Gold Rush Fever Economy Style

Those gold rushers who could not afford ship's passage or preferred solid ground had a choice of several overland trails.  One began at Fort Smith, Arkansas through Santa Fe and the Arizona deserts.  Lack of water and temperatures around 110 degrees cracked wheel axles and killed oxen, leaving those Argonauts to wander on foot, leaving their bones to bleach in the desert.

Not much easier but by far more popular were the Mormon and Oregon Trails over the Rockies directly to Sacramento.  Originating in Independence, Missouri (now Council Bluffs) this journey required waiting for spring before departure.  Most wagon trains heading out had actual bodies of government assigned (even legislatures) to enforce law and order on the journey.  Wet weather plagued many gold rush trains, making trails muddy bogs, sinking wagons wheels and making travel impossible.  Cholera epidemics took 5,000 Argonaut lives.  By the end of 1849, the trails were littered with cemeteries and gravesites.  Later travelers west used the abandoned junk like rusted old stoves, left on the trail as route markers to California.

One prospector's journey is recorded in 1849 "For miles an animated mass of beings broke upon our view.  Long trains of wagons with their white covers were moving slowly along...in a few moments we took our station in line, a component part of the motley throng of gold seekers who were leaving home and friends far behind to encounter peril of mountain and plain."  -  Alonzo Delano 1854 Life on the Plains.  .

So it seems that no matter which method you used to get to the gold in California, it was not a sure thing! One was more expensive than most Argonauts could afford, one was almost sure a death sentence from tropical disease, and finally the one affordable was a trial of the elements that could end in your death anyway!  Makes you think that the gold might not have been worth the trip?!

Next time...those rip-roaring gold camps
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Today in Pioneer History: "On July 10, 1889, In a drunken rage, “Buckskin” Frank Leslie murders his lover, the Tombstone prostitute Blonde Mollie Williams. Leslie was an ill-tempered and violent man, especially when he drank. He told conflicting stories about his early life. At times, he said he was from Texas, at other times from Kentucky, claimed he had been trained in medicine and pharmacy, and he even boasted that he had studied in Europe. He earned the nickname “Buckskin” while working as an Army Scout in the Plains Indian Wars. None of his assertions can be confirmed in the historical record.