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Gold Rush California: 1848–1855
California · 1848–1855 · exact time + place
Amidst the 1849 Gold Rush, California was transformed as fortune seekers flooded its hills and valleys — boomtown chaos, lawlessness and survival stories in a land of opportunity and hardship. The button below opens StoryTerra with both California and 1848–1855 already set. (California is selected as a province on the map.)
Open Gold Rush California on the map10 famous Gold Rush stories
Live snapshot of the top 10 most popular catalogue items (2026-09-04). Click any card to open this entry on the live map.
Browse 10 books and 2 movies set in California.
The Sisters Brothers
Oregon 1851. Hermann Kermit Warm a chemist and aspiring gold prospector keeps a profitable secret that the Commodore wants to know so he sends the Sisters brothers two notorious assassins to capture him on his way to…
Redeeming Love
California’s gold country, 1850. A time when men sold their souls for a bag of gold and women sold their bodies for a place to sleep. Angel expects nothing from men but betrayal. Sold into prostitution as a child, she…
The Whip
The Whip is inspired by the true story of a woman, Charlotte "Charley" Parkhurst (1812-1879) who lived most of her extraordinary life as a man in the old west.As a young woman in Rhode Island, she fell in love with a…
Daughter of Fortune
Orphaned at birth, Eliza Sommers is raised in the British colony of Valparaíso, Chile, by the well-intentioned Victorian spinster Miss Rose and her more rigid brother Jeremy. Just as she meets and falls in love with the…
The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters
Enjoyed by millions since its first publication in 1958 The Travels Of Jaimie McPheeters is the lively story of a 13-year-old boy's adventures on a journey across America in 1849. This million-copy Pulitzer…
The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin
To restore his family's lost wealth a young Boston lad stows away on a ship bound for the California Gold Rush. When their very proper butler gives chase all roads lead to nonstop adventure wild and woolly characters…
The Measure of a Lady
Rachel van Buren arrives in Gold Rush San Francisco with two wishes: to protect her younger siblings and to return east as soon as possible. Both goals prove more difficult than she could imagine as her brother and…
Riding Freedom
Charlotte Parkhurst is raised in an orphanage for boys, which suits her just fine. She doesn’t like playing with dolls, she can hold her own in a fight, and she loves to work in the stables. Charlotte has a way with…
Under a Painted Sky
Missouri, 1849: Samantha dreams of moving back to New York to be a professional musician—not an easy thing if you’re a girl, and harder still if you’re Chinese. But a tragic accident dashes any hopes of fulfilling her…
Calico Palace
This thrilling story of the California gold rush is not about the forty-niners, the prospectors who came rushing to the San Francisco area in 1849, but about the men and women who were there when it all began with the…
The 10 stories above are just a sample of the 12 in the catalogue for this entry. For the live Gold Rush catalogue, use the button above — or browse Wild West America and all US stories. On the live map you can also filter by the exact time the stories take place — any year, decade or century, from BCE to the future.