2008 Winner of the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association
"It is a glorious country," exclaimed Stephen J. Field, the future U.S. Supreme Court justice, upon arriving in California in 1849. Field's pronouncement was more than just an expression of exuberance. For an electrifying moment, he and another 100,000 hopeful gold miners found themselves face-to-face with something commensurate to their capacity to dream. Most failed to hit pay dirt in gold. Thereafter, one illustrative group of them struggled to make a living in wheat, livestock, and fruit along Putah Creek in the lower Sacramento Valley. Like Field, they never forgot that first "glorious" moment in California when anything seemed possible.
In After the Gold Rush, David Vaught examines the hard-luck miners-turned-farmers—the Pierces, Greenes, Montgomerys, Careys, and others—who refused to admit a second failure, faced flood and drought, endured monumental disputes and confusion over land policy, and struggled to come to grips with the vagaries of local, national, and world markets.
Their dramatic story exposes the underside of the American dream and the haunting consequences of trying to strike it rich.
David Vaught is a professor of history at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875–1920, also published by Johns Hopkins.
Table of Contents
AcknowledgmentsPrologue: "Glorious"Part One: Making a Settlement1. Removals2. Seduced3. Farms without Titles4. "A Very Public Place"Part Two: Disaster and Persistence5. "To Begin Again"6. Favorite Son7. Prominent CitizensPart Three: The Second Gold Rush8. "As Good As Wheat"9. "A Devil's Opportunity"10. Looking BackPart Four: The New Generation Emerges11. Gold—Wheat—Fruit12. LegaciesEpilogue: RemnantsNotesEssay on SourcesIndex
What People are Saying About This
From the Publisher
I was delighted, even slightly overwhelmed, by the extraordinary scholarship and elegant writing of this book. Because Vaught writes so well, his study reads like a novel in its rich detail and narrative pace. It offers us a unique insight into the environmental history of the Sacramento Valley, banking and credit in California in the mid-nineteenth century, the entrepreneurial spirit of the times, community on the California frontier, the legal culture of the times, and a number of other important topics. It will appeal to scholars of American history, of American social and agricultural history, of the newly developing field of American business history, and Californianists of every sort.—Kevin Starr, University of Southern California, author of California: A History
Kevin Starr
I was delighted, even slightly overwhelmed, by the extraordinary scholarship and elegant writing of this book. Because Vaught writes so well, his study reads like a novel in its rich detail and narrative pace. It offers us a unique insight into the environmental history of the Sacramento Valley, banking and credit in California in the mid-nineteenth century, the entrepreneurial spirit of the times, community on the California frontier, the legal culture of the times, and a number of other important topics. It will appeal to scholars of American history, of American social and agricultural history, of the newly developing field of American business history, and Californianists of every sort.
— Kevin Starr, University of Southern California, author of California: A History
