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Excerpt from Gold Rush Diary: Being the Journal of Elisha Douglass Perkins on the Overland Trail in the Spring and Summer of 1849

Written between May 1849 and February 1850

Published in 1967

Edited by Thomas D. Clark

In 1848 the discovery of gold in California created a wave of excitement across America. The news of gold in California spread through the United States like wildfire, and the migration to California increased. The New York Herald reported that "the great discovery of gold has thrown the American people in a state of the wildest excitement. Gold can be scooped up in pans at the rate of a pound of pure dust a scoop. 'Ho! For California' is the cry everywhere." Similar announcements appeared in newspapers across the country.

By the summer of 1848 other westerners—Hawaiians, Oregonians, Mexicans, and Latin Americans—caught wind of the...