David Vaught

After the Gold Rush: Replicating the Rural Midwest in the Sacramento Valley

In the 1850s and 1860s, prior to Californias bonanza wheat era, a prominent agricultural community emerged along Putah Creek in the lower Sacramento Valley. This was a community of considerable stability, despite being settled by displaced 49 ers—speculators, squatters, and “swamplanders”—on a fraudulent Mexican land grant. Capitalist and traditional values, imported from the Midwest, sustained them.