Edward “Ed” Schieffelin (1847–1897) was the epitome of the American frontiersman. A former Indian scout, he discovered what would become known as the legendary Tombstone, Arizona, silver lode in 1877. His search for wealth followed a path well-trod by thousands who journeyed west in the mid to late nineteenth century to try their luck in mining country. But unlike typical prospectors who spent decades futilely panning for gold, Schieffelin led an epic life of wealth and adventure. In Portrait of a Prospector, historian R. Bruce Craig pieces together the colorful memoirs and oral histories of this singular individual to tell Schieffelin’s story in his own words. Craig places the prospector’s family background and times into context in an engaging introduction, then opens Schieffelin’s story with the frontiersman’s accounts of his first prospecting attempts at ten years old, his flight from home at twelve to search for gold, and his initial wanderings in California, Nevada, and Utah. In direct, unsentimental prose, Schieffelin describes his expedition into Arizona Territory, where army scouts assured him that he “would find no rock . . . but his own tombstone.” Unlike many prospectors who simply panned for gold, Schieffelin took on wealthy partners who invested the enormous funds needed for hard rock mining. He and his co-investors in the Tombstone claim became millionaires. Restless in his newfound life of wealth and leisure, Schieffelin soon returned to exploration. Upon his early death in Oregon he left behind a new strike, the location of which remains a mystery. Collecting the words of an exceptional figure who embodied the western frontier, Craig offers readers insight into the mentality of prospector-adventurers during an age of discovery and of limitless potential. Portrait of a Prospector is highly recommended for undergraduate western history survey courses.

American personalities are a dime a dozen. Becoming a legend takes much more. Vernon J. Pick made the jump with his serendipitous prospecting discovery of yellowcake" in the southern Utah desert, gaining infamy as The Uranium King of America in 1954. The story of his discovery was told and retold at that time in the likes of Time and Fortune magazines, but only now has the depth of his persona and his discovery's influence on the future of American minerals exploration been made clear through the literary meanderings of his erstwhile protege, Jack M. Langton. First casting a spotlight on the genesis of his own career, Langton recounts his days and adventures with Pick in the Arctic tundra, building a personal view of the man and his extraordinary vision. Descriptions of Pick's magnificently wrought retreats at Walden West in California and Walden North in British Columbia are interwoven with the dealings and antics of Pick and Langton in their quest for minerals and riches . . . tales sprinkled with privileged authenticity that only genuine friendship can achieve. From this vantage point he paints a vivid picture of the behind-the-scenes intrigue associated with Nelson Bunker Hunt's famous attempt to corner the world silver market, the demise of The Superior Oil Company, and the caste-like world of the Phelps-Dodge Corporation. Not since Upton Sinclair has such a stunning portrait been painted of the inner workings of an entire segment of American industrial society. A bit brash and not without guile, The Prospector and His Protege is in the end the personal story of a man both guided by the spirit of a legend and haunted by the personal destruction that unfulfilled striving for equal celebrity can bring . . . a chronicle of the Prospector and his Protege.

The California Gold Rush captured the get-rich dreams of people around the world more completely than almost any event in American history. This catalog, published in celebration of the sesquicentennial of the 1848 discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, shows the vitality of the arts in the Golden State during the latter nineteenth century and documents the dramatic impact of the Gold Rush on the American imagination. Among the throngs of gold-seekers in California were artists, many self-taught, others formally trained, and their arrival produced an outpouring of artistic works that provide insights into Gold Rush events, personages, and attitudes. The best-known painting of the Gold Rush era, C.C. Nahl's Sunday Morning in the Mines (1872), was created nearly two decades after gold fever had subsided. By then the Gold Rush's mythic qualities were well established, and new allegories—particularly the American belief in the rewards of hard work and enterprise—can be seen on Nahl's canvas. Other works added to the image of California as a destination for ambitious dreamers, an image that prevails to this day. In bringing together a range of art and archival material such as artists' diaries and contemporary newspaper articles, The Art of the Gold Rush broadens our understanding of American culture during a memorable period in the nation's history.