![]() At the top of many of the pages are links that provide, under the general heading “Natives and Immigrants,” alternative paths through the material, linking the references to African Americans, Californios/Latinos, Chinese, California Indians. There are links at the bottom of many pages that extend the story outwards-to a Chinese camp, a Miwok mining site, a long tom. ![]() Each page has text and pictures, photos of objects from the exhibition. “Gold Fever!” contains the more detailed narrative and analytic material on the gold rush story, covering such topics as the journeys to gold rush California, the miners’ daily life, law and order, commerce, and entertainment. California remains a land of opportunity and abundance, a place where people can reinvent themselves. Women, we are told, faced hardships on the journey out and in gold rush California, but they found they could do things they had never done before. ![]() The environmental damage of the gold rush is said to be a precedent for later “gross manipulation and exploitation of natural resources”- “we have not escaped the forty-niner mentality.” The “Peoples of California” section notes the “prejudice and discrimination” several groups faced in gold rush times and the fact that the gold rush was a “disaster” for the California Indians, but it ends by affirming the rich diversity of contemporary California. The introduction, “Stories of the Lure and Legacy,” is a multimedia presentation-voices and changing still images-which explores the themes of “environment,” “peoples,” and “women.” Both critical and celebratory voices are heard. This most valuable Web site is an online version of four exhibitions created at the Oakland Museum in 1998 to mark the sesquicentenary of the California gold rushes- “Gold Fever!,” “Art of the Gold Rush,” “Silver and Gold,” and Harry Fonseca’s “The Discovery of Gold in California.” Created and maintained by the Oakland Museum of California, Oakland, Ca.
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