William S. McCollum

When the mania of the California gold discovery began to sweep the East Coast in late 1848, William S. McCollum was already over forty years old and a well-established doctor in his local community. However, he was not immune to the lust for adventure that swelled in the hearts of young men half his age.

Among a loose association of twenty citizens of his native Lockport, New York, he departed by ship on January 28, 1849, for the prospecting grounds of California. In the short span of one year, he would travel to and from the West Coast across the Isthmus of Panama and participate in the gold rush.

Shortly after his return to New York in the spring of 1850, McCollum published a memoir of his gold rush adventures at his own expense for local distribution. In the following excerpt fromCalifornia as...