A Year of Mud and Gold - by William Benemann (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

A Year of Mud and Gold is a collection of over two hundred excerpts from letters and diaries of ordinary men and women caught up in the rapid transformation of San Francisco during its gold rush heyday, 1849-50. Together these accounts render a rich mosaic of San Francisco's metamorphosis from a small Mexican outpost into a rough-and-tumble boomtown filled with gamblers and prostitutes, evangelists and entrepreneurs--men, women, and children from all parts of the world, arriving in California with the dream of striking it rich. The correspondents come from a variety of economic and social backgrounds. Some are barely literate, while others write as well as the finest authors of nineteenth-century travel literature. Their writings address a broad range of concerns, from business prospects and consumer prices to social mores and popular amusements. The letters and diaries also hold clues to processes central to frontier history: the Americanization of Hispanic California, the stresses that migration placed on individuals and families, the fluidity of boomtown economies, and the nature of gender and race relations in an urban population of immigrants.

Review Quotes

"A nicely selected collection of San Francisco letters and diaries."-"Los Angeles Times Book Review"

"Lawlessness and violence took their toll on the eager gold seekers, one in five of whom was dead within six months of arrival. Men consorted with prostitutes and each other. They died by violence, or from disease, hunger, or suicide. San Francisco thus anticipated the later development of the anomic modern city, and this volume is a fascinating portrait."-"Journal of the West"

"Lawlessness and violence took their toll on the eager gold seekers, one in five of whom was dead within six months of arrival. Men consorted with prostitutes and each other. They died by violence, or from disease, hunger, or suicide. San Francisco thus anticipated the later development of the anomic modern city, and this volume is a fascinating portrait."

About the Author

William Benemann is the archivist for Boalt Hall Law School Library and a former librarian at the Bancroft Library at the University of California, Berkeley.