They Saw the Elephant: Women in the California Gold Rush

Summary

The phrase seeing the elephant symbolised for '49 gold rushers the exotic, the mythical, the once-in-a-lifetime adventure, unequalled anywhere else but in the journey to the promised land of fortune: California. Most western myths generally depict an exclusively male gold rush. Levy's book sets out to debunk that myth. Here a variety of women travel, work, and write their way across the pages of western migrant history. Levy's narrative is enhanced by revealing quotations from so many little known women diarists and from guide books that it serves as a source and reference book as well. For those interested in women's history and in western history, this volume should be valuable.