Cash for Gold, 19th Century Version

Western novels are full of stories about men and women moving out West to Californy to pick up gold nuggets as big as a fist, and it is a proven fact that one person actually did pick up one such gold nugget. However, there was only just the one, and the rest of the people that flocked out West had to find a way to screw everyone else out of their hard-earned gold.  Such was the beginning of the Internet– I mean, the great Gold Rush of 1849, which predictably started in 1848 California time.

Western Novels and Dirt

Nothing quickens the reader’s pulse quicker than tales of treasure just laying on the ground, waiting to be picked up by the hero or heroine. Western novels are ripe with pungent tales of the hardy ’49ers who braved Indians and harsh living conditions to eke out a meager existence for decades before hitting the big strike and dying right on the spot. Many an unmarked grave exists out in the West where men just died where they squatted, worn out from sheer irony.

The Real Gold Rush

Plenty of fortunes were made during the Gold Rush, but mostly by the people who sold shovels and picks and placer pans to the miners. Not much is written about the shopkeepers that retired back East after a few years of raking in the gold dust for a new shovel while miners dropped like flies from exposure, camp fights, and dysentery. This is cheerfully known as the “American Dream,” and still exists today in most Internet marketing and MLM businesses.

What Happens in Vegas…

A mining camp that actually struck gold was a rarity, and the ones that did were usually mined out within a few years. Between first strike and registered claim to eventual abandonment, a Gold Rush town was the epitome of fast living. Western novels are full of stories about a man who could show up broke, strike it rich, sell his claim, become richer, and lose everything at one hand of cards in a matter of hours. In fact, Las Vegas was founded upon this very principle.

Western Ghost Towns

Literally hundreds of ghost towns dot the West from Texas to California, or from Texas to Montana, if you prefer to go in the other direction. Built and abandoned in the space of a few years, these towns have managed to stay preserved due to a lack of rain, a blisteringly hot environment, and staying well off the beaten path. Some are even reopening as tourist attractions today, for the person who relishes a  stay in a hotel that was used as a whorehouse 150 years earlier.

Silver and Gold

Western novels keep Ghost towns alive and well in the mind of the reader. Shalako, Deadwood, Vulture’s Gap, and other famous Ghost towns are forever memorialized in the dusty print of  Zane Grey, Louis L’amour, and Jake Logan. As the big mining companies took over the patchwork of mining claims from individual miners, the big money from back East began to take over the placer miner, and the mining camp came to an abrupt halt. The Civil War finished off what the rich bankers began, and by the 1870′s, wildcat miners had fled their camps and moved on to other pursuits. But in the minds of Western authors, the Colorado silver strike, the gold strike at Sutter’s mill, and Custer finding gold in the Black Hills of South Dakota (not his best move, by the way) are three of the turning points in the settlements of the West.