A single-file line of packers climbing the snow slope of the Chilkoot Pass

History/Letters from the rush

Letters from the rush

The gold and silver rushes, told by the people who were there. Walk through 6 rushes in 48 letters, diaries and newspaper reports from 1848 to 1897, with the globe turning beneath your feet from one place to the next.

Start in California, 1848

Library of Congress, no known restrictions (Public domain)

6 walks

Choose a rush

Each walk follows one writer, or one town's newspapers, letter by letter. Scroll and the globe flies to where each one was written. Press Read it to me and your browser reads the walk aloud, moving on by itself.

  1. California, 1848-49 · 8 lettersGold! Gold! GOLD!In the words of The Californian, the California Star and Bayard TaylorGold mine found. In the newly made raceway of the saw-mill recently erected by Captain Sutter on the American fork, gold has been found in…Walk it
  2. Rich Bar, 1851-52 · 9 lettersDame Shirley's letters from Rich BarIn the words of Louise Clappe, writing as Dame ShirleyI can easily imagine, dear M., the look of large wonder which gleams from your astonished eyes when they fall upon the date of this letter. I can…Walk it
  3. Bendigo, 1852 · 8 lettersA lady at the diggingsIn the words of Ellen Clacy“Not a spare room or bed to be had—no living at all under a pound a-day—every one with ten fingers making ten to twenty pounds a-week.” “Then of…Walk it
  4. Eureka, 1854 · 7 lettersUnder the Southern CrossIn the words of Raffaello Carboni and the Ballaarat TimesHence the troopers were despatched like bloodhounds, in all directions, to beat the bush; and the traps who had a more confined scent, creeped and…Walk it
  5. Comstock, 1861-76 · 9 lettersSilver fever in WashoeIn the words of Mark Twain and Dan De QuilleThe “Washoe Zephyr” (Washoe is a pet nickname for Nevada) is a peculiar Scriptural wind, in that no man knoweth “whence it cometh.” … Its office…Walk it
  6. Klondike, 1897 · 7 lettersOver the passes to the KlondikeIn the words of Tappan Adney and the Seattle pressThe news that the telegraph is bringing the past few days of the wonderful things of Klondike, in the land of the midnight sun, has opened the…Walk it

Every letter on one globe

The routes the writers took, from San Francisco to the Feather River, Melbourne to Bendigo, Seattle over the Chilkoot to Dawson. Click a route to walk it.

How these walks are made

The words in the letters are the writers' own, copied from books and newspapers published between 1850 and 1900 that are now in the public domain, and checked word for word against the scans and texts we link to. Where a newspaper is quoted, the text comes from a book of the time that reprinted it, and we say which. The short lines between the letters are ours, and say only what our sources say.

These writers were not neutral. They were miners, a doctor's wife, a rebel on trial, a humorist and a reporter. Each walk says whose voices are missing.

Pictures on this page: Library of Congress, no known restrictions (Public domain); Library of Congress, no known restrictions (Public domain); Library of Congress, no known restrictions (Public domain); Goudzoekers in Australië, een Australisch meisje met haar broertje, een zendingspost op Nieuw-Zeeland en een bisschop op een slee, Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); A silver mine: miners digging. Wood engraving., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Library of Congress, no known restrictions (Public domain).

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Super Pit, Kalgoorlie by Kgbo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Gold prospectors constructing a long box with a filter for panning gold. Process print after H.M. Paget, 1899., Henry Marriott Paget (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Kimberley, South Africa: miners and washing gear at the Bultfontein diamond mine. Woodburytype, 1888, after a photograph by Robert Harris., Harris, Robert, active 1881-1888. (Public Domain Mark 1.0); Falu gruva, Lundberg, Bengt A / Europeana (CC0 1.0).