Heading: (California Gold Rush - 1850 letter from a miner near Coloma and Sacramento)
Author: James W. Taylor
Title: Long 1850 letter from a miner on the American River near Coloma and Sacramento
Place Published:
Publisher:
Date Published: 1850
Description:

Autograph Letter Signed. "Middlefork of the American" [River], June 30, 1850. 8 x 12", 4pp. To A. Barnes. A long letter of over a thousand words in which Taylor recounts his adventures since coming to California in the fall of 1849: After recovering from a long illness, he was working with a group of men on the American River near Coloma to drain the water, which was too high for prospecting. The "miners life is a very hard one before you get use to it, you have no regular place of abode and have to make your bed on the ground and at the shortest notice to pack your bed and [tools] over these mountains on your back as many places are too bad to get a mule along" - with rewards as "uncertain" as "a lottery", some men getting rich in a few weeks, while others who stayed on could hardly cover the exorbitant expenses of room and board. Still, he was captivated by the beautiful scenery of the Sacramento Valley and Sierra Nevada mountains and impressed by the hustle and bustle of Sacramento City,

Taylor's illness, which left him unable to work for over three months, doctor's bills and the high cost of provisions leaving him "flat in the world" until "fortune and luck" restored him to health. He was then working with 25 other men in "digging a race" on the American River, to dam and drain the water, hoping to share the good fortune of men who had worked there the year before, "made their pile and gone home",. A "very rich canion" had been discovered a mile up the river, which had yielded "considerable gold", one of many stories of "large piles of gold being found" - most of these being "exaggerated...humbug". He hoped, when the rainy season began, to "go south and see the country", the Sacramento Valley being "one of the handsomest" he had ever seen, with views from the top of the hills offering "one of the most magnificent scenes that the eye ever witnessed", stretching to the "sierienevada" mountains, with its peaks of "perpetual snow". In the spring the whole valley "appeared to be covered with the handsomest flowers that you ever seen", though they had al witled with the dry, hot summer weather. The River was a "large stream" which allowed ships to sail as far as Sacramento City, "one of the most business places of the west", where many had made money as grocers, selling vegetables and other provisions which "demand good prices here in the mountains", which miners had to lug for miles up hills so rocky and steep, "that I hold to bushes to keep from tumbling to one side or the other". He wished his friends at home could come to California to "see the Elephant", though he warned against the dangers of crossing the plains, his final advice being that "any of you who are well and doing would better stay" home,