After the Gold Rush

<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 100000 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.