I have been reading about the California gold rush of 1848-50 and discovered a great deal more than expected. Some Arkansans did find wealth in the gold diggings, but the state as a whole did not take advantage of the opportunity to become a major jumping-off point for the massive migration.
The same desire for quick wealth that motivates buyers of modern lottery tickets drove our ancestors to seek riches in gold rushes. (Northeast Arkansas was the scene of a rush during the first decade of the 20th century when thousands of men, women, and children pillaged the mussel beds along the White River in search of pearls.)
Gold was discovered in California in January 1848, and word reached Arkansas in late summer. By Sept. 5 of that year, a group of men in Fort Smith was already planning to go to California. Newspapers throughout America were soon publishing fantastical stories about the extent of the gold deposits and the ease of extraction.
Arkansas found itself in the middle of a national migration of staggering size in 1849. Around 90,000 people arrived in California that year, about 60 percent being Americans, the remainder coming from throughout the world.
A substantial number came from Australia and New Zealand. Chinese immigrants came in the thousands. About 4,000 free black people emigrated from the southern states; many also came from the Caribbean and Brazil.
By the end of 1855, more than 300,000 people had joined the gold rush. These numbers are even more staggering when considering that California had a population of 18,000 when the gold rush began.
In January 1849, some visionary Little Rock leaders convened a meeting to petition Congress to build a road from Memphis to California, crossing Arkansas, Within a month an association had been formed to promote a road through Little Rock. U.S. Senator Solon Borland worked tirelessly for the road proposal, realizing that the thousands of immigrants passing through the state were contributing mightily to the economy. This was especially the case in the Fort Smith-Van Buren area, where many of the travelers purchased wagons, horses, mules, oxen, etc.
On March 8, 1849, the Arkansas Gazette told of the growing number of migrants found in Little Rock, including the arrival of a steamboat with 80 men from New York bound for California. Eighty Germans were reported to have embarked from Fort Smith. By the middle of that month, 40 migrants were passing through Little Rock daily.
No reliable statistics exist on the number of Arkansans who joined the gold rush, but it was in the thousands. A Little Rock and California Association was organized, with Captain James McVicar, a Scottish immigrant, in command. The Clarksville and California Mining Association sent a large wagon train under the command of dual captains. Captain Lewis Evans organized and led a train of migrants from northwest Arkansas, including 15 Cherokees, one of whom was accompanied by five enslaved servants.
Another Cherokee, John Rollin Ridge, migrated with the party led by Major Elias Rector, a prosperous Fort Smith businessman and farmer. Ridge settled in California where he became a journalist, and in 1854 published what is believed to be the first novel written by an American Indian, The Life and Adventures of Joaquin Murieta, the celebrated California bandit. Ridge's book became a popular sensation.
The late James W. Parins of Little Rock, author of a fine biography of Ridge, has summarized the impact of Murieta: "The book was widely read and reviewed, and eventually frequently plagiarized. Pirated versions appeared as books, were serialized in periodicals, and were translated into foreign languages. Adaptions appeared in verse, and at least one film was made on Ridge's story."
Journalism was probably a good alternative to mining. Few Arkansans did well in the diggings. Priscilla McArthur in her fine book Arkansas in the Gold Rush (1986) states that Carl Jernigan, a member of the Clarksville Company, found the largest gold nugget reported by any Arkansan, worth more than $3,000.
The expansion of the exodus of Arkansans in 1850 began to worry some leaders. Senator Borland, who had been a proponent of building a national road (and railroad) across Arkansas to the west coast, suddenly became concerned that so many people were leaving the state. Borland convinced the War Department to withdraw its garrison from Fort Smith in an effort to make the place less appealing as a departure point.
Certainly, Borland put an end to prospects for a national road. As historian Michael B. Dougan has written, "Van Buren and Fort Smith might have grown into sizable towns as gateways to the west, except for Borland's false reasoning."
A surprising number of Arkansans stayed in California and became successful farmers, merchants, and politicians. Among the many who returned to Arkansas was William Quesenbury, a teacher, writer, and humorist from Cane Hill in Washington County. Quesenbury, who wrote under the name Bill Cush, kept a detailed diary during his long and unpleasant trek. He also recorded that many of the gamblers and ruffians who had given Arkansas such a bad reputation were now plying their trades in the California gold diggings.
A black man named Mifflin W. Gibbs, who had been a highly successful merchant and entrepreneur in San Francisco and later in Victoria, British Canada, brought his west coast fortune to Arkansas after the Civil War.
Gibbs, who was born free in Philadelphia, quickly discovered that selling shovels to California miners was a more certain way to make a living than wielding one. He also helped establish the first black newspaper west of the Mississippi. Later he served on the Victoria city council, and in 1872 he was elected municipal judge of Little Rock--the first black elected judge in America.
Maybe Gibbs' arrival helped compensate for our failure to take advantage of the gold rush as a means for building the infrastructure of our small state.
Tom Dillard is a historian and retired archivist living near Glen Rose in rural Hot Spring County. Email him at Arktopia.td@gmail.com. An earlier version of this column was published June 24, 2007.
Editorial on 11/10/2019