The Gold Rush Diary of Ramon Gil Navarro

Gold! Gold! Gold! This seductive mantra, shouted throughout the Americas in 1848–49, convinced thousands of people that California's gold could be had simply by picking it up off the ground. Ramón Gil Navarro, an Argentinean political exile living in Chile, heard these rumors of a new El Dorado, but he was not so naïve as to believe that the gold merely had to be gathered. He understood that mining required extensive capital investment and labor, and along with three other investors he arranged to have 120 workers and a shipload of supplies sent to California. Navarro accompanied the workers to Stockton and began prospecting.

Gold rush California was a rough and tumble world where finding gold—and keeping it—was not a simple matter. Navarro encountered people from all over the world brought together in a society marked by racial and ethnic intolerance, swift and cruel justice, and great hardships. It was a world of contrasts, where the roughest of the rough lived in close proximity to extremely refined cultural circles. Despite his planning, Navarro had not reckoned on the racism he would encounter. He witnessed several instances of Anglo miners harassing Latinos and other ethnic groups. After three years without success, Navarro returned to South America. He became a national representative in the Argentinean congress and worked as a journalist. He never returned to California.

María del Carmen Ferreyra is a researcher affiliated with the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba in Argentina. She is the great-granddaughter of Ramón Gil Navarro and made the original transcription of his diaries. David S. Reher, a professor of history at the University of Madrid, is the author of Perspectives on the Family in Spain: Past and Present and other works.