Vaught After the Gold Rush

Tarnished Dreams in the Sacramento Valley
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8018-9780-1
Verlag: Johns Hopkins University Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 0 Seiten, Format (B × H): 152 mm x 229 mm

2008 Winner of the Albert J. Beveridge Award of the American Historical Association

"It is a glorious country," exclaimed Stephen J. Field, the future U.S. Supreme Court justice, upon arriving in California in 1849. Field's pronouncement was more than just an expression of exuberance. For an electrifying moment, he and another 100,000 hopeful gold miners found themselves face-to-face with something commensurate to their capacity to dream. Most failed to hit pay dirt in gold. Thereafter, one illustrative group of them struggled to make a living in wheat, livestock, and fruit along Putah Creek in the lower Sacramento Valley. Like Field, they never forgot that first "glorious" moment in California when anything seemed possible.

In After the Gold Rush, David Vaught examines the hard-luck miners-turned-farmers—the Pierces, Greenes, Montgomerys, Careys, and others—who refused to admit a second failure, faced flood and drought, endured monumental disputes and confusion over land policy, and struggled to come to grips with the vagaries of local, national, and world markets.

Their dramatic story exposes the underside of the American dream and the haunting consequences of trying to strike it rich.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Vaught, David

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft | Kulturwissenschaften Kulturwissenschaften: Ernährung & Gesellschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Amerikanische Geschichte
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Ökotrophologie (Ernährungs- und Haushaltswissenschaften)
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Sachkultur, Materielle Kultur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Prologue: "Glorious"
Part One: Making a Settlement
1. Removals
2. Seduced
3. Farms without Titles
4. "A Very Public Place"
Part Two: Disaster and Persistence
5. "To Begin Again"
6. Favorite Son
7. Prominent Citizens
Part Three: The Second Gold Rush
8. "As Good As Wheat"
9. "A Devil's Opportunity"
10. Looking Back
Part Four: The New Generation Emerges
11. Gold—Wheat—Fruit
12. Legacies
Epilogue: Remnants
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Vaught, David
David Vaught is a professor of history at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875–1920, also published by Johns Hopkins.

David Vaught is a professor of history at Texas A&M University. He is the author of Cultivating California: Growers, Specialty Crops, and Labor, 1875–1920, also published by Johns Hopkins.