To Die in Goldfield

T he human casualties left behind by gold rushes on the mining frontier have not been fully computed.Valuable work has been done on pioneer physicians, diseases, and epidemics in western locales.Estimates and anecdotes suggest that many died in the reckless dash across deserts and mountains in the pursuit of riches, but we do not know what price the gold rushers paid for their adventures in comparison to those who stayed behind.! An examination of mortality in Goldfield, Nevada, during its boom period, provides definitive evidence on the high social costs stemming from the unique culture of the gold rush.The wild excitement, inflated expectations, and careless bravado long celebrated in western lore were mirrored in the epidemic diseases, foreshortened lives, and violence that constituted the boomtown way of death.Goldfielders died as they did because of the way they lived.Goldfield is particularly suited to such an analysis because its position as the last great western boom camp permits comparison not only with more settled communities of the period, but also with the earlier gold rushes that rolled back and forth across the western landscape from California to the Klondike over the previous half century.In the decade after 1900, a mining boom ignited by discoveries at Tonopah (1900) and Goldfield (1902), an isolated and previously unsettled area of the central Nevada desert, reversed the long period of economic depression that had depopulated the state during the Comstock's decline.For the last time, men "rushed for

Archaeology · Frontier · Geography · American Environmental and Regional History · Historical and Cultural Archaeology Studies · Race, History, and American Society

• Incorrect, loose and coarse terms’

  Open Access•Rebecca Kippen•Journal of Population Research•2011

  Add to list