The men who traveled to California in the Gold Rush years had a conscious sense of the need to organize. There are rules. For instance, no swearing -… - J. S. Holliday

So at the point where you make the choice, there is this moment where scores of men stand around, and they debate and they argue and they discuss and they read little signs on the road. And a barrel, a big barrel, full of cards and full of information. You sift through it: 'Oh, George went this way, Sam went this way, Louie went that way. What am I going to do?' There's choices being made. And they stand around and they debate, and sometimes companies'd argue and they split, and there'd be fights, and We'll go this way and We'll go that way. So it was a life-and-death choice, everybody knew it to be that. Wasn't just some casual matter of saving a few hours, it might save your life.

The gold rush changed California, it changed the whole west, and it changed America's sense of itself because for the first time the United States of America, in the minds of the American people, fulfilled the dream of Jefferson, which was a continental nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific. No one thought about America stretching from Chesapeake Bay to San Francisco Bay until fathers and sons and uncles and brothers and fiances were out there.

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 very comfortable life. They don't have anything to complain about in eighteen forty-nine. This is a key point. They did not have anything that would cause them distress. His expectations were perfectly comfortable expectations of an average family, a farming family in America. The Gold Rush changed that. Suddenly he wanted more. Suddenly he wasn't satisfied.