| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.2

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| Book Review | The Western Historical Quarterly, 39.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

After the Gold Rush: Tarnished Dreams in the Sacramento Valley. By David Vaught. (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007. xi + 310 pp. Illustrations, maps, notes, bibliographic essay, index. $55.00.)

Scholarly interest in and popular fascination for the California Gold Rush has far outlasted the gold in the rivers. In After the Gold Rush, David Vaught seeks to add a new chapter to the well-worn narratives of golden hopes and bitter failures by arguing that many of the unsuccessful gold-seekers, unable to face the prospect of an empty-handed trip back east, stayed in California to farm, build homes, and raise families. Dreams of wealth, marked by the experience of emigrating in search of gold, continued to dictate the lives of those who stayed in the Sacramento Valley, shaping the structure of their communities for the remainder of the nineteenth century. Putah Creek was one of the communities in the Sacramento Valley settled by former Argonauts hoping to make fortunes out of the soil. While only a few struck it rich, many others helped keep the dream and the memory of the gold rush alive.

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