Sub-title: - The Story of the 1848 Gold Rush and How It Shaped a Nation
This book gave me new perspectives on the impact of the gold rush on the migration across America. According to the author more than 300,000 people had trekked across the plains, rounded South America, crossed Panama and Mexico and traveled from Australia to the California gold fields. It was a scramble for riches and upward mobility, a chance for a better life for men and their families. He covers the treaty with Mexico to add California to the U.S. and how the Native Americans were driven off into reservations.
I was fascinated by the personalities in the story, Sutter the merchant, Marshall, the builder. The generals who oversaw the war with Mexico, the diplomats sent by the government to negotiate an agreement and the hundreds of unnamed men who swarmed the area, establishing gold rush towns that disappeared when the gold ran out and they moved on. One story was about A.D. Hobson, a man from Yadkin County on the Yadkin River in East Bend, North Carolina, born in 1825 and of English and Welsh ancestors. He and his brother traveled through Salt Lake City to Shaw Flat on the Tuolumne River "where they did very well in mining".
An in-depth read of the 1840 to 1870 period of a mass migration that populated the West.
Published: 2005 Read: May 2024 Genre: History
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