Trails To The Gold Rush

To California...

• Map of the California Mining Camps A great, easy to read, fast loading map of the mining camps along Highway 49.
• All About The Gold Rush The PBS web site: good information
• All About Gold Includes the History of Gold, Gold Standards, Uses for Gold, Fool's Gold, Gold Fever, and much more!
• Art of the Gold Rush This is a virtual tour of a real exhibition at the Oakland Museum of California, jointly organized with the Crocker Art Museum.
• Bodie State Historic Park: A Real Ghost Town in California
• California Gold: An Authentic History of the First Find Written in 1894 by a worker employed at Sutter's Mill
• California Gold Rush includes a chronology of events surrounding the discovery of gold
• California Gold Rush A nice history
• The California National Historic Trail This trail carried over 200,000 gold-seekers and farmers to the gold fields and rich farmlands of California during the 1840's and 1859's, the greatest mass migration in American history.
• The Days of '49 A Song of the Gold Rush
• The Discovery of Gold Written by General John A. Sutter
• The effects of the Gold Rush on The Environment All kinds of unique facts. Also effects on Native Americans
• Follow the '49er Trail to the Gold Country
• Gold Discovery: Coloma California The home of Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park where you can find a museum, original and restored buildings, and costumed volunteers.
• Gold Rush! California's Untold Stories An excellent site of the Oakland Museum of California
• The Gold Rush in California A very comprehensive biblilography of joural articles. Put together by the Archivist at California State University, Stanislaus
• Gold Rush A well written summary of the California Gold Rush
• The Great American Gold Rush A chronology of gold rush happenings, and links to other sites.
• Joaquin Murieta Who was Joaquin Murieta, the man? And who was Joaquin Murieta, the legend?
• Land of Glittering Dreams California Sesquicentennial Calendar of Events and Activities
• Life in California Before the Gold Discovery by John Bidwell, a pioneer of 1841.
• Lola Montez...Femme Fatale.. Early feminist of sorts and writer of a book of beauty tips. Homicidal temper; carried a whip. One of the most outrageous women of her time.
• Lots of Links to web sites on mining, prospecting, personalities, and gold.
• Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park including the 1998 World Gold Panning Championships!
• No Place For A Woman? The California gold camps were hard on the ladies, but that didn't stop them from arriving, surviving, and sometimes thriving.
• Ocean voyage to gold fields meant bad food, bad water The all-sea route was a trip "around the Horn," although not every boat actually went around Cape Horn. It was an ocean voyage down the east coast of North America and into the South Atlantic Ocean, sometimes blown by prevailing winds almost to Cape Verde off the west coast of Africa. The boat would keep a southerly course down the South Atlantic to the tip of South America, sometimes stopping at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil or Montevideo in Uruguay for reprovisioning.
• Official Reports on the California Gold Mines: Written in 1848
• Paintings of Gold Rush Scenes
• Santa Fe Trail used by argonauts The Southern Gold Trail was a popular way to get to the California gold fields in 1849 and 1850, but use by prospectors declined precipitously after that in favor of the northern route due to the creation of more practical wagon roads through the trans-Sierran passes into northern California and less frequent incidents of hostile Indian action. The Santa Fe Trail was rejuvenated at the end of the 1850s when gold was discovered in Colorado.
• Show Me The Gold! A brief history and nice images of landmarks along the trails to the gold rush
• Sutter's Fort State Historical Park Each student in the 4th grade at Foulks Ranch Elementary took the part of an historical character of the period when they stayed overnight at Sutter's Fort as part of their Environmental Living Program. The students wrote the narratives for this web site. This is a great site--don't miss it!
• Travel By Sea Memoirs of Eugene Ring who traveled on a long sea voyage from New York to the gold fields of California, published by his grandson, Steven Ring
• Trail Through Nevada The Humboldt River was the highway across Nevada.It has been estimated that some 200,000 people took this arduous route to California between 1840 and 1860, the greatest peacetime migration in history. By comparison, 53,000 people traveled the Oregon Trail during that same period. Several nice maps.
• Welcome To The Gold Rush A comprehensive history by the Sacramento Bee
• The Wild West Really Was An interesting collection of information "left over" from an author's notes, and didn't quite fit into his novel.
• Women in the Gold Rush This web page is by a recognized authority on women in the gold rush, JoAnn Levy, whose book, They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush, was praised by the San Francisco Chronicle as "one of the best and most comprehensive accounts of gold rush life to date."
• The Women: Actresses, Hotel Keeper, Gamblers, Pie Maker, Muleteer, Miner, Speculator, Victim, Washerwoman, Chinese Prostitute... read their story here.

To Colorado....

• Cripple Creek: The world's greatest gold camp
• Victor Colorado: Discovering gold in a high-country cow pasture west of Pikes Peak
• Go For The Gold! A tour of gold mining towns in Colorado
• Ghost Towns In the heart of the High County
• Tincup Colorado: Named after a tin cup used to carry newly-found gold in 1860

To South Dakota and Wyoming

• History of the Black Hills of South Dakota including information about the gold rush
• The Wyoming Prospector Still under construction as of 12/99.... Keep checking back!

To Oregon

• Buncum: A Southern Oregon Ghost Town
• Oregon: Land of Gold and Opportunity "Many prospectors are busy along the waters of Columbia River and on both sides of the Canadian boundary. Reports of gold in Thompson and Fraser rivers, in 1856-57, produced the great "rush" of 1858 to those streams." Read more of this article written in 1873 from the Historical Gazette.
• Oregon Gold Prospecting Trips Although a commercial site, it has historical info and images of gold mining in the area

To Alaska....

• Alaska: The Continent's Greatest Gold Rush
• Ghosts of the Klondike Gold Rush "Like soldiers marching to the insistent beating of a drum, they set off with pounding hearts, mouthing pat slogans and often enough believing them..."
• All America Route: Copper and Gold Unscrupulous prospectors, eager to cash in on the the nation's gold fever, were touting an All-American route through the heart of Alaska to the Klondike gold fields. Very few ever made it.
• Gold Rush Centennial Photographs, 1893-1916 A catalog of selected photos of the Alaksa Gold Rush.
• The Chilkoot Trail to the Klondike A volume which provides an in-depth look at the dramatic history of what is now an international historic site and popular recreational trail
• The Chilkoot Trail A 33 mile long trail accessible only on foot--one of three main routes taken by the Klondike Gold Rush "stampeders" to the gold mines of the Yukon. It was also the hardest.
• The letters of Harold Charles Engelson From Minnesota to Valdez and the Klondike, 1897 following the gold trail
• Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park Located in Skagway, Alaska and also one in Seattle, Washington
• The Centennial Year: 1998 What's happening in and around the Skagway, Alaska area to celebrate the Klondike Gold Rush
• The Valdez Gold Rush Lots of interesting information and links by The Valdez Museum & Historical Archives

And to Other Gold Rushes....

• The Bradshaw Trail The Gold Road to La Paz, Arizona or the Bradshaw Trail, unlike that taken in an earlier day by Spanish Conquistadors in their search for the Seven Cities of Cibola where the streets of Indian villages were supposedly paved with gold, led to millions of dollars in placer gold. In the winter of 1993 a young prospector from Alaska found a 23.6-ounce gold nugget using a Fisher Gold Bug metal detector in a gulch a short distance south of the La Paz diggings.
• The Cariboo Trail, Canada In October 1861 the Governor was advosed that the Yale to Cariboo route through the Fraser Canyon would be beneficial to the development of the country, and that construction should start at once. The Royal Engineers were ordered to map out the best route for the Cariboo Wagon Road.
• The Otago Goldfields Heritage Trail Visit this trail site to find out all about goldpanning, pioneering history, and historical sites in the South Island of New Zealand. There are still places in Otago where you can pan for gold! Take a journey back through time and follow the trails that the miners took in their quest for gold.
• Crystal Gold Mine, Kellogg Idaho Tom Irwin, a gold prospector, discovered a gold bearing vein here in 1879. When he left after three years, the mine stayed hidden and lost for over a hundred years.
• Gold in North Georgia Where the rush continued from the early 1800's until 1849, when word of gold in California reached Georgia and many of the miners left.

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