Elliot West: The Beginning Of The California Gold Rush

Elliot West writes, "We can think of western history as one of conflicting narratives. Just as people have fought for control of resources and for dominance of institutions and values, so the West has been an arena where stories have contested to command that country's meaning and thus to influence how the West is treated." In 1860, America was “divided” in two; the eastern half and the western half. For many years Native Americans have lived in the Midwest; it was home to them. It gave them farming land, animals for hunting, land for gathering and a place to build a home, but when European settlers came to America to call it home everything changed. There are many different stories about the west, they all very depending on who wrote it

They would use “lumber to keep the mines open.” They would use the “creek beds for placer mining, and underground mines for hard rocks.” With the discovery of the gold in California, in 1849, it sparked the beginning of the California Gold Rush. Along with the discovery of gold, came people flocking to California to find their own

An eleven-year-old girl from New Jersey, “won a trip to Yellowstone National Park.” When she returned from her trip so told her class what she had experienced. “The waterfalls are taller than [our] school. Old Faithful is a geyser. Some lakes are hot, which keeps them ice-free so animals can get drinks in the winter…The air is so clear you can see many miles. It doesn’t smell like cars. The West seems to have more stars than New Jersey has people…coyote and buffalo that black the road.” Many others, just like this girl, have never experienced, nor knew of what kind of “utopia,” as they would have probably called it, the west