John Doble's Journal and Letters From the Mines (Nonfiction)
Edited by Charles Camp
Categories: Book Reviews
By: Richard H. Dillon 04/01/2008
Volcano Press, $14.95, Softcover.
Doble’s journal, first published in 1962, is one of the best on-the-spot records that we have of daily life in California’s Gold Rush camps. A placer gold miner working a “long tom”sluice in and around Volcano, Mokelumne Hill and Jackson, Doble kept records with the zeal of a bean counter. Mixed in with day-by-day trivia on work, weather, local travel, profits, expenses, accidents and illnesses are mentions of murders, Indian customs, vigilance committees, bandits like Rod Stowell and even the brief appearance of Kit Carson, driving a flock of sheep from New Mexico to the mines. Since no newspapers were printed in ?Doble’s mining camps during 1852 to 1854, we have to depend on diarists like him for accurate records of daily life on the Sierra Nevada frontier. Doble’s better-written letters supplement his journal and extend his story into the 1860s.
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