The California gold rush evokes romantic notions of adventurers in search of instant wealth. The period is inextricably linked to the basic idea of the American Dream— anyone, regardless of class, could head to the mining fields and find success....

The gold rush, was a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold. Several gold rushes took place throughout the 19th century in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, New Zealand,...

Economic turmoil and record prices have lured a new generation of prospectors to the Californian hills where the original '49ers' sought their fortunes. Guy Adams reports from Plumas Forest Rich pickings They've been talking about the gold in California's hills since 1849,...

TRAIL OF THE UNEXPECTED Glamour and glitz in Klimt's Vienna Get ready for a rush on sales of gold-leaf paint. Gustav Klimt: Painting, Design and Modern Life in Vienna 1900, which has just opened at Tate Liverpool, has a fabulous lineup of...

The capital city's ties to the Gold Rush are everywhere, from the historical old town where fortune-seekers arrived on the Sacramento River to Sutter's Fort, where costumed actors recreate the Wild West for schoolchildren.It was at that fort, just two miles west of the state...

Companies are flocking to market themselves in virtual worlds, game-like and usually three-dimensional online universes, but the long-term shape of this fledgling industry is far from clear."We're pretty much where the Internet was in the mid-90s," said Steve Prentice, a vice president at technology research...

In the following essay, Johnson focuses on the Southern Mines of California, suggesting that because of such factors as the ethnic diversity of the region and its “unruly history” (which did not coincide with typical American tales of success), the Southern Mines have been virtually forgotten by twentieth-century society.

In the following essay, Stoneley focuses on the theme of male-male relationships in the works of Bret Harte and Mark Twain, illustrating how these gold rush writers reflected the changing nature of homosocial ties in the American West during the mid- to late-nineteenth century.

In the following essay, Morrow details the birth and growth of the Western local color movement, emphasizing the contributions of such figures as Bret Harte and Mark Twain.