SOURCE: “The California Gold Rush as a Basis for Literature,” in Americana-Austriaca: Beitrage zur Amerikakunde, Vol. 2, 1970, pp. 61-80.

The discovery of gold on the banks of the American River in 1848 was the signal for one of the most unique mass migrations since the Völkerwanderung of the Germanic tribes. Some 100,000 adventurers are estimated to have converged on the gold fields of California within the twelve months following James Marshall's sensational discovery. “The gold in the rivers, the dry diggings and ravines, is accessible to any man who has the strength to use a pan or washer, a spade and pick-ax,” reported the Honorable Thomas Butler King to the American Secretary of State¹.

“It is supposed there were not far from 5,000 men employed in collecting gold during that season. If we suppose they obtained an average of $1,000 each—which is regarded by well-informed persons as a low estimate—The aggregate amount will be $5,000,000”, continued the Senator. “Information of this discovery spread in all directions during the following winter; and, on the commencement of the dry season in 1849, people came into the territory from all quarters … In the month of July it is supposed that there were fifteen thousand foreigners in the mines … It is not probable that during the first part of the season there were more than five or six thousand Americans … This would swell the whole number, including foreigners, to about twenty thousand the beginning of September … Estimates give us the result of the operation in the mines for 1848 and 1849, the round sum of $40,000,000 … From the best information I could obtain, I am led to believe that at least $20,000,000 of the $40,000,000 were taken from the rivers, and that their richness has not been sensibly diminished, except in a few locations, which had early attracted large bodies of miners.”²

Obviously these modern-day Argonauts had no time for anything except gold-digging. If they wrote letters home or kept sporadic journals, it is all that could be expected of men who had the chance of a lifetime to make their fortunes. Soon, however, the journalists arrived. Horace Greeley, the famous editor of the New York Tribune, whose often quoted advice, “Go West, young man. Go West!” has become an American byword, sent his best journalist, Bayard Taylor, to cover the sensational story. His book Eldorado was the result. Between 1850 and 1882, it had gone through ten editions, and had been translated into German (1851).

Other journalists were among the Argonauts; Alonzo Delano, affectionately known as “Old Block”, sent a weekly “California Correspondence” to the Ottowa, Illinois, Free Trader, and the New Orleans True Delta, and kept a journal which became the basis of his book Life on the Plains and Among the Diggings (1854).

Hubert Howe Bancroft, the future historian of California, soon gave up digging for gold and established a lucrative book business. Dozens of pamphlets put out in a variety of languages lured more and more adventurers to brave the hardships and try their luck in the diggings. Even the Europeans as early as 1849 were tempted by the prospects of an easy way to riches as seen by the pamphlet “Weg zum Reichthum”³ which told of the newfound wealth and how best to get to the land of the “untouched gold fields”.

All this can be classified as “utilitarian” literature. “Belles lettres” were notably absent, unless one considers the ballad literature which is spontaneously generated wherever action, adventure, and sociability come together. Only at the end of the gold rush era did the real literature of the times appear. Up to that period there were only such materials as diaries, newspaper articles and other factual writings. As a more stable society developed, short stories, poetry, a few novels and dramas were published.

Before looking at the actual literature and its reflection of this era, it might be well to define the times and life as it really was during the last half of the nineteenth century in California and Nevada. Popular writers have almost ruined the western theme for serious writers. Through a knowledge of the times one can plainly see the difference between a literature which combined the devices of the “penny dreadful” with the sentimental romance and the literature which offered a true portrayal in an artistic recreation. Most works to date on this era use western names and settings with little realistic purpose other than to bring back the “good old days”. How good these days actually were is another question the reader must answer before evaluating any literature of the gold rush era.

Gold fever struck many people. Some made good plans and foresaw the difficulties they would have to face, while others were too struck with the idea of making a quick fortune with merely a gold pan. They headed for the hills and their riches. There were two ways to reach California, either overland some 2,000 miles, or around Cape Horn. Both ways took the better part of five months and presented many hardships. As the would-be miners headed west, they were quite encouraged when they heard the familiar saying, “There's gold in them hills”. Once they reached the gold fields, they found the truth in the saying adapted from the Book of Job, “Gold is where you find it,” and many miners after months and years of hard work and little pay understood the discouraging words so often heard, “Gold is where I ain't”.

Gold was a magic word which revived the spirit of adventure in many and started a race over land and sea. Towns and camps overflowed with characters from all walks of life and each had an equal opportunity, for who was better than the next one when he could strike it rich at any moment, provided he worked to find gold? Even Sutter himself had plans to work the gold fields when he wrote to a friend in Sacramento stating:

We intend to form a company for working the gold mines which prove to be very rich. Would you not take a share in it? So soon as if it would not pay well we could stop it at any time.⁴

Sutter could very well stop at any time for he had a ranch and a home well stocked with food and belongings. The mass that came West, however, had to bring everything with them and consequently many suffered from want. One miner in a letter home stated that he could not even find paper to write upon, that he had only gold, flour, and pork, and worked night and day to earn ten dollars.⁵ California had no means of supporting the herds of would-be miners that invaded the gold country. Those who found gold could, in the early years, buy no more than flour, pork, or vegetables from the Indians.

The gold rush to the West falls into three phases: California from 1848 to 1858, Nevada and the far West from 1858 to 1868, and the rest of the West, including the Black Hills. As soon as civilization moved in, the term “gold rush” no longer applied. The unique situation of these times depended on the fact that they were primarily mining frontiers. For this reason it is difficult to make a generalization about the west as a whole. Each site of discovery must be viewed individually, and as long as it remained in a state of isolation, must be considered a frontier mining camp or town. With the coming of the railroad in 1869 the days of isolation were numbered for most parts of the West. This marked the beginning of a new type of frontier for America.

In his frontier hypothesis, “The Significance of the Frontier in American History”, Frederick Jackson Turner closed the frontier in the year 1890. He noted that the “boom towns” in California, Colorado, Montana and Idaho had turned the West into a patchwork of scattered settlements.⁶ In this manner the distinction between Indian country and civilization was destroyed forever. Turner failed to see that in this new advance of civilization was formed a new West, not the one he had known. He did recognize the explosive force of the mining camps and how they changed the land. What was missing now was his familiar trend of first the fur hunters, then the pioneer farmers, then permanent farmers and finally the town builders. The miners were procurers of food, builders of towns as well as diggers of gold. To cater to the needs of the miners, civilization was slowly brought to them. Some saw more profit in farming or other forms of labor than in mining. The important point is that the miners came first, then the slow development of civilization. Turner was as unfamiliar with this new type of development as he was with the terrain. For the most part the camps were so situated that lumber and water were worth more than gold, especially when the strikes were found in Nevada.

There are many accounts of the long journey west and the life which existed during the frontier days. In one such account Twice Across the Plains 1849-1856,⁷ the author states that, while in the glamour of his early manhood, he took the trip west and relates a truthful narrative of his experiences, strictly avoiding anything pertaining to exaggeration or distortion. From this account one can picture a realistic view of the times, not the one portrayed by the present western tradition.

Pleasants and his father along with an entire wagon train left their mid-western home for California for two reasons: first, the mid-west was becoming congested, whereas the West was limitless; second, they could enrich themselves in the gold fields. The love of adventure and the chance to explore new country were also of great influence. Most persons at that time thought the trip foolhardy. It took courage to tear one's self away from a happy home and enter a country of wild men and beasts with the promise of dubious rewards. Each man set as his goal a $5,000 mark, and of the entire group only seven men attained their goals. Gold could be found, but the question was, could one find it in paying quantities? After five months and eight days on the trail, the party reached Bidwell's Bar, where men were panning from ten to one hundred dollars per day. The author and his father were not so lucky at the art of panning and quickly found that they could earn more money by labor. They split shakes at twenty-five dollars per hundred or built houses at a wage of ten dollars per day. These earnings were more dependable than gold hunting. They soon left the gold fields and settled as farmers in the Sacramento Valley and, sending east for the women and children, became permanent residents of California.

Pleasants' account reveals an exciting but a probably accurate picture of events during the settlement of California. Many people, not finding gold or silver, returned to their old trades to make their way in the new world. Most of the literature based on this era portrays a land of gun fighters, gamblers, and drinkers where hard work and sweat are unknown. It is the contention of several authors in more recent times that the West was not as wild as most people were led to believe.

Some pioneers who lived through this era maintain that the “bad element” did not exceed more than one-half of one percent.⁸ It is true that these towns of the early gold rush presented the worst side. Heavy drinking and gambling were not frowned on by anyone save a minute number of ladies' groups. Actual shootings and hangings were every day occurrences in a few towns. Those towns where violence took place became well-known overnight. Where the bad element of society was well organized, its impact was felt all over the West. No one told the story of an honest worker, unless he had made a large strike or a large amount of money overnight. The tale of the gunfighter always found a listener or a reader and each teller added his own special touch. Men in such towns as Bodie, California, became famous for bragging about killing a man for breakfast, whereas hundreds of small mining towns were never mentioned in the eastern papers.

The mining civilization started much that was only of a temporary nature, and almost everything it attempted was done wastefully. The early camps had nothing and were pictured with streets strewn with refuse. No one had time to stop mining long enough to think of living conditions. Each town went through a typical cycle. First came the discovery of gold, real or otherwise; then rumors of wealth grew, bringing in a very disorderly crowd. Then claims were bartered; if all the rumors proved true and the deposits were worthwhile, a town began to grow. From this town some moved on for further prospecting and the cycle would be repeated.

During the winter months when high waters and snows halted mining operations, the miners were forced to amuse themselves as best they could on their isolated frontier. In several of the Sierra towns the miners took up the sport of “snow-shoeing” (skiing) to fill the long winter months. The sport, originally introduced by a Norwegian, John A. “Snow-Shoe” Thompson, became very popular among the miners, who soon turned to the manufacture of twelve foot skis and “dope” (wax) for a winter profit. Competitions were held, and, as usual, betting took place as to who would run the straight half-mile course in the fastest time. As early as 1859, miners were holding meets and forming clubs for the new winter sport.

There are several newspaper accounts on this winter pastime in the mining camps, including one by Dan DeQuille for the Overland Monthly on “Snow-Shoe” Thompson, the heroic first skier of California. Thompson used his native skill to carry mail to the snowed-in Nevada miners. DeQuille's article is, however, a factual one as are most of those works on Thompson. Only Evelyn Dangberg Teal has attempted a fictional account of Thompson's heroic deeds, which, since it is a children's book, leaves out many character revealing incidents about the skiing mail carrier. This very unique side of the gold rush story has been virtually untouched to date.

There has been one attempt at a fictional account of the skiers of the gold rush country by Col. Albert Evans. His Ala California—Sketches of Life in the Golden State relates what he saw in the camp of La Porte during one of the three day ski meets in the 1860's. Evans, a newspaper reporter from Oregon, suffered the malady of the times when he felt compelled to end the ski race with a murder. The sensation of murder was his main point of concentration; the miners and their unusual way of life along with their winter sport were not viewed by the author as sufficient material for a story. This showed the western readers penchant for a yarn full of horror and gruesomeness in the tradition of Poe and Ambrose Bierce. This is a tradition which has maintained its spell on the literature of the West up to the present day.

The mining West experienced a different type of change from the earlier frontiers. Miners removed natural resources which could not be replaced, and, thus, each camp or town existed only as long as the minerals lasted. As soon as the mining operations stopped paying, the population moved on to greener fields. The early days are referred to as the flush times, when a man with a pan could try for a fortune. As the years went on, there was more of a demand for experts and machinery, the first sign of civilization in the mining West. The actual gold available to the individual miner became less and less, and as early as 1852, an article appeared in the Sacramento Union⁹ stating that there were fewer cases of individual fortunes but that with the aid of new methods and machines, mining was becoming a well-paying and permanent occupation. The flush years were the gold rush years; after them, mining became a business and required long range planning, as does any business venture. These flush years are the ones that produced the unique nature of the gold rush which extended at a diminishing rate into the twentieth century. Each camp or town was, for a time, its own frontier; it existed for a while in a state of isolation and then either became a home of normal western civilization or a ghost town of a bygone era.

A better opportunity to observe a society evolve overnight has never been found before nor after the western frontier. Rapid change removed those habits brought west but allowed the citizens to make a practical evaluation before acceptance of new ideas or customs. American social development began anew. All of the prospectors, miners, gamblers, traders, speculators and saloon keepers found no existing social institutions. They were forced to create in a hurried and confused manner just enough economic, social, and political controls to permit each individual to seek out his fortune and still enjoy some of the benefits that came only with organized society. The end result was a curious mixture of the new and the familiar, of innovation and imitation. The very art of mining was foreign to most Americans; thus, each person started on unfamiliar, but equal, ground. There was an air of freedom out West, and it is said that there was a directness among men and a lack of pretense. In short, democracy reigned.

This society had a humor which was to find its way into American literature. This humor is reflected in the burlesque lodge of the Mother Lode, E Clampus Vitus, where drinking and tall stories were the only order of the day, mocking the secret orders of those times. This society was open to new ideas. When Fitzhugh Ludlow, an advocate of Darwin's Origin of Species, came to San Francisco, he was welcomed. They even held a mock trial, accusing him of heresy, where standing in flannel breeches, with heavy boots and a copy of Darwin's book under his arm, he was acquitted. Many had strange ideas of natural phenomena. Some thought that earthquakes were caused by electric storms in the air and that as soon as the transcontinental railway were completed, the tracks, acting as a conductor, would carry the earthquakes back East. The railroad did bring permanent change to the West. No longer did the trip west require five months; rather after the last spike of the transcontinental railroad was driven in 1869, one needed only $49.25 to reach the nearest gold fields in the Black Hills.

This life of a pioneer in the gold country was by no means a life of ease, and the miners wanted someone to tell of the hardships which they were forced to endure. A reporter came to them in Alonzo Delano. Delano himself had come to California in search of gold, and with a grubstake, headed from Sacramento only to find disappointment in the mines. Discouraged, he resorted to sketching the miners for his livelihood, and, while making his rounds to the various camps in California, he met hundreds of sick, disappointed, and homesick miners. Delano probably made the first tentative beginnings of a gold rush fiction in his Chips from the Old Block, a collection of humorous sketches describing life in the mines and the types of humanity to be found there: “the greenhorn, the gambler, the trader”, as well as “the solitary miner who might be seen resting his weary limbs in the shade of a magnificent pine, or while prospecting under the weight of his blanket, mining tools and transient supply of pork and hard bread, keeping a cautious watch with his hand on his trusty rifle to guard against surprise, not knowing but in another instant an arrow from the bow of some lurking treacherous savage might terminate his toil and earthly career at one and the same moment”.¹⁰ Delano's play, A Live Woman in the Mines, “an ordinary enough melodrama with a few amusing touches of local color”,¹¹ as Franklin Walker describes it, was supposed to have been written for Lola Montez.

Another ex-miner, John Rollin Ridge, wrote a fictional romance about the California Gold Rush, under the pen name of Yellow Bird. His book Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the Celebrated California Bandit plays a unique role in Western literature, but also foreshadows the deterioration of the Gold Rush as a basis for a serious literature.

Ridge, an Indian by birth and feelings, but white by education, was born in Georgia. Forced out by the whites, his father moved his people, the Cherokees, across the Mississippi. For this decision, fellow members of the tribe decided Ridge's father must die. The death by stabbing was witnessed by young Ridge.

After completing more of his education, he was unable to avenge the death of his father. In 1850 he came to California, hoping to make his fortune. Having little luck in the mines, he accepted an offer from the New Orleans True Delta for eight dollars apiece for a series of articles on crossing the plains. He then turned his efforts towards writing and, as Yellow Bird, contributed many articles to the Golden Era and the Hesperian. He wrote conventional poetry, but his major effort was the book on Joaquin Murieta.

In the early fifties there was much unrest in the mining camps because of a decline in the output of the mines. During this time much banditry took place, for which mainly Mexicans and Indians were blamed, guilty or not. During this time the government put a tax on “foreigners” who mined. As a result there was a flare-up of Mexican nationalism. During the spring of 1853 there were a number of daring daylight robberies in the mining districts of Calaveras, Tuolumne and San Joaquin, which were attributed to an unidentified bandit bearing the common Mexican name of Joaquin. Joaquin and his band were noted for the delight they took in killing Chinese in great numbers and the speed with which they moved from place to place. The gang was claimed to have been in so many places at one time that many people thought that one person was being credited with the crimes of many. Proof of this feeling was the fact that the State Legislature refused to post a $5,000 reward for the head of Joaquin for fear that too many heads would show up for identification.

On July 5, 1853, an adventurer named Love and his band of disreputable “rangers” surprised a group of Mexicans and killed one member identified as Joaquin and another identified as “Three-Finger Jack”. The head of Joaquin was brought to Stockton where it was identified by those said to have known him, one of whom was a prostitute from San Andreas named Solome.

The fame of the Love gang and the exhibition of the pickled head of Joaquin gave birth to a legend about Joaquin and his activities, whereas many bandits whose deeds were just as wicked never became famous. Little is actually known of Joaquin, and the conditions were perfect for the creation of a romantic hero of the Robin Hood type. One year following the alleged killing of Joaquin, Yellow Bird published a detailed account of Joaquin's life. Giving Joaquin the surname of Murieta, Ridge created substance for the tale which is the basis for all accounts which follow.

In his tale, Ridge supports the Mexicans as he identifies his Indian background with their plight. He pictures the robber as a wronged man who came to California with his sweetheart to make his fortune. He was not accepted at the mines and was beaten by a group of miners. His sweetheart was raped and his half-brother was hanged on a false charge. The once peaceful citizen was transformed into a bandit, who vowed to kill each one of the evil doers. As is the case with most bandit heroes, Joaquin did most of the heroic deeds and left the killing to “Three-Finger Jack”. In the tradition of the folk-hero he was a gentleman in front of women; he was social-minded about whom he robbed, never robbing the poor. His final ambition was to lead his people in a revolution against the “gringos”.

Ridge's tale contains many elements common to the tales of Robin Hood, the Arthurian legends, and others. His story reflects the author. His character, Joaquin, represents the revenge which he himself was unable to carry out in his youth. In supporting the Mexican cause, he supported the cause of another down-and-outer, the Indian. In the success of Joaquin he expressed his hopes for his own nation, the Cherokees.

In over 100 years the story has not changed, and the same vicarious western adventure is portrayed each day anew. It still contents itself with story telling—the telling of wild adventures out of history magnified many times. Ridge had good reason for writing the tale as he did. He used the theme of this era for his own personal reflections and in so doing set an almost, never-to-be-broken pattern. He is one of the few authors who wrote about the gold rush and also identified himself with it. Ridge's theme foreshadowed the ten-cent novel in the late nineteenth century, then the pulp magazines in the twentieth century. Today the tradition is perpetuated by the comic book and the “B” grade movie. In these later forms we see the undoing of the western theme for serious literature.

With the driving of the last spike in the transcontinental railroad, the West was no longer the isolated frontier. California was already a state and the colorful era of the stampede for gold had passed into history. Not until the isolation was partially removed by civilization did the people begin to realize what had taken place. They began to realize the true magnitude of the gold rush and slowly began to reflect it in their works. Two newspapers of this period the Golden Era (1852-1893) and the Overland Monthly (1868-1875) depicted not only the passing of the frontier, but also the growing interest in the by-gone era.

The Golden Era, published in San Francisco for forty years (1852-1893) had been distinctively a product of the frontier. Its news of the outside world came with the inbound steamers, and was old by the time it reached the Era's subscribers. Local events and gossip, short stories, bits of knowledge and jokes clipped from old papers filled its pages which were eagerly awaited by the miners and settlers in the gold country. The news staff had to wait for each inbound steamer for its news. This news was summarized and was supplemented by local happenings and gossip, offering little in the way of news. For example several issues contained letters from people attacking “squirters”, tobacco chewers who missed their marks. The newspapers encouraged the writing of original material and nearly all of the would-be poets had their start with the newspapers or journals. Its chief claim to literary fame was the fact that Bret Harte began his career with the Era.

The freedom Bret Harte enjoyed while working for the Era allowed him to experiment and develop his literary skill through a steady stream of articles, sketches, short stories, and poems. It was while working for the Golden Era that Harte developed what was to become his unmistakable style. He first used local color in a story “The Work on Red Mountain” in 1860. Here he portrayed pioneer life in the mining camps, alternating between humor and pathos. His vivid descriptions of the Sierra Foothills and the mining society show the skill which was to lead to the success of “The Luck of Roaring Camp”.

There is always a feeling of forced style about his works, and he never did achieve a natural way of writing about his surroundings. For example he could not refrain from referring to Homer while writing about a society of flannel-shirted miners working in the red earth. This tendency mars his portrait of an honest miner or a kind whore. Harte was, in spite of all this, the first of the Western writers to sense the possibilities of the scene around him, and, therefore, must be considered as an innovator first and an author second. In contrast to Mark Twain, who said what he felt, Bret Harte did identify himself with the Western world; Twain was only too glad to return East. What Harte produced is of the West, is of the days of the gold rush, and bears his identity.

Few of the miners had any literary talent; however, Prentice Mulford, writing under the name of Dogberry, did produce sketches and novelettes of the mining country where he had sought his fortune. He offered his reader great detail and insight into the life of a mining camp. He wrote of the process of cooking in the camps and how it evolved from its simplest form, as well as many descriptions of the various methods of mining. His novelettes consisted of such burlesque themes as the inventor of a gold separator who had to pan gold to keep the machine in operation, or the tale of a shipload of women on their way around the Horn to become wives of the western miners.

The Overland Monthly was the first magazine in the West to print all original material and offer cash for all contributions. These practices were heretofore unheard of and had spelled doom for any magazine that attempted to be original. Anton Roman, the publisher, intended his journal to be a study in Western manners and civilization. He persuaded Harte, who as a writer for the Californian had scorned the ideals of Western civilization, to become its editor. After Roman had won Harte over to his ideas, he became a champion of the gold rush in romantic fiction. During his two and a half years as editor of the Overland Monthly Harte produced the best literature he was ever to write. The appearance of “The Luck of Roaring Camp”, “The Outcasts of Poker Flat” and “Tennessee's Partner” depicted the West and the gold rush as Harte had known it and counteracted the bitter satire which Twain and other “visitors” had produced.

The request that the California publication carry more stories of California romance encouraged Harte to write the story, “The Luck of Roaring Camp”. Upon publication it brought him instant success. At the time the request came Harte had the story in mind. It would be based on a familiar tale from the gold country. Bennett's “The First Baby in Camp”¹² suggests the fact that this plot was at least well-known if not the source of Harte's tale. Like the young hero of the tale, the story was considered an oddity because the readers could not picture an all-male society as is portrayed in “Luck”.

Harte's story was the beginning of a new California literature and soon many magazines were eager for stories of this type. Thus, Harte was encouraged to write and was accepted by many magazines such as Atlantic, which welcomed his stories. The story is not so much a literary work of art as it is a work showing Harte as the innovator of a new era in American literature. It has been criticized as superficial and as showing a real lack of knowledge of subject matter. However, it not only presents a sentimental story of local color, but also gives a symbolic representation of life in the mining camps, or any other place where one depends upon luck for his livelihood.

“Luck” combined humor and pathos in a story of an illegitimate child born to the camp prostitute, an Indian. It created a world where the rough, hard-working miners had hearts of gold. As a symbolic representation of early camp life it can be considered the best story produced in this era, which ended in 1871. Each mining camp depended on luck for its very existence; when it was present, as when the baby is present in Roaring Camp, everyone prospered. The baby as a personification of luck is pampered by the miners until the flooding river takes luck away just as it stopped mining operations in the river beds each winter. The theme of luck in Harte's story is well-depicted and gives the careful reader a good idea of what it was like to be part of this all-male society which depended on chance for its existence.

Upon his departure from the Overland, Harte's writing had moved away from the type of story he was producing as is shown by the title of one of his last works in California, The Iliad of Sandy Bar. Harte had made a place for his works in California, but as the society changed, so did Harte. The days of mining and stage coach guard were over. His real connection with the days of the gold rush were short and now at an end. His sudden fame was his downfall; he was never able to recreate a story like “The Luck of Roaring Camp” after he left California in 1871.

There were many visitors who, during their stay in California, left their impression on its literature. One such visitor was Artemus Ward, the well-known American humorist, who visited San Francisco in 1863 and toured the gold camps giving lectures. Ward's humor was one of exaggeration in the tradition of the tall tale. Ward had a great effect on Twain, for it was at the suggestion of Ward that Twain wrote his famous Jumping Frog, the only story he produced during this time which dealt directly with the gold rush. Some traces of Ward's humor can also be seen in Harte's “Luck”, though used with little success. Harte recognized Ward's humor and pointed out that it was an audacious exaggeration of perfect lawlessness, a humor that belonged to a country of boundless prairies and limitless rivers.¹³

According to Harte this was the humor of America, which was found around campfires or barroom stoves. This was the humor as Harte used it, as Twain used it, and as America has known it ever since the days of Artemus Ward. Twain was influenced most by Ward, who offered to publish the Jumping Frog story in his new book. The story arrived too late and was sent to the Saturday Review, where it brought Twain instant fame.

Mark Twain, as well as Ambrose Bierce, was one of the thousands to escape the Civil War by coming out west. Both of these authors were very bitter about Western values and when their writings were introduced in California, a great change in literature took place. Visitors from the east planted ideas in the minds of the literary men about returning east and also of going to Europe to make their way as exponents of the frontier. The Californian (1864-1868) in San Francisco was a forewarning of the closing of the frontier. The Californian limited its material to polite essays and satires, ignoring almost entirely local color, thereby turning its back on that which had brought Harte and Twain fame. Like Twain and Bierce, the paper did not wish to be associated with the frontier. A skepticism about California values of forty-niners, patriotism and literacy was in the air. Even Twain's Jumping Frog sketch was sent east for publication. The once romantic names like Whiskey Diggens' and Poker Flat were condemned as vulgar. Even the ideals of hard work came under attack by Twain and others. Society and the literary circles of the west were at odds. The western institutions of climate, pioneer vigor, and hospitality came under attack, reason enough that the Californian should end in bankruptcy and its major writers headed east.

Twain shows these attitudes in Roughing It and his Jumping Frog. His realm was humor, which he developed while searching for himself out west. He was neither miner nor honest laborer, the backbone of the gold rush era, and only in retrospect did he realize what the west had given him. Twain's big find in California came while loafing in a saloon in Angel's Camp, as his friends were out pocket hunting. Here he overheard the story of the Jumping Frog which he entered in his notebook, along with the fact that life was not pleasant for him there. Encouraged by Ward, he wrote the story and sent it east. That it brought him success was unwelcome news, for he considered it just a backwoods sketch containing no social philosophy or morality which were to become prominent in his later works. The unusual structure of the story, a narrator listening to a story being told about a third party, removes Twain from the frontier; we see him merely as a visitor. There was no follow-up on the “Frog” story as was the case with Harte and his “Luck”. In Roughing It, Twain assumes again the role of a visitor whose eastern values predominate. He would rather barter mining claims and stocks than work the claim. He gave up his ever diminishing claim at Lake Tahoe because it required too much work. Twain did, however, do well as a reporter in Nevada, but when he came to San Francisco his satire contributed to the growing dislike on the part of writers for the gold rush and the frontier.

By 1875 all the major writers of the west coast had returned to the east and some had gone on to Europe. They had their headquarters in London where they made their way as exponents of the gold rush era. This theme of the west and the gold rush lost interest for the sophisticated reader, only to be occasionally used by later writers. Jack London, a writer of another gold rush, used the California rush in one of his stories. Walter Van Tilburg Clark also used the very end of the gold mining era for one of his short stories.

Jack London based his short story, “All Gold Canyon”, on the California gold rush. It tells the story of emotional and physical conflict involving a miner who is hunting a pocket of gold. The story opens with the perfect picture of nature, untouched by man, much the way California was before the rush. A miner begins to mar the serene valley the way mining marred California. Upon discovering the pocket after days of hard work, he is held up and wounded by an outlaw who has been following him. The miner, however, overcomes his assailant, kills him, and leaves the canyon with $40,000 in gold. As he leaves, the valley returns to its natural peace. The theme is one of isolation and both the miner and the outlaw must fight it out, without relying on society, for there is none. London's closing lines in the story summarize symbolically the coming and passing of the gold rush and its effect on California when he states, “Only remained the hoof marks in the meadow and the torn hillside to mark the boisterous trail of the life that had broken the peace of the place and passed on”.¹⁴ In the early days there were just two types; the miners, or those who worked; the outlaws or those who preyed on those who worked.

Clark's short story, “The Wind and Snow of Winter”, portrays a miner who has lived his life in the gold country. Now an old man, he fails to realize that the gold rush is over. He returns to the town of Gold Rock as he had done for many years as a prospector. Refusing to travel the highway, he takes to the dirt roads which are now overgrown with weeds. He returns to town this December only to find that his friends have either died or have left. Clark portrays the type of miner who refused to believe that the mining days were over and continued to wander about the hills still hoping for a big strike. Clark, born in Reno, Nevada, was a part of these declining days of the mining era. Each town or mining camp, after the minerals had been taken out, slowly became the ghost town which Clark portrayed so vividly in his story. Clark signals the end of the mining era when, upon inquiring about the whereabouts of an acquaintance, he is told, “No, she died quite a while ago, Mr. Braneen”.¹⁵ Clark seems also to say that the mining era died long ago for he based only this one short story on the gold rush. Like many other authors, he found his literary gold in nature.

If there are few prose works directly concerning the gold rush, there is even less good poetry. The frontier accepted almost any type of literature, and poetry was no exception. As early as 1847 the newspapers carried a poet's corner, which was to become popular during the years to follow. The poetry of the gold rush era was mostly that of imitation, recounting a thousand times the familiar ancient tales, preaching morals, or lamenting some type of loss. There were mixed emotions about poetry, and the first book, Outcroppings, containing poetry by Harte, Ridge and others, was valued at 33[frac13] cents a ton by one critic. Harte's volume was criticized for not having attempted to create an epic of the gold hunting period.

No one took the idea of writing a western epic seriously except a poet named Edward Pollock. He died at the age of thirty-five, having never produced his intended work. Pollock's verse showed traces of many great poets from Coleridge to Poe. In an article entitled “Thoughts Toward a New Epic”,¹⁶ Pollock set high standards for his proposed work. In the tradition of Homer, Virgil and Milton, was to follow a great modern epic containing the struggle of right against wrong, stemming from the heart of man in America. The creator of this work was to regard America as the most important of countries. Pollock's notebooks reveal no plans as to how he would produce it.

Perhaps we are still too much a part of the times, too well acquainted with facts, to be able to produce this literature. Perhaps the popularizers have discouraged any would-be western writer, fearing his becoming obscure through association with the all too familiar popular western which has delighted the masses for years. The idea which Twain had still prevails, that the western theme is sub-literary and vulgar. Few writers have broken this tradition and even London and Clark are sometimes placed with the writers of popular western type literature. No writer dares to take this literature seriously for fear of being criticized by a long line of pedants ranging from Twain to present day critics.

The fact that so much literature about the west exists and so little of it concerns the gold rush should inspire some writer to use this material for his writing. The gold rush era still awaits a skilled hand. This is not the hand that relates facts nor seeks to shock his reader with fantastic tales, but rather the hand desirous of involving the reader with the people and the times which form our culture today. The gold rush era was unique and has produced a culture in western America which has had a far reaching effect. The task at hand for the literary world is one of relating our times to those of the gold rush era. Taking the reader back to the “days of old” with a sentimental retelling of the gold rush period is not the problem.

California's literature has gone the way of her economy—agriculture and industry have replaced mining. Robert Louis Stevenson stated in his work The Silverado Squatters, “… we look timidly forward, with a spark of hope, to where the new lands, already weary of producing gold, begin to green with vineyards”.¹⁷ California has produced many writers after the gold rush who have exalted her numerous natural resources. In Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath we see the realization of Edward Pollock's western epic in prose. Clarence King and John Muir gave early birth to a long heritage of nature writers and poets, the best of whom is California's poet Robinson Jeffers. The gold rush and its subsequent western movement is in literature today just as Steinbeck describes it in the Red Pony when the grandfather tells Jody, “It was a job for men, but boys want to hear about it”.¹⁸

Notes

1. Quoted from Bayard Taylor, Eldorado; or, Adventures in the Path of Empire (1850); reissued New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1949, Appendix, p. 369.

2. Ibid., pp. 365-67.

3. Weg zum Reichthum: Californiens Gold-Reichthum (Leipzig, Verlag von Gustav Thenau, 1849).

4. See Letter from John Augustus Sutter to William A. Leidesdorff, New Helvetia (Sacramento), March 25, 1848, in Letters of the Gold Discovery (San Francisco, Book Club of California, 1948).

5. Henry Blinn, I Saw Hard Times (Letter from Sacramento City, December 23, 1849), Stockton, Cal., San Joaquin Pioneer and Historical Society, 1950.

6. See Paul W. Rodman, Mining Frontiers of the Far West (New York, Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1963).

7. W. J. Pleasants, Twice Across the Plains, 1849-1856 (San Francisco, Walter N. Brunt Co., 1906).

8. Cf. Rodman, op. cit., pp. 166-67.

9. Sacramento Weekly Union, May 15, 1852.

10. Alonzo Delano's California Correspondence (Sacramento, Cal., Sacramento Book Collector's Club, 1952, p. 133).

11. Franklin Walker, San Francisco's Literary Frontier (San Francisco 1941), pp. 38-39.

12. William P. Bennett, The First Baby in Camp (Salt Lake City, Rancher Publishing Co., 1893). Bennett relates the tale of a twelve pound boy born to W. J. Wilson, called Bill's “big find”, who attracted miners for miles around and is said to have brought luck.

13. Walker, op. cit., p. 162.

14. Jack London, “All Gold Canyon”, The Sea-Wolf and Selected Stories (New York, New American Library, 1964), p. 239.

15. Walter Van Tilburg Clark, The Watchful Gods (New York, Random House, 1950), p. 50.

16. Edward A. Pollock, “Thoughts Toward a New Epic”, The Pioneer, II (1854), p. 65 ff.

17. Robert Louis Stevenson, From Scotland to Silverado (Cambridge, Mass., Balknap Press, 1966), p. 205.

18. John Steinbeck, “The Red Pony”, The Portable Steinbeck (New York 1943), p. 409.