He is a farmer. He lives a simple life. He's pretty well educated. He's read Shakespeare, he's read Wordsworth. His wife is a teacher. They have a ve… - J. S. Holliday

Pride is a powerful force. The pride that kept so many men in California. They want to go home. But I can't go until I've got something to prove my success. They've been reading about success back home. I know, says the miner, how many people are failing. Failure is the most common fact of life in California. They don't know that. How can I go home a failure, when they expect me to come home a success? So they stay.

But when you get to the other side of the Sierra Nevada, you don't see the green of the Sacramento Valley, you see the desolation of the Pit River Valley. You see rocks and stunted growth, and mountain deserts. It's just, it's just a pain, it's a shock, it's a hit in the head, it hurts your heart to see what still lies ahead. And you haven't gone a short cut. What you've done is you've gone north, and you're at what's called Goose Lake. So instead of going west, you've gone north-northwest. Now you've got to go south.

The tremendous success of that summer of 1848 spread by way of letters and government reports. The President in his State of the Union speech announces that the astonishing news from Sacramento is true. So the news is coming not only from the President, but most of all from these people who are writing these vivid reports. A guy writes home and he says, he says, 'You remember Dickson? He used to work for Ebeneezer?' He says, 'He has dug enough gold to weigh down a mule.' Now, that means something to people. A mule.