When thinking about a gold rush or gold miners, the first things that come to mind are perhaps not Parisian perfumes, champagne or bowling. During the California gold rush, however, these things were very much a part of life. In the 21st Maple Leaf and Eagle conference held in Helsinki, Gold Museum’s project coordinator Niko Vanhala presented a paper on how participants of the California gold rush used consumption, that is various goods and services, to survive and thrive in their new environment.

The usual tale of the California gold rush is that of crude conditions. Miners lived in tents or small log cabins, with little material comforts, little variety of food, sometimes even without food at all. To a certain extent, this view is true. Yet in their tents and log cabins, rush participants also consumed various goods, and most camps had hotels, saloons and gambling dens where to spend time and money. Gold rush participants were indeed consumers, giving rise to another tale perhaps as famous as that of their crude lives: others made vast fortunes by “mining the miners”.

Golden dreams, including those of material goods, were central in the whole premise of the rush. When gold was found in the American river in the Spring of 1848, many forces converged to create a global migration drawing in hundreds of thousands of people. Goods, people and information moved faster due to new technology. The United States had just acquired California in the American-Mexican war, being eager to send Americans to consolidate their hold over the territory. In addition to technological and political explanations, the most recent research has emphasized social change as a trigger of the rush. Historians such as Mark Eifler and Brian Roberts have seen the rush as a response to the growing role of markets. In short: more people than ever were living with rising aspirations, but with less certainty on how to obtain the place in life they wanted – indeed it was not even certain what kind of world they were living in, as the world was in such a rapid change due to industrialization.

People then came to California in hopes of realizing their dreams of a better life. This is where consumption comes in. Material objects and all kinds of experiences are central in framing our world, building our identities, simply in enjoying life. In this regard, gold rush participants were no different. Consumption is constantly commented on in the writings of several rush participants, ranging from a refined lady to storekeepers and a South American politician. The various commentators compared California to their old homes, often highlighting how they could not get certain things in California, or vice versa how fast California was catching up in refinement. Simple things such as potatoes and onions being unobtainable for parts of the year highlighted the distance to former homes.

Missing many of the things they used to rely on, gold rush consumers did not abandon their desires, but simply redirected their efforts. In the mining camps, non-material experiences rose to the forefront. With little incentive to pile material things in their temporary hopes, rush consumers spent their money on food, drinking and entertainment. Bowling was a favorite past-time, perhaps only surpassed in popularity by gambling. Gambling halls both at the camps and in cities like Sacramento City were often the most lavish places around, selling refinement and dreams of golden elegance. Drinking was a way to endure the harsh conditions, and to build camaraderie with fellow miners. In one mining camp, there was a Christmas-time Saturnalia, which lasted for days. The canvas-hotel was decorated with new calico, as were the bowling alleys, with the noise of bowling carrying on across the night. Even the most respectable men of the camp attended the Saturnalia, which included a champagne and oyster dinner.

The mining camps got their oysters and champagne from commercial hubs like Sacramento City. When one glances at the newspapers of Sacramento, especially after the first two seasons of gold mining, the image is one of abundance. Almost everything was at one point or another sold in gold rush Sacramento: Parisian perfumes, Italian marble tables, old cognacs, lobsters, “katsup” and London luxury watches, to name a few. From Sacramento, rush consumers flushed with gold could get many of the more traditional markers of earthly success. They could dress up in fancy clothes from Europe or the East, get a Parisian haircut then in vogue or they could get a hand-crafted English watch – cased in California gold – to symbolize their success. Indeed, in many early probates of Sacramento City Court, a gold watch is the most valuable single item.

Obviously, the abundance of Sacramento advertisements was never the reality in any single place at one time – not even in Sacramento itself. But neither was all gold rush life poor and crude. The direst moments, when people were subsisting on old crackers and bacon, were the exceptions, reality only when snow blockaded the camps or a lack of funds forced city residents to adopt leaner lifestyles. Most often, rush participants were doing their best to make their lives better through consumption. From crafting DIY-furniture from old beer crates to making lanterns from champagne-bottles piling outside, people found ingenious ways to create a resemblance of normality in their lives. Often, they just simply went to the store.

The centrality of consumption has major implications on how we understand the rush. Rather than independent pioneer types reveling in nature chasing some vague dream, the rush was populated by people looking for very real, commercial goals. The resulting consequences – from vast environmental change to destruction of Native American lives – were then too a product of people looking to fulfill their desires to drink, dance and have some fancy things. Consumption gave meaning to the miner’s work, made the whole gamble of going West matter. Through consumption gold rush participants began to find their place in the changing world. In turn, they forever changed the world.

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This article draws from the conference presentation, which in turn was based on the authors master’s thesis “Privation and inconvenience, luxury and abundance”: Gold rush consumption in Sacramento City 1848-1852 and on expanded research around it. Other good scholarly sources include Mark Eifler’s The California Gold Rush: The Stampede that Changed the World and Brian Roberts’ American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture.

Photo: Bottles and other objects from the gold rush era, Wells Fargo History Museum, San Francisco. By Niko Vanhala