Susan Lee Johnson: Historian helps PBS paint vivid picture of the California Gold Rush
As an historian, Susan Lee Johnson finds few subjects of American history more irresistible than the California Gold Rush, a movement that unfolded so fast and furiously that it must seem like watching history get shot from a cannon.
"Almost nothing draws people as quickly as the possibility of digging cash out of the earth," says Johnson, a professor of history and Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The California Gold Rush was not just a 'get rich quick' phenomenon; it happened at a peculiar point in both U.S. and world history that just kind of made people go nuts."
Johnson is one of the experts who contributed to the documentary "The Gold Rush," which will run this month as part of the acclaimed PBS history series "American Experience." Using primary sources such as letters and memoirs, the film pieces together real personal stories of gold-rush adventurers hoping to strike it rich, while adding perspective from authors and professional historians.
Wisconsin Public Television will air "American Experience: The Gold Rush," on Monday, Nov. 6, from 8-10 p.m.
Johnson was interviewed by the filmmakers in San Francisco, in a stately Victorian home that was a product of the astounding wealth amassed from the Gold Rush era. The film focuses on the first big wave of the rush, from 1848 to 1853, when surface mining and individual prospecting still prevailed in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.
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"Almost nothing draws people as quickly as the possibility of digging cash out of the earth," says Johnson, a professor of history and Chicana/o and Latina/o Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The California Gold Rush was not just a 'get rich quick' phenomenon; it happened at a peculiar point in both U.S. and world history that just kind of made people go nuts."
Johnson is one of the experts who contributed to the documentary "The Gold Rush," which will run this month as part of the acclaimed PBS history series "American Experience." Using primary sources such as letters and memoirs, the film pieces together real personal stories of gold-rush adventurers hoping to strike it rich, while adding perspective from authors and professional historians.
Wisconsin Public Television will air "American Experience: The Gold Rush," on Monday, Nov. 6, from 8-10 p.m.
Johnson was interviewed by the filmmakers in San Francisco, in a stately Victorian home that was a product of the astounding wealth amassed from the Gold Rush era. The film focuses on the first big wave of the rush, from 1848 to 1853, when surface mining and individual prospecting still prevailed in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada.