This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.

This book relays the factual details of the California Gold Rush. The narrative provides multiple accounts of the event, and readers learn details through the point of view of a builder working on Sutter's Mill when gold was discovered, a '49er who left New York for California, and a prospector from Chile who came by ship to California to find riches. The text offers opportunities to compare and contrast various perspectives in the text while gathering and analyzing information about a historical event.