CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH (kindle) by Hourly History

 















Published in 2022 by Hourly History.

The short histories produced by Hourly History are designed to read in about an hour. In some cases the size limit makes for a very incomplete history. In this case, I thought that topic and the size limit matched up pretty well.

This e-book details from the beginning (spoiler alert: John Sutter of Sutter's Mill fame was clearly not a good guy) and details the good as well as the bad of the Gold Rush.

Turns out there was a lot of bad, such as environmental destruction on an unprecedented level (they used mining techniques that were outlawed just a few years later. How obviously bad were they if people who let children into mines said that these techniques are clearly out of bounds?!??) 

The white miners also used genocidal techniques to wipe out the local Native American populations, killed Chinese immigrants that came across the Pacific to find gold and, of course, jumped the claims of other white miners and killed them. All of the gold and the lure of the possibility of getting rich quick just brought out the worst in almost everybody.

It also brought poor hygiene and possibly even worse building standards and this led to tragedy. Disease outbreaks were common and when there were earthquakes a lot of people were killed. But...a lot of gold was discovered and a lot of people got rich selling to the other gold seekers.

I thought this was a solid re-telling of the history of the California Gold Rush - warts and all. I rate this short history 5 stars out of 5. It can be found on Amazon.com here:  CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH (kindle) by Hourly History.

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