J. S. Holliday

"And he looks down where the soil has been dug and there's a sparkle, and there's a glint in the morning light, and he reaches down and he picks it up with his stubby dirty fingers, and the last thing …"

"You're working in freezing water up to your waist for hours at a time.You're reaching down, moving rocks, bringing in the rock and the gravel and working it all the time, with your hands, with the sho…"

"They end up working the claims that are the least attractive, and yet they make a success in them, because they work harder, because they have a technique and a willingness to struggle longer. They're…"

"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 -- literally! They have constitutions, they have the…"

"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, …"

"And they walk into these great big places, and there's excitement, and there's hope, and there's a sense of sin. 'Mother wouldn't want me to be here. What if Louise knew that I was here?' A lot of men…"

"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, fulf…"

"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 mountai…"