The Rip-Roaring Mining Camps

Mark Twain once said of the Gold Rush days,

"the only population of the kind the world has ever seen.  Two hundred thousand young men, not simpering, dainty...weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves...the very pick and choice of the world's glorious ones."

The gold mining camps, stretched 200 miles along the Sierras' western slopes.  The men were determined to strike it rich and spent long hours in freezing rivers just for an ounce or more often nothing at all.  They formed partnerships to build dams and divert streams for easier access.

Surprisingly, many were well-to-do men lured by the adventure as much as by the gold, but most came to escape poverty and make a better life for their families.  Tensions ran high - a small disagreement over a card game could result in a gun battle, disputes over ownership of an ounce of gold dust often ended in a bloody brawl.

In the early days these all male societies where there were no preachers, mothers, wives or teachers, became a haven for profanity, vulgarity and crude behavior.  The camps began to support a floating population of professional gamblers, barkeepers, con artists and prostitutes.  Lynch law was the only law, and lawbreakers were either hanged or whipped on the flimsiest of evidence.

All foreigners were banned in most camps.  Mexican "greasers" were despised and their claims ignored.  The Chinese worked camps abandoned by whites and were made to fight as entertainment with medieval lances and swords.  Sometimes anti-foreign sentiment was based on genuine corncern as when an absentee capitalist hired low wage labor to earn him a fortune, or slaves were forced to work for their owners - in Free California territory. 

Gradually the wild camps were deserted with the men moving on to Nevada or settling down in the coastal towns.  A few got rich, the majority were as poor as when they came. For a time the Gold Rush had a society all its own in American history.

Next time...The Babylon of the Pacific
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On July 13, 1866, construction began on Fort Kearny the most important outpost guarding the Bozeman Trail, named after John Bozeman who blazed a trail off the Oregon Trail through Montana in 1863.