Angela Hawk, “Going ‘Mad’ in Gold Country: Migrant Populations and the Problem of Containment in Pacific Mining Boom Regions,” Pacific Historical Review 80 (February 2011): 64–96. In this prize-winning article, historian Angela Hawk analyzes the relationship between insanity and gold rushes in California and later in British Columbia and Australia. Of the many young men who left home and hearth to strike it rich in the gold fields, some showed signs of mental instability, chronic drunkenness, and violent behavior. “Gold Fever,” as it was sometimes called, seemed to affect many young men in the heady days of the gold rush. In response to this problem, the California legislature created the state’s first insane asylum in Stockton in 1853. Hawk describes in particular the experiences of a young man known as Scotty.

David Igler, “Alta California, the Pacific, and International Commerce before the Gold Rush,” in A Companion to California History, ed. William Deverell and David Igler (Chichester, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008), 116–26. In this essay, historian David Igler argues that California was a destination for international trade vessels long before the gold rush. California was one of many regions in the Pacific Ocean that witnessed increased trade in the early nineteenth century. Other common trade centers were Peru; Hawaii; Canton, China; and the northwest coast of North America. Drawing on a database of almost 1,000 European and American ships that entered the Pacific prior to the gold rush, Igler’s work studies the vessels’ destinations, cargos, and nationalities. The California gold rush sparked a new era of trade in the Pacific Ocean, and California became the primary destination of migrants in the 1850s.

The public and private archives of California are filled with primary source material related to the gold rush. These records include published and unpublished documents, such as early newspapers, court records, memoirs, diaries, photographs, sketches, maps, and letters. A great deal of material can be found online, especially at research institution Web sites like www.calisphere.universityofcalifornia.edu.