Gold Seekers of '49

Part of God's providence it was to found A Nation's bulwark on this chosen ground; Not Jesuit's zeal nor pioneer's unrest Planted these pickets in the distant West, But He who first the Nation's fate forecast Placed here His fountains sealed for ages past, Rock-ribbed and guarded till the coming time Should fit the people for their work sublime; When a new Moses with his rod of steel Smote the tall cliffs with one wide-ringing peal, And the old miracle in record told To the new Nation was revealed in gold. —BRET HARTE
It has taken Americans to build the Panama Canal, and it took the Americans to build California. These are two great feats of which we Americans of the United States may well be proud: the building of that canal, in the strange tropics 2000 miles away across the water, and the up-rearing of a mighty State, under equally strange conditions, 2000 miles away across plains and mountains.
On the Isthmus men of many nationalities combined like a vast family; each man, from laborer to engineer, doing his stint, without favoritism and without graft, toward the big result. So in California likewise a people collected from practically all the world became Americans together under the Flag, and working shoulder to shoulder—rich and poor, old and young, educated and uneducated, no matter what their manner of life previously—they joined forces to make California worthy of being a State in the Union.
So hurrah for the Panama Canal, built by American methods which encourage every man to do his share; and hurrah for California, raised to Statehood upon the foundation of American equality!
The discovery of gold in California was hailed as an occasion for getting rich quick; but its purpose proved to be the development of character. It seems a long, long way back to Forty-nine, when across the Isthmus and across the plains thousands of men—yes, and not a few women and children—pluckily forged ahead, bound for the Land of Gold. Some made their fortunes, but the best that any of them achieved lay in the towns that they founded, the laws that they enacted, the homes that they established, and the realization that these things were of more importance than the mere frenzy for quick wealth.