Divulging areas you'll never get to, but are aware of or heard about.

Miners in The Dakotas and Rocky Mountain camps ate a lot more beef
 

This game couldn't have been too avaliable for long as 300 000 hungry miners went up the hills?

Weird that pork was twice the price of beef according to that article. Gold price was about 20 usd / oz and a kilogram of beef would cost somewhat more than 1 dollar. Today, 1/20 of an ounce, more than 50 USD, gets you more beef than that.

A gold miner made 10$ / day according to the same article. That equals to about 0,4 ounces / day and miner, so including expenses - each miner would have to produce more than that each day. I find it a little bit too much to be real from what I've seen and given the tools they had back then, with the exception of the best claim holders.

I wish I, or anyone else alive, knew how rich those placers were back then. Would I have a bunch of pickers in my pan after digging a creek, or would there be merely a flake or two, indicating that something might be hiding a few feet down?

Also, there are some really inacessible parts left of the US. Remote parts of Idaho for example - were these also mined or would placers be passed on, because of the distance?

If I was really wealthy, I wouldnt spend time looking for stuff in Eastern Europe. I'd drop a dredge in the middle of Idaho with a helicopter and try my luck.

Edit: I'd totally use this company http://www.geoheliboise.com/
 

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Beef was expensive, up to $125 a head in the early 1850's.
There were many cattle ranches started between 1850 and 1860.
They did sell beef to the miners. However I see more evidence of hogs being eaten than beef.
Hog tusks are very common in the older trash dumps.

Wild game was not always plentiful. There were starvation times where over-hunting led to scarce game.

My belief is that many miners went from wealthy to broke all in a single week.
Champagne shipped in from France one day, and ditch water the next. They were high rollers.

Some were starving, while others had ham steak and fresh eggs for breakfast. Very expensive meals.

More than not, everyone was probably mostly hungry.
 

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Roughing It is a great read but most of the mining information is from after the California gold rush but more towards Nevada and the Comstock rush. They ate whatever game was available, there were professional hunters that sold their meat to the miners and they hunted just about anything they could find. I have read about miners dining on mountain lion steaks. Tinned oysters were popular.
 

During the early years times were difficult.
Here are a few excerpts from 1849. Beans, coffee, hard tack...hard tack, beans and coffee.

An iron pan, which we use for washing gold, serves also for boiling our coffee. A frying-pan is our only cooking utensil. In this one of the company—who leaves work before the others for the purpose—fries some pork, which is rancid, and then, in the fat, fries some flour batter. After it is done on one side, he tosses it whirling up, catching it as it comes down upon the other side, which is then fried in turn. We have neither knife, fork, spoon, nor plate. A spade answers very well for a plate. We use coffee without sugar, bread without salt, salad without vinegar. Our prospects so far are not favorable. Four of us were at work, when a pretty vein of gold was discovered, passing down the channel and into the bank. We have to-day made $18.25 each.

Our diet consists of hard bread, flour, which we eat half cooked, and salt pork, with occasionally a salmon which we purchase of the Indians. Vegetables are not to be procured.

After traveling three miles, we stopped under a tree to cook slap-jacks–a fried batter–and pork

I perceived an old, drunken sailor cooking some nice steaks from the grisly bear. I had never yet tasted the meat, and when I expressed a curiosity to do this, a tin plate, with a generous slice of the savory meat, was placed before me on the ground, with a bottle of brandy.

For breakfast we had tea, hard bread, beans, and pork, and a few pickles, for all which we paid $2 each

Two of my companions, feeling the pressure of hunger, went to the tent of an acquaintance, where they found some venison steaks and bread, which had been left at breakfast.

I had cooked my dinner with my breakfast–some venison and bread, with a dish of beans and a dipper of coffee. Going to take my dinner, I found the whole gone–eaten clean and the coffee drank, probably by some miner more hungry than myself.

Then in 1850..
The year 1850 opened more favorably in the supplies furnished at the mines. It was estimated that during the year there would be one hundred thousand miners
employed. Many of them had built themselves comfortable log or stone houses—provisions were more abundant, and at lower rates. Vegetables, fresh meats, and fish were constantly supplied, many of them from the vicinity of the mines.

Things get progressively better each year. By 1855, we are starting to see large hotels with restaurants thriving in the most remote areas.
 

As early as 1851 land claims were taken up in the valleys, the first industry being the cutting of hay, as well as the grazing of cattle for a supply of beef. In 1852 A. raised a great many vegetables and a quantity of wheat, barley, and oats. The resources and industries are of three kinds, agriculture, mining, and manufacturing. They to a large extent support and sustain each other, and if it were not for the home market created and supported by the mines, agriculture would never have been so fully developed nor so ably sustained. The farmers of this county are thrown chiefly upon the home demand to furnish a market for their produce, and this the mining industry creates and supports.


How quickly things changed with the influx of miners.

The table below illustrates how quickly things were changing....1855 to 1860 was a busy time for sure.
Horses, cattle, sheep and poultry seeing the greatest increase...food. cattle went from 3,000 to 30,000 in five years.
Clipboard03.jpg

So I guess it depends on how you define the "Gold Rush Era".
 

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Interesting - this means that the gold rush wasn't only a gold rush. It was an agricultural rush aswell.

Demographics were in favor of expensaion that time. Still, I wonder if this meant that farming elsewhere was abandoned as a result of it all.

Considering the drought I saw in the US, I believe water itself was an industry aswell during the gold rush days. Many operations were far up in the hills, some very far from any stream. No ground water whatsoever, I think. Whatever water was flowing, must have been subjected to polluting. Questionable whether hauling water just from the nearest source would be sufficent.

Add some Californian heat and heavy work to that, and water consumption must have been massive, especially if they needed some for sluicing/panning aswell. One man and a horse per three miners must have been working full time just hauling water to some of the operations. Maybe. I'm not sure, I just know I went through water like crazy and it was pretty much nowhere to be found at times.

Edit: Especially true in the Nevada/Arizona rushes?
 

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Generally the effort to furnish water to a "diggings" was more than a single miner could accomplish.
Companies of like minded miners would be formed, with the goal of furnishing water to a particular mining area.
These companies were very organized with a chief, secretary, treasurer, bylaws, ect. Company shares were sold.
All this organizing occurring in a prominent tent or local trading post.

When the work was done the company was disbanded. Many people earned a living simply working as laborers doing this kind of work.
Steady reliable wages. Other people built saw mills so as to provide lumber for the ditch flumes, opportunity around every corner for a hard working person.

This is similar to how other large projects were accomplished.
Roads and bridges were built via. subscription, where each person that benefited paid their share. Very organized despite the fact that the area was just a territory, lacking any formal government or law enforcement.
 

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There were good hard rock mining jobs where men could make $4 a day and the blacksmiths would make $4.50 or $5 once things got more regular, and some would still prospect during their time off.
The lower paying mines I've read had much more problems with the miners stealing ore but that probably happened everywhere at times.
The creek my claim is on is fed by a diversion the old timers dug and it still flows. They took the time to dig it for almost a mile for the water.
 

Already defined 1848 to 1855

Game was not scarce at that point.

Southerners ate a lot of pork. Beef wasn't popular in the southeast.

Though when your hungry you'll eat what's there.

Most of the motherlode camps were well supplied by 1853
 

Goldwasher said:
Already defined 1848 to 1855

Game was not scarce at that point.

Southerners ate a lot of pork. Beef wasn't popular in the southeast.

Though when your hungry you'll eat what's there.

Most of the motherlode camps were well supplied by 1853
Click to expand...

In the northern goldfields, transportation was hindered during the winters, which caused problems replenishing provisions.
Every hard winter caused starvation, but 1852-1853 was especially hard on the northern goldfields.
It appears beef and venison saved the day.

I provide the following not in argument, but as reading for the curious.

1850
A great many cattle were driven into the valley during the fall of the year, and a considerable supply of groceries packed in by mule trains. By the middle of November the mountains were covered so deep with snow that the pack trails were obliterated and impassable, so that no more provisions could be gotten into the valley until spring. Long before the trails were opened up, provisions of almost all kinds (except beef) were consumed, and the merchants asked fabulous prices for what was left. Flour was $50 per sack of 50 pounds, bacon $2 per pound, sugar $2 per pound, coffee and tea any price asked. I saw salt sell for $16 per pound--$1 per ounce--and eggs $12 per dozen. You could at the same time get all the beef you wanted for 6 and 7 cents per pound, but you had to eat it without salt. Some of the miners sifted fine wood ashes over their meat as a substitute for salt. Of course such prices were caused by a shortage at that place, but for some years the people of California and Oregon were compelled to pay what we would now think ruinous prices for almost everything . . . in the spring of 1851 [sic] a packer came to Jacksonville in Rogue River Valley with two mules loaded with cats, and that he sold all he had as fast as he could hand them out for an ounce of gold dust each ($16.50). The miners wanted the cats to eat--the mice which infested their cabins and destroyed their provisions, clothing &c.

1852
There was a butcher who had his shop here, and we paid him 70 cents per pound for beef and $5 per pound for salt. Of course there were many who had no means to buy at such prices. One day there were 10 men who came and begged the butcher to let them have beef, but as they had no money to pay for it, he refused to do so. Mr. Dean told him to let them have the beef, and he would be responsible for it. We gave the men the store-room--it had a big fireplace--and loaned them frying pans, and they lived there for several weeks on fried beef alone without salt. Their beef bill was $200, which Mr. Dean paid, and for which, needless to say, he never received a cent. Another man, a preacher, was stopping in a little shanty near, and would come and pick up the beef heads thrown away. As soon as the butcher discovered this he charged him 25 cents each for them. Mr. Dean told him to stop that '2-bit business' or leave the place, for he would not tolerate it. I fear I tire you with this subject, but Oh! E----, those were delicious pancakes." Such was pioneer hospitality and privations. The "halcyon days" were not exactly the most comfortable times to live in.

1852-1853 was a particularly hard winter up north.


Salt and salt meats there was none. "Venison straight," as they termed it, only was plentiful. The crust on the snow would bear up a man, but the sharp feet of the deer would cut through it, impeding their progress to such an extent that they could not escape their pursuers, and were overtaken and killed by footmen with axes. This condition was fortunate for the miners, as they had no ammunition with which to shoot them, and no venison without salt or bread or bacon or beans was in most instances their only food for several weeks.

1852-1853
The roads were so impassable on account of mud and water, and the mountain trails so blockaded with snow, that pack trains were unable to get in with supplies. Provisions became exhausted. Salt, flour, bacon,beans, rice, and nearly everything of that nature were eaten up, and a new supply could not be obtained. Flour sacks were scraped and soaked to remove from them every vestige of their contents.There was plenty of fresh meat, cattle in abundance, game in profusion, and as a last resort horses and mules, so there was no danger of actual starvation, though many who could not afford to pay the exorbitant prices charged for everything, fared far from sumptuously. Salt was the dearest and most necessary article, for a diet of fresh meat without any seasoning became nauseous. A small sack of that article was brought in from Oregon and sold rapidly in small lots at one dollar per ounce.

1852-1853
"In the Rogue River Valley the few settlers lived on meat alone for some six weeks. Game, however, was plentiful, and Mr. [William] Hamilton and a neighbor kept the carcasses of from 20 to 25 deer hanging in front of their cabins all the time, and all were allowed to help themselves. Flour sold at $1.50 per pound, and salt at $15 per pound."

1852-1853
By the middle of December only a very limited amount of flour, some dried fruit, cheese and a quantity of "poor" beef remained in camp.

Jan. 1853
Upwards of 1200 pack animals on their way to and from the mines died of starvation. The miners and settlers on Umpqua and Rogue rivers were reduced to extreme want, eating poor cattle, and no bread, salt or coffee since the 1st December last. Supplies cannot yet reach them, owing to the vast amount of fallen timber on the mountains and the loss of bridges and boats on the road. The last flour used at the mines sold at $1.50 per lb. More than 1,000 miners left for Oregon, and, subsisting on animals and begging, starving and swimming, they arrived last week in our valley, nearly naked and starved, to swell the numbers here, already too large, for subsistence and employment in our valley.
There are but few fat cattle now in Oregon and little pork. Flour sells at 18 cts. per lb., wheat $5 per bushel, beef 15 to 20¢ per lb., pork 25 to 30¢, shorts 8¢, rice 33¢, coffee 42¢, sugar 10 to 25¢, oats $3 per bushel, cabbages 30¢ each, fruit 25¢ per lb., molasses 25 cents per gallon.
Labor is down here to nothing. Not one half of the emigration obtain their board for their work. Money is in abundance, but yet I fear there are not supplies for the people three months in Oregon. We hope for arrivals here shortly from the States of flour, coffee, pork, rice &c. Those articles have reached California in abundance within a few weeks past.

Feb. 1853
There were no provisions of any kind in the market, with the exception of a few potatoes, and a great many are subsisting on beef alone, of which there was an ample supply. There are several thousand pounds of flour within forty miles of Jacksonville, but [it] cannot be carried in on account of high water. A great many immigrant cattle died during the snow storm. The miners who have claims are not discouraged, as they are doing well.

Feb. 1853
Articles rose in price, those only of the following articles could be had at any price--beef--which from every particle of feed being covered up by snow, except a few green bushes, the tops of which could be eaten by them--was very poor and very tough and was generally called sheet-iron beef--60 cts. per lb. Salt (only 1½ lb. in town) $16 per lb.--as long as flour lasted it was sold from $1 to $1.50 per lb.--potatoes had been grown near and the fortunate grower made his fortune out of them that winter, although he sold them at the same price as before the snow--were sold at 30 cts. per lb.


March 1853
I have arrived in this "glorious country" just at the termination, I hope, of what is called starving time. For two months the inhabitants of this valley had to live upon what they termed beef straight--that is, beef alone, without salt or pepper; bread, butter, sugar, tea or coffee, for six weeks.

1853
When located in the Rogue River Valley there came a starving time when provisions were very low and our folks lived for six weeks on beef without salt. The cattle were in fine pasture. Buck was the fattest of them, so he was slaughtered for beef, and Mother said he had saved her life twice. Incidentally, the first salt they were able to procure was $1 an ounce.

Feb 1855
"I've ordered supper for 70--for all hands." But no supper seemed to be cooking. About 40 had reached the house, and voices were heard outside--so then the landlord concluded that he was not mad--supper was got of "sheet iron beef" and venison--and potatoes and pickled beets--how good were these to hungry men--even though there was no bread--how hard all looked--all out--some were sick.

Around here, they drilled a very deep well looking for natural gas for town lights, and hit salt water.
They tossed buckets of it on piles of buck brush, and let it evaporate. Once the brush was covered in salt, the salt would be shook out of the brush and collected for sale. So valuable and scarce was salt.
 

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A wet cold system moved into the west coast in 1853.

Yes Oregon in 1853 really sucked.

I promise I'm not arguing. Just pointing out that the way things are told about the Gold Rush are very simplified and in popular culture based on the worst and most amplified stories.

Being unprepared and unsuccessful was not the norm. Even considering starting in one industry failing and doing something else.People just didn't give up as easily back then.

fact is opportunity was everywhere and a majority took advantage, the nation gained.

It was a hard environment for those who wanted to throw money at their problems yet no desire to work or adapt.

The mining districts also had mandatory infrastructure work. You were required to put in time on a ditch either digging or patrol. They also worked on trails.

The miners were way more organized, ambitious, prepared, fast learning, successful and efficient in their work than is implied through the beer goggles of history.

I've never understood why the story is told about how terrible they were at everything, when the wealth dug and often under reported, the places they went , the ground they moved....tells a much different story.


They were all drunk, ignorant , newbies. ready to get suckered into any bad purchase and most gave up before they started....

NOT!!

Everything I've studied over the last thirty years...my very own neighborhood the diaries I have read of the guys who worked here. the legacy and impact they left, tell a much different story.

I've learned to lend way less creedence to stories published for public consumption in the nineteenth century vs. the letters and diaries written by the participants.

What they put down was for their own recollection no agenda..not to sell papers...much more accurate.

I have a book its a Ca. state text book from like 1953 called " Gold Days" I think. I saved it from the trash actually. It is amazing how positive it is about gold mining., especially compared to the current climate in the state.

I'll find it in the morning and take a few pictures.​
 

SaltwaterServr said:
You know you hit the big time and you celebrated with a good old "hang town fry".
Click to expand...

You can still order it in the town it was created... I still haven't done it I should though.

I am going to town tomorrow...HMMMMM...

Maybe I'll go buy an over priced shovel at Pville hardware and dig into some fancy overly manipulated oysters
 

The old timers were some tough hombres back then.
Those were the days when temporary starvation and frost bite was just a hindrance and if you lived through the day of work it was a good day!
 

Im not sure life in cities or farms was much better for ordinary people back then. Starvation was just as common and when the farmer needed his food the most, it would be taxed by the government as part of the misgrowth, war efforts etc.

City life wouldnt be much easier, the poor lived plenty of men in tight areas, often without WC or water.

Thats probably what triggered many to trek out, regardless of the conditions it could still be better than home. Dont think the upper middle class of then did these kind of things.
 

Probably the best place to be was a multi generational farm. As well as in the community surrounding it.

Again It just isn't true that everything was harsh. People were very hardy and in a lot of respects much better at taking care of themselves then compared to now.

The reason it was a big deal for many to up and leave is the fact that they really didn't have to.

The population of the Country at the time was a little over half of the population of California now.

The Upper middle class back then was still a working class.

It was a very small percentage of American Citizens that took part in the gold rush. Around ONE PERCENT!

It may have been the Nations first largest migration. However the fact that only about ONE PERCENT of the population took part in it means that there was not a major drive to move West for a better,more stable safer life.

The numbers that moved West later were much larger and were the people who took everything and moved west.

Ca. Gold rush was a big deal for California. It did change our history and path. It increased our nations wealth tremendously.

Yet, only one percent of the people were part of it in regards to actually getting up and doing something about it. The rest of the country reaped the rewards

It didn't change their lives all that much though.

Living conditions in Europe were much much worse.​
 

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