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Good Prospects: Life
in the California Gold Fields
May 9, 2007 – Summer, 2009
- Henry William Bigler, Diary, 1848
This sentence, written by
Henry Bigler at the end of a day’s
work at Sutter’s Mill, is the first
account of the discovery of gold in the
northern part of what was then Alta California.
The impact of the discovery was immediate
and spurred an influx of people from the
East and Midwest as well as from Europe,
Mexico, South America, Asia, and Australia
to the mining regions of the Sierra. Good
Prospects: Life in the California Gold Fields
examines with an affectionate eye the lives
of the “forty-niners” who traveled
to California with hopes of making their
fortune. The exhibition traces their travels,
experiences, and hardships with a selection
of sheet music and instruments, photography,
paintings, books, maps, and journalistic
and eyewitness accounts found in the permanent
collections of The Society of California
Pioneers.
The life of the California miner spawned
a rich and enduring popular culture that
has come to define this era in history.
Songs were written about mining, song books
were published for miners to carry with
them to the gold fields. Melodeons and music
halls drew performers such as Lola Montez
and Lotta Crabtree to entertain the influx
of hopeful miners. Artists created images
of the mines and miners – some realistic,
but many idealized. Photography introduced
the daguerreotype, which allowed miners
to send photographs of themselves with pick
and shovel to their loved ones back home
– or to carry with them an image in
a locket.
Much of the literature of the day –
plays, poems, essays and books – focused
on the mines and mining. With the exception
of the Civil War, no other period in American
history is so rich in written personal accounts.
Diaries were kept on trips to and from the
gold fields, on the covered wagon trails,
on board ships around the Horn, and on the
journey via Panama by ship and wagon. Scores
of letters were written by the miners and
their distant loved ones. Many of these
survive, giving us a clearer picture of
life during these times. Peter Decker, an
early member of The Society, wrote many
diaries, including an 1857 account of a
trip to Yosemite. James Mason Hutchings,
another early member, produced a magazine
which featured illustrations from the whole
state, as well as mining scenes and early
scenes of Yosemite. The southern mines,
in the vicinity of Yosemite with their center
at Sonora, became an even more lawless area
than those mines in the northern part of
the state. Guns and daggers were standard
equipment for a miner along with the pick,
shovel and gold pan.
The nineteenth century was also an age of
printed media, and newspapers, magazines
and books flourished. The first printing
press came around the Horn to California
on board ship – and those on board
printed an account of their journey aboard
ship. Artists and printers joined forces
to produce lettersheets, which were often
used by miners to write home. These sheets
were illustrated with scenes from the mines,
cities and people of the gold rush. Books
were published on the gold rush in many
languages – German, French, Swedish,
Italian – to name a few, reflecting
the origins of many of the gold seekers.
Much of our most direct knowledge about
the lives of the miners comes, however,
from on-the-spot accounts by individuals
who lived it. Louise Amelia Knapp Smith
Clappe, known to her readers as Dame Shirley,
wrote a series of letters from the California
gold fields during 1851-1852. Her letters
describe incidents from everyday life, as
well as murders, accidents, hangings, and
mob justice in vivid and unvarnished prose.
In her last letter from a log cabin at Indian
Bar on November 21, 1852 she wrote:
My heart is heavy at the thought of
departing forever from this place. I like
this wild and barbarous life; I leave it
with regret. The solemn fir trees, “whose
slender tops are close against the sky”
here, the watching hills, and the calmly
beautiful river seem to gaze sorrowfully
at me, as I stand in the moon-lighted midnight,
to bid them farewell…
The Gold Rush brought great wealth for some
and disappointment and/or emigration for
more than a few. But like Dame Shirley,
few forgot their early experiences in the
California foothills that the present exhibition,
more than 150 years later, seeks to evoke.
Tim Evans and Patricia Keats
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