These historical photos from the American Gold Rush (1850s–1890s) capture a pivotal chapter in U.S. history. Rather than charts or financial records, what survives are striking images of miners, ...

Long before California’s gold frenzy, the first American gold rush began in North Carolina in 1799 — triggered by a 12-year-old’s strange rock. This forgotten chapter reshaped the South.

The American Gold Rush was a wild, chaotic time that transformed the country almost overnight. In the mid-1800s, prospectors — known as “forty-niners,” since the peak of the Gold Rush occurred during ...

Once upon a time, in 1848, a man could walk into the wilderness on the brink of poverty and emerge, caked in mud, dust and days-old sweat, a multimillionaire. The discovery of gold in California in ...

Sandwiched between the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the Civil War in 1861, the California Gold Rush is considered by many historians to be the most significant event of the first half of the ...