John Doble's Journal and Letters from the Mines: Volcano, Mokelumne Hill, Jackson and San Francisco 1851-1865

Book by Doble, John, Camp, Charles Lewis

On a hill overlooking the Sierra Nevada gold camp of Volcano, four unidentified miners displayed the tools of their trade--a pan, shovels, picks and hopeful expressions.

Dated from 1855, this earliest known daguerreotype of Volcano captures just a moment in their lives. Below, the town appears vacant because much is lost to the camera's long exposure. But inside the JOURNAL AND LETTERS FROM THE MINES, the streets and gulches fill to bursting as John Doble reports events great and small. The JOURNAL is the remarkable record of a California miner in the 1850s. It is a significant contribution to our knowledge of the Gold Rush.

Despite long days of hard work, John took the time to set down his feelings and observations as did few of his contemporaries. He included the daily details of life; he did not know what to leave out, so he put in everything.

The reader will enoy sharing John Doble's story. There is happiness when he makes a rich strike, and sorrow when his partner Jim dies. The day-to-day tasks of placer mining, business, and gold camp housekeeping are recorded as a matter of fact. The reader attends an interesting vigilante meeting in Jackson, and is on hand as wagon trains full of emigrants arrive in Volcano.

The reader will also discover, along with John, that hard work and great expectations brought no surety of success in the gold claims of the Mother Lode. By a remarkable coincidence, the later discovery of unfulfilled courtship letters between John Doble and Lizzie E. Lucas are also included here, as are three maps prepared by editor Charles Camp. They locate places which have not been mapped before, towns and camps that long ago vanished from the land.