Mining the Miners
Many of the most successful Californians during the gold rush were enterprising merchants who sold supplies to the miners. Rather than mining gold, the merchants prospered by "mining the miners."
A Bavarian-born dry goods merchant arrived in California in 1853 with a load of canvas he hoped to sell to the miners for tents. But this merchant soon found a better use for his canvas, making pants for the miners. The merchant's name was Levi Strauss, creator of those trousers known around the world as "Levi's."
Railroad barons Mark Hopkins and Collis P. Huntington got their start as hardware merchants in the gold-rush town of Placerville. One of their neighbors, John M. Studebaker, did a brisk business building and selling wheelbarrows for the miners. Later he and his brothers became the world's leading manufacturers of wagons and buggies. Eventually they went on to build automobiles, and from 1902 until 1963 the streets and highways of America were graced with sleek new Studebakers.
Another up-and-coming gold-rush merchant was a butcher from New York named Philip Danforth Armour. He made a small fortune cutting meat in Placerville and then went back to Chicago where he and his family became multi-millionaires running the largest meat-packing business in the world.
Historian Oscar Lewis has estimated that fewer than one out of twenty California gold seekers returned home richer than when they left. They expressed their frustration in the names of ramshackle mining camps like Poverty Hill, Skunk Gulch, and Hell's Delight.
Loneliness and despair also were recurring themes in gold-rush ballads such as "The Unhappy Miner," "I'm Sad and Lonely Here," "I Often Think of Writing Home," and "The Miner's Lament." One of the most poignant ballads was "The Lousy Miner," first published in John A. Stone's Original California Songster (1855). The opening stanza begins:
It's four long years since I reached this land, In search among the rocks and sand; And yet I'm poor when the truth is told, I'm a lousy miner, I'm a lousy miner in search of shining gold. The final refrain is one of bitter disappointment: Oh, land of gold, you did me deceive, And I intend in thee my bones to leave; So farewell, home, now my friends grow cold, I'm a lousy miner, I'm a lousy miner in search of shining gold.
Women were a rarity in most gold-rush communities. They represented about one-twelfth of the state's non-native population in 1850, and increased only to one third by 1880.
One of the most remarkable women in gold-rush California was Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe. She lived for over a year in a rough-and-tumble mining camp along the Feather River. She's known to us today by a marvelous series of letters she published under the pen name Dame Shirley. The letters are a valuable resource because they provide a woman's perspective on life in the gold rush. They contain a wealth of detail on the interior furnishings of miners' cabins, the clothing worn by the forty-niners, and their typical daily fare.
Dame Shirley also records the miners' unusual figures of speech. "Seeing the elephant," for instance, meant having a truly remarkable experience, something as unusual and unexpected as encountering an elephant in the mines.
Like so many episodes in California history, the gold rush has been considerably romanticized by many of its later chroniclers. Memoirs and fictionalized accounts, published decades after the event, tended to view the "days of '49" through a golden haze. Understandably, the aging Argonauts wished to put the best possible spin on their youthful exploits.
Heroic pioneers, stouthearted and triumphant, were popular images in Gold Rush anniversary celebrations. "California's Golden Jubilee" in 1898 included a procession through the streets of San Francisco witnessed by a crowd of two hundred thousand enthusiastic celebrants. The glorification was complete by 1948 when Californians observed the centennial of the gold discovery. Gordon Jenkins and his orchestra recorded a "musical narrative" that unabashedly celebrated the gold rush as part of the national legendary:
There's gold in California, Gold out California way. Streets are paved with it, Fortunes are made with it, Even golden razors So you can get shaved with it.
The mood during the gold-rush sesquicentennial in the late 1990s was considerably different. Thomas Frye, curator of a gold-rush exhibit at The Oakland Museum of California, commented: "In 1948, everyone identified with California's golden history. Today, it is very different. Not everyone believes in the golden history." State librarian Kevin Starr agreed, noting that Californians no longer "have a coherent society where everyone can agree on what is being celebrated."