W. Turrentine Jackson, The Enterprising Scot (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), 211-16, 222-33; W. W. Rostow, The British Economy in the Nineteenth Century, 1750-1914 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1949), 22-23; Jenks, Migration of British Capital , 160-63.

29. Berry, "Gold—But How Much?" 247-55.

30. Noted in Vilar, A History of Gold and Money , 322; see also Roy Jastram, The Golden Constant.' The English and American Experience (New York: Wiley, 1977), 212-15, 224.

31. Karl Marx, Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy , trans. N. I. Stone (New York: International Library Publishing, 1904), preface, 14.

32. John Maynard Keynes, A Treatise on Money , 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1930), 150; Fernand Braudel, "Monnaies et civilizations de l'or du Soudan à l'argent d'Amerique," Anhales (1946): 22; Vilar, A History of Gold and Money , 12-13.

33. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things (London: Tavistock Publications, 1970), 173; see also Kevin Starr, Americans and the california Dream (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), and Geoffrey Blainey, The Rush That Never Ended (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1963).