Editor Fitzroy of the small-town newspaper Mine and Mill is dismayed to see the vitality and pioneer strength of his small town fade before the forces of violence, inexplicable deaths, corruption by bribery and acts of vengeance amongst the ordinary citizens of Fiddletown. he decides to log, to chart, as it were, in his paper and his diary the dismal decay of the early California gold town. He sometimes uses his poetic pen to capture the sad events, the inexplicable failures of ordinary people to show civility and compassion. "Gold! fear was not of tomorrow but of an irrecoverable sacrifice of home, honor and charity in the name of gold-a sacrifice and corruption of the conscience like mephisto the gold miners had traded their souls for the golden metal. That fear lingered beneath outward forms of pleasure and happiness, like a waiting spirit of death."

Fictional account of the death of the town of Fiddlehead.

Some issues include separately paged sections: Better management, Physical theatre, extra profits; Review; Servisection.

The first gold rush in American history occurred in north Georgia; it preceded the mining booms in the West by almost two decades. Published in 1956, Auraria tells the story of the mining town at the center of Georgia's gold frenzy. Auraria, which reached its zenith in the 1830s, eventually faded into a ghost town by the twentieth century. E. Merton Coulter gives readers more than a local study by placing Auraria's fascinating story in the context of larger regional and national developments.