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Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
An Illustrated History of California's Gold Rush by Wells Fargo Bank (PH 1-27) (34 pages)
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Page: of 34
ing of later years which contributed so largely to
erosion and the silting up of streams that it was
finally outlawed in California.
Another ingenious soul invented the “Long Tom’—
a long wooden sluice with a perforated iron bottom
in which the gravel was washed. The smaller stones
and the bits of gold went through the bottom where
a series of baffles collected the gold and the dirt was
washed away. With a rich claim and a Long Tom,
a pair of miners could take out a hundred ounces of
gold in a week. Gold at the time brought about $16
an ounce. Even so, fortunes were not quickly made
in the diggings. The imbalance of demand over supply had forced food prices up to a point which we
would regard as scandalous even today when our
cost of living is approximately four times what it
was a hundred years ago.
The miner’s week consisted of six days of backbreaking work, standing hip deep in cold water shoveling
gravel, or manhandling heavy timbers to build a
flume. The day was ten hours long, and when it was
through he would like as not stagger to his tent or
shack, eat some cold beans and homemade bread
and fall into his pine bough bed with his clothes on.
Sunday was the day to catch up with all the unfinished tasks of the week. Equipment was cleaned
out and repaired, clothing was washed, tents and
cabins were swept out, and enough beans and bread
were baked for the following week. Sometimes, if
a miner’s claim was near a town, he would walk in
on Sunday to watch the monte game, have a glass
of all but lethal whiskey, and look at the girls from
the fandango hall with a combination of disdain and
desire. Women—even those who were euphemistically called dance hall girls—were extremely rare
in the gold fields.
Certainly the colorful characters such as Snowshoe
Thompson, Lola Montez, Black Bart and Rattlesnake
Dick make the best material for stories. But for the
most part the ones who came to California after gold
were just people like anybody else—mostly good,
partly bad, mostly sensible and somewhat foolish —
looking for that one big strike which would make
them independent and a little bit different.
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