Most of the fiction on the California Gold Rush makes it sound like one grand, boyish adventure. However, when you read the real history, you realize that it wasn't that way at all.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I was surprised at how cosmopolitan the Gold Rush was: prospectors were of all races, genders, and countries. I was equally surprised at how fast gold prospecting became big business.
The Gold Rush and the Pony Express made Sacramento a substantial place in terms of enterprise.
The first treasure California began to surrender after the Gold Rush as the oldest: her land.
Researching and writing about the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98 was one of the most exciting and involving projects I've undertaken.
Every time I see something about the Wild West, I'm reminded that our version of history may not be what really happened.
The Seven Cities of Gold always fascinated me. Southwestern U.S. history especially fascinates me. The whole spur of the Spanish exploration of the Southwestern U.S. was the search for these mythical Seven Cities of Gold.
A lot of the stories I was brought up on had to do with extreme actions - leaving everything behind, crossing the trackless wastes, and in those stories the people who stayed behind and had their settled ways - those people were not the people who got the prize. The prize was California.
When I was five, we moved to Virginia and lived inside an old fort that was surrounded by a moat. So when I heard stories of American history, I felt as if those dramas were taking place right in my own backyard.
I really wanted to write an adventure story, a murder-mystery that was set during the gold-rush years in New Zealand.
The arc of the American story is long, it is bumpy and uncertain, but it always bends toward a more perfect union.
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