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Reviews
Gold Rush Capitalists: Greed and Growth in Sacramento
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By Mark Eifler
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University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 2002. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. 288 pages. $39.95 cloth, $21.95 paper.
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Reviewed by Charlene Porsild
Montana Historical Society, Helena
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| Gold Rush Capitalists is a welcome addition to the growing literature on the formation of gold-rush communities in the West. Working from extensive primary manuscript and newspaper sources, Eifler carefully documents the founding and development of California's capital city. |
1
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Eifler was drawn to the subject initially by the Squatters' Riot of 1850, and thus his analysis centers on the tensions between the mercantile elite and the transient settler population. This perspective creates a multidimensional portrait of the city, including the early tussles over who would control the city's development. Eifler draws out the various conflicts between capital and labor, urbanization and resource exploitation, and mercantilism and transportation to show the complexity of the tensions in mid-century California. Each group, he argues, had a competing vision for the future of the fledgling city. |
2
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Eifler argues that in the space of just three years (1849–1851), the battle for Sacramento's future was waged and its future determined. It was in the first three years that Sacramento lost its status as a major port to San Francisco, instead gaining important stature as a regional trading center. This change resulted in a shift in population and in leadership that helped shape the subsequent direction and demographics of the city itself. The biggest battle was between the Settlers' Association (the so-called squatters) and the city's landowners, but other ethnic and social tensions persisted beyond this particular conflict and its resolution, as Eifler outlines. |
3
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Eifler finds evidence that Sacramento's earliest residents used a variety of private and public associations to create and maintain a sense of community. Unfortunately, the unstable economy and internal ethnic and social divisions prevented citizens from establishing any unified sense of community in these early years. For example, just when the Settlers' Association seemed poised to assert itself over the landowners, a new gold discovery scattered the members and they headed out to the new diggings. The whole cycle of building began again. |
4
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Gold Rush Capitalists reads well, but with its intensely detailed analysis and narrow focus on Sacramento's first few years, it will ultimately find its primary audience with urban and labor historians and a few California history buffs. The work is mostly text, although there are some wonderful examples of early California manuscript illustrations, including an early map of the region and its rivers. |
5
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In short, Eifler has created a useful, interesting, highly detailed, and scholarly examination of early community formation in California. |
6
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