Enter a name, company, place or keywords to search across this item. Then click "Search" (or hit Enter).
Collection: Directories and Documents > Pamphlets
An Illustrated History of California's Gold Rush by Wells Fargo Bank (PH 1-27) (34 pages)
Go to the Archive Home
Go to Thumbnail View of this Item
Go to Single Page View of this Item
Download the Page Image
Copy the Page Text to the Clipboard
Don't highlight the search terms on the Image
Show the Page Image
Show the Image Page Text
Reset View and Center Image
Zoom Out
Zoom In
Rotate Left
Rotate Right
Toggle Full Page View
Flip Image Horizontally
More Information About this Image
Get a Citation for Page or Image - Copy to the Clipboard
Go to the Previous Page (or Left Arrow key)
Go to the Next Page (or Right Arrow key)
Page: of 34
Around the Horn to California
who live in quiet desperation trom day to day, hoping vaguely that something will happen to change
their lives. The Gold Rush was the excuse they had
been looking for —a chance to pick up and leave,
justified by the possibility of striking it rich and returning to a new and more prosperous life.
There were three ways to get to California. You
could take a wagon across the plains over trails
mapped by Fremont and the Mountain Men. You
could, for $200, book passage on a sailing vessel
bound for the West Coast via stormy Cape Horn. Or
you could sail as far as Panama, ferry your equipment across the fever-ridden isthmus on muleback,
and hope to find another ship on the other side.
There were no freeways to the Gold Country.
But they came anyway—thousands of them. They
were frozen in the passes of the High Sierra,
plagued by malaria in the tropical jungles of Panama, half-drowned in the plumed seas off Cape Horn,
but they kept on coming, partly because it was almost equally as bad to turn back, but mostly because
there was always on the horizon ahead of them the
phantom glimmer of gold. They had paid their
money and they wanted to see the elephant.
Some of them did. Some of them made vast fortunes
almost overnight. Some of them made just enough
2 Beene on. And some of them lost everything
ane ad, Among the latter were John Augustus
si i who died penniless, and James Wilson Marshall, who eked out a sparse living during his later
years by selling his autograph as th +o
covered gold in Guin P e€ man who dis
5