Gold Fever on Discovery

[Ordell]

Anyone watching? It's a miniseries on the California Gold Rush and how basically one guy built San Francisco capitalizing on prospectors. Mike Rowe is narrating and they have a few talking heads, one of them Dave Turin.

 

[Hefty1]

NOPE!

 

[goldenIrishman]

I caught quite a bit of it and felt it was very well done. Of course being a product of the California school system I had 90% of the info drilled into me in 4th grade. Made for a good refresher course though and if you've never studied that part of California history it would be very informative. Mike Rowe is a great narrator as well.

 

[jcazgoldchaser]

I caught quite a bit of it and felt it was very well done. Of course being a product of the California school system I had 90% of the info drilled into me in 4th grade. Made for a good refresher course though and if you've never studied that part of California history it would be very informative. Mike Rowe is a great narrator as well.

Did they teach you the money to be made was in chickens and prostitutes?

 

[Aurabbit79er]

Yea I was raised on the Cal Gold Rush and they did a good job picking out some little known things I never learned in the 4th grade. I liked it.

 

[DizzyDigger]

Watched the first episode tonight, and TBH I really enjoyed it.
More about history of mining that area than it is about big strikes,
but with Mike Rowe narrating they've gone from the very beginning
of the Calif. gold rush right up to the big San Francisco fire.

There are a group of common characters, but they seen to be
there more to illustrate the difficulties of trying to prospect back
then. The Cholera outbreak was something I'd never heard of,
and the mining camps all side-by-side..packed into a small
valley.

If you enjoy history, then give it a try as I think you'll like it.

 

[russau]

i had my DVR set to record the seris. ill watch it when it rains today.

 

[Hoser John]

MMMMMMMMMM a nice warm toddy for the body and a great show also. Very close to true story of a parties hardships going and trying to learn to mine. As usual the shopkeepers,hookers,gamblers and saloons took it all,but great narrative with many associated facts. Wish I was there with ya Russau having some libations and a hootn' and a hollern' again bud-John

 

[Jeff95531]

Watched it, liked it and learned from it. Part 2 next Friday.

 

[kuger]

I wasnt impressed,they embellished,lke they normally do,and why is it they always dress them like Yosemite Sam?That attire was the 1870's Gun fighter era...not the Gold Rush.Thats like watching the Sands of Iwo Jima with the soldiers wearing Tiger Stripe Camo.I didnt watch the whole thing....bothers me when they skew our history.....was snow in the back ground of San Fran too.....geeze,must be that Global warming!

 

[Ordell]

See some clips here:

Gold Fever : Discovery Channel

 

[gold nuggets]

If you could get past the drama that was interjected from time to time, the history part of the program was very interesting and brought out a lot of the hardships that the newbie miners encountered on their trek to become wealthy. Some made a "killing" and got rich but the majority of the new miners got the empty pan and went home. Pretty good program IMO.

 

[Sample Pan Dan]

Damn and $25 for a gold pan?! Good show, I will watch the next part next week.

 

[whitjake]

I saw bits and pieces last night. I am from a Colorado prospector family so I am interested. I do not plan on ever going to Cali though but the history is good lol

 

[kuger]

Damn and $25 for a gold pan?! Good show, I will watch the next part next week.

..that is factual,and 1 oz for a good meal,another 1-2 ounces for a shovel....2-3 ounces for rent on a spot to pitch a tent......it wasnt always that gys didnt find gold,it was damn expensive to exist....the merchants who mined the miners are the ones who made and sometimes retained fortunes

 

[calnatv]

brought out a lot of the hardships that the newbie miners encountered on their trek to become wealthy. Some made a "killing" and got rich but the majority of the new miners got the empty pan and went home.

Sounds like what has been going on in Humboldt County the last couple years

 

[aurumdigga]

Of course this is the sanitized version of what it was really like. The Wild Wild West got its name from the fact that you could stay up all night and have sex all night because cocaine & morphine was sold freely/legally in all general stores. STDs were rampant and it was more prevalent to the situation that history teachers will ever allow to be known.

One of the cures for some STDs was to inject boric acid up into the urinary canal of the *****..... ouch!

Cocaine had a great deal to do with demeanors and the reason some people just shot people for the heck of it. Marijuana was prolific also.

 

[kuger]

Of course this is the sanitized version of what it was really like. The Wild Wild West got its name from the fact that you could stay up all night and have sex all night because cocaine & morphine was sold freely/legally in all general stores. STDs were rampant and it was more prevalent to the situation that history teachers will ever allow to be known.

One of the cures for some STDs was to inject boric acid up into the urinary canal of the *****..... ouch!

Cocaine had a great deal to do with demeanors and the reason some people just shot people for the heck of it. Marijuana was prolific also.

^^^^^^and this is exactly what I am talking about........History totally mis-represented,on TV,then people pass stuff like this on as well...what your kind of describing is the Wild West(Gunfighter era).....and NEWS for you the Gold Rush was 20 years before that.As for drugs......there was no mention in any period journals of smoking MJ,there was the use of Opium.....rather widespread,Cocain was used for medicinal purposes....later as well.Please dont try to turn such a great time in history into something it was not.These guys came out here to better there financial situations back home,many had wives,and children back home.....they all had families that many never got to see again.Disease was rampant ,but not STD's,women were few and far between during the actual rush

 

[aurumdigga]

I know my history well. Impropriety only happened in civilized situations. Next you will be saying that brothels didn't exist.

Get your history correct before letting everyone know that you don't know it.

Cocaine was used for whatever you wanted. Freud was a cocaine junkie until his death before he resorted to morphine. I was in touch with a student of Freud's sister, Anna Freud, in a forum to know this.

Opium dens proliferated throughout the West and San Francisco.

You can't stay up all day and all night having sex without stimulants and drinking at the same time. Cocaine came in tins like tobacco & snuff does today.

Thomas Jefferson was a hemp farmer and grew marijuana also. Someone has to be really rationalizing with a hindsight view of past history to think that Hemp farmers didn't smoke and/or grow marijuana also. Hemp was a #1 resource for rope for sailing ships. Hemp rope was prized by the British and most other Countries for the rope that wouldn't break on the high seas. Hemp was more prized than Tea. The British stole Jefferson's whole crop of hemp plus his marijuana or special plants near the house. I read the letters to & from his wife in college. Find these three books, read them, then get back with me.

Also, there was heroin, and opium along with cocaine and all the marijuana that you could shake a stick at. Marijuana was easier to get than tobacco.

If you don't know about opium & the Korean war, then you are not reading the right data on this war. Warriors for thousands of years used opium before battles.

Mummies in Egypt have been found to have cocaine in the body tissue.

Heck, Coke, the drink, got its name from having cocaine in the original formula.

And by the way, Marconi didn't invent the radio.

 

[IdahoJake]

I liked it. Looking for to part 2.