THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH
From Sutter's Mill to StatehoodBy James R. Whitfield
Length5h 43m
About this audiobook
California Gold Rush history — from Sutter's Mill to statehood, the forty-niners, and the American West transformation of 1848-1860. How gold discovery triggered the largest voluntary migration in human history and destroyed a civilization.
On January 24, 1848, carpenter James Marshall picked a half-pea-sized piece of metal from the tailrace of John Sutter's sawmill on the American River. Mormon diarist Henry Bigler recorded it that night: "this day some kind of mettle was found in the tail race that looks like goald." Sutter tested the flake with nitric acid and apothecary scales — twenty-three carats fine — and wrote in his diary: "What a great misfortune was this sudden discovery for me!" He was right. Within a year his workers had left for the diggings, his wheat rotted unharvested, and his land titles were in litigation. He died in Washington in 1880, broke, still petitioning Congress for restitution.
James R. Whitfield's California Gold Rush narrative covers twenty-six chapters — from Mexican California's 150,000 Indigenous people through Polk's 1848 Congressional message that sent 90,000 forty-niners west, the $81 million peak production of 1852, and the 1.5 billion cubic yards of debris that choked the Sacramento River and produced America's first major environmental court case in 1884. California's non-Native population grew from 14,000 to 380,000 in twelve years. Its Indigenous population fell from 150,000 to under 30,000.
Inside this American West history:
The discovery and the news going out — Brannan's quinine bottle, Polk's message, and migration from Hunan to Cornwall to New South Wales (Chapters 4-6)
The boomtowns — Coloma, Hangtown, Mokelumne Hill's French and German newspapers, and 200 named camps whose canvas traces are nearly invisible today (Chapter 11)
Chinese miners and the Foreign Miners' Tax — called to the "Gold Mountain," taxed and expelled, written out of the official story (Chapter 13)
California Indians and genocide — state-legislature-approved killing-campaign budgets, population collapse from 150,000 to under 30,000 (Chapter 17)
Hydraulic mining and environmental catastrophe — Matteson's 1853 invention, the North Bloomfield monitors dismantling entire hillsides, and the 1884 Woodruff v. North Bloomfield decision (Chapter 23)
What the rush built — San Francisco's rise, the Transcontinental Railroad's financing, and $2 billion in nineteenth-century gold (Chapters 22, 25)
The flake Marshall found is in the Smithsonian today. The Gold Rush it started built an economy and destroyed a civilization. Whitfield's narrative holds both without looking away.
For readers of H. W. Brands's THE AGE OF GOLD and J. S. Holliday's THE WORLD RUSHED IN.
Audiobook details
GenreHistory
Length5 hrs 43 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Introduction
22Chapter 14: Chileans, Mexicans, and the Foreign Miners' Tax
2Author’s Note
23Chapter 15: African American Argonauts
3Prologue: The Glint in the Tailrace
24Chapter 16: The Women of the Diggings
4PART ONE: BEFORE THE STRIKE
25PART SIX: VIOLENCE AND DISPOSSESSION
5Chapter 1: Mexican California — The World That Was
26Chapter 17: California Indians and Genocide
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6Chapter 2: John Sutter and the Empire on the American River
27Chapter 18: Lynching, Vigilance Committees, and Frontier Justice
7Chapter 3: James Marshall and the Carpentry of Fate
28Chapter 19: The Land Grant Wars
8PART TWO: THE NEWS GOES OUT
29PART SEVEN: STATEHOOD AND CONSEQUENCE
9Chapter 4: January 24, 1848 — The Discovery
30Chapter 20: The 1849 Constitutional Convention
10Chapter 5: Sam Brannan's Bottle and the San Francisco Run
31Chapter 21: The Compromise of 1850 and Free-State California
11Chapter 6: Polk's Message and the World Hears
32Chapter 22: San Francisco — From Village to Metropolis
12PART THREE: THE FORTY-NINERS
33PART EIGHT: THE LONG TAIL
13Chapter 7: By Sea Around the Horn
34Chapter 23: Hydraulic Mining and Environmental Catastrophe
14Chapter 8: By Land Across the Plains
35Chapter 24: The Comstock Lode and the Silver Successor
15Chapter 9: Through the Isthmus of Panama
36Chapter 25: What the Rush Built — Banking, Agriculture, Industry
16PART FOUR: THE DIGGINGS
37Chapter 26: The Rush in American Memory
17Chapter 10: Placer Mining and the Pan
38Epilogue: What the Rush Left Behind
18Chapter 11: Boomtowns — Coloma, Hangtown, Mokelumne Hill
39Acknowledgments
19Chapter 12: The Mother Lode and Hard Rock Mining
40Selected Bibliography
20PART FIVE: THE PEOPLE OF THE RUSH
41About the Author
21Chapter 13: Chinese Miners and the Gold Mountain
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