Why Don’t I Write About the Chinese During the California Gold Rush?
The novel I’m currently writing alludes to race relations between whites and Native Americans, Hispanics, and African Americans during the California Gold Rush years. However, I do not touch on the Chinese influx into California. Why not? Because my novel takes place in 1848-1850, before the large wave of Asian immigration to California began. The […]
The Summer of ’64: Pacific Grove
I’ve mentioned spending summers with my grandparents in Pacific Grove, California. It seemed like I spent several idyllic summers there, but there really weren’t that many. Only twice did my brother and I spend long vacations with our grandparents. In 1963 we spent a month there, but our mother was with us, so that didn’t […]
Highland Fling or Irish Jig?
In June 1992, the same month that my kids spent at camp in North Carolina, my parents toured the British Isles. In fact, part of the reason we sent our kids to the June camp session was so they could visit my parents later in the summer, after my parents returned from Europe. Unfortunately, my […]
How Much Gold Was Enough in the California Gold Rush Years?
In my research into the California Gold Rush, I’ve read about prospectors who struck it rich and returned to their homes wealthy men, about others who made a fortune and then spent it, and about still other men who never made a dime. And I started wondering how much it took to become wealthy in […]
La Jolla, California—A Jewel of a City
My husband and I were fortunate to spend a recent weekend in San Diego, California. One afternoon we drove through La Jolla, a suburb to the north of the city. According to the La Jolla visitor’s website, the origin of La Jolla’s name is not clear. It either derives from the Spanish “la joya”, which […]
Party Like It’s 1850
The main plot and some of the sub-plots of my work-in-progress revolve around relationships between the sexes. I try to be faithful to the attitudes of people of the mid-19th century in my book, even though modern readers are often put off by how formal people were compared to our own times. My characters come […]
How the Great Fires Shaped Early San Francisco
The last survivor of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake died earlier this month. William Del Monte was three months old when the earthquake struck and 109 when he died on January 11. Reading the news articles about his life and death brought to mind all the novels I’ve read about the earthquake and the fires […]
Sacramento in July 1849
As I searched for a topic on the California Gold Rush to write about this month, I came across issues for the Sacramento Placer Times in July 1849. At that time, Sacramento was a burgeoning outpost at the confluence of the American and Sacramento Rivers. It still was not an incorporated town. The location had […]
Banking in the American West in the 1840s—Before and After the Gold Rush
I’ve blogged about some boring topics related to my research for my Oregon Trail and Gold Rush novels, but this post may discuss the most boring—banking. Yet one of the biggest problems I had in plotting my novel was how my protagonist could move money from the East Coast to Oregon, and then between California […]
How the California Gold Rush Changed Emigration Patterns to the West
The Great Migration of 1843 was the first significant group of emigrants to head west. That year between 700 and 1,000 emigrants left for Oregon, mostly families seeking free land. In 1843, it was still uncertain whether the United States or Great Britain would govern the Oregon Territory, but it was clear the land was […]