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Northern California and the Pacific Northwest were forever changed by gold rushes, from population increases to economic growth to the introduction of new foods. People from all over the country - even all over the world - were crammed together in overcrowded camps and settlements, mixing ideas and recipes. Supplies were often limited, and food rations had to last much longer than normal, especially in remote regions.
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As America grew and expanded throughout the 19th century, the 1848 discovery of gold in
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California led to the first major gold rush in American history. By 1849, thousands of
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prospectors, who had come to be known as 49ers, came to the area in hopes of striking it rich
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But life in the region was harsh and resources were scarce. But the gold miners were nothing if
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not resourceful and managed to not only pack well for their excursions, but create some unique
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cuisine along the way. Today, we're sampling the eclectic foods prospectors ate
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to survive during the gold rush. The cry of, there's gold in them thar hills
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echoed loudly in the minds and spirits of America's 19th century prospectors
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Between 1848 and 1864, over 300,000 people flocked to the Sierra Nevada Mountains
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during the California gold rush. A small town near the foothills known as Old Dry Diggins
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had recently been renamed Hangtown after a series of hangings in the town square
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The town was later rechristened Placerville. Hangtown Fry originated when a miner struck gold
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near the town at the height of the gold rush. Afterward, he went straight to the nearest saloon
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the El Dorado Hotel, and asked for the most expensive meal they had. The cook made him a
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fancy omelet complete with bacon and oysters. Looks like going to Denny's after winning the
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lottery and getting a shrimp side with your moons over Miami. The miner apparently
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loved the dish, and it became a popular recipe known as the Hangtown Fry. The dish grew more
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popular, finding its way onto the menus of restaurants across the country. It even found
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a place on New York's membership-only Breakfast Club at Club 21 and was once featured on the
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first-class menu of American Airlines. It's easy to make, too. All you need is an egg
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some breadcrumbs, oil, bacon, and milk. Oh, and three medium-sized oysters, of course
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Speaking of seafood... A few decades after the California Gold Rush ended
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the Yukon Gold Rush brought 100,000 prospectors to the great frozen north in search of precious metal
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Even in the frozen white north, seafood wasn't always available. But even when it was, prospectors used salmon
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to make hearty soups and stews. The heartiness of a stew provided a filling meal
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that lasted for a few days. Recipes vary, but one recipe from Jay Moynihan's
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The Good Time Girl's Guide to Gold Rush Cuisine provides a modern take on this gold rush meal with a dish called Dutch Kate's Salmon Stew
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In addition to salmon, the stew calls for milk, butter, flour, salt, and some pepper
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exactly the type of fare a Yukon miner would have eaten at the time. The modern recipe calls for canned or fresh salmon
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but Yukon miners would have gone with a fresh catch as they trudged across the tundra in search of gold
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For prospectors during the California gold rush, manufactured yeast wasn't easy to come by
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So they had to get creative when it came to baking bread. For all you pandemic bakers, this will sound familiar
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Enter the sourdough starter. Everyone's favorite pandemic hobby had its origins in San Francisco during the gold rush
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when miners discovered a way to make their bread softer and fluffier. According to writer Ed Wood, a true sourdough
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is nothing more than flour and water with wild yeast to make it rise and special bacteria to provide the flavor But miners during the gold rush had a trick up their sleeve They mixed flour and water together then added some sugar Then they kept that mixture warm to allow it to ferment
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Sometimes miners kept their starters warm by cuddling with them at night and keeping them
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close to their bodies. Once fermented, prospectors used these starters to make sourdough bread
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Sometimes, potatoes and poppy seeds were added to give the bread extra flavor and crunch
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Sounds like something Whole Foods would sell for 15 bucks a loaf. Sourdough bread became a San Francisco standard, where it's still popular today
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During the gold rush, it wasn't uncommon to find turtle meat on the menu in some gold-mining towns
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Importers saw the sudden influx of settlers into California as a chance to capitalize on importing tortoises and turtles for food
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From sea turtles to the giant Galapagos tortoise, These unlikely reptiles found their way onto the plates and menus of California settlers
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throughout the gold rush. It started small, with about 122 tortoises being imported to San Francisco in 1849
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but blossomed into a burgeoning trade. At one point, a ship brought 500 of the unfortunate reptiles to the city to be used as food
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Turtle steak, soup, pies, and even baked goods were popular meals at the time
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But some folks preferred the organ meats the most. Captain Thomas Crapo
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Yeah, that's his real name. loved turtle organ meat so much, he wrote about it in his diary
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saying it was far superior to any kind of meat I ever ate
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Eventually, tortoise meat fell out of favor, but the damage was already done
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Galapagos Island tortoise population significantly declined because of this, and many of the tortoise species exploited for their meat are still recovering today
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Good job, crappo. During the Klondike Gold Rush, inventive miners used wildflowers and herbs to flavor otherwise
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bland foods. Syrup, soup, mashes, and spices all benefited from adding a few herbs. One such
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substance Klondike explorers loved was squaw honey, a syrup made from wild clover and other
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flowers. As a six-foot-high weed growing in the wild, wild clover was easy to spot in the warmer
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months, making it a good choice for cooking. There weren't any bees in Alaska, so harvesting real honey
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was out of the question. But the flowers contained sweet nectar that approximated
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the flavor of the sticky treat. But other plants offered unique flavors as well
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The gold rush wasn't just a time of people settling the West. It also ushered in some of our modern industrial practices
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Commercially preserved foods were starting to be distributed around that time. despite preservation methods existing for centuries before
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Dried apples or salted beef, for instance, were common provisions for settlers at the time
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So it made sense to apply these methods to other foods. In the Yukon, miners used preserving techniques
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to make a type of food the native Alaskans already enjoyed, kelp relish
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Relish, a cooked and pickled mix of vegetables and herbs, can be made from a lot of different ingredients
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Making relish involved combining salt water, onion, lemon, in pickling spice, brown sugar, vinegar, and kelp together
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until it was well blended. Then it could be eaten all at once or stored for later use
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Reports from the period in more modern recipes point to it being a delicious dish
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But you probably wouldn't want to put it on a hot dog. In Alaska they used kelp a large type of seaweed that grew along the coast Harvesting the stuff fresh wasn always easy So preserving it provided the freedom to travel longer distances with a ready supply of relish
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Throughout the Yukon Gold Rush, plants were the ingredient that kept on giving
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A large shrub called Devil's Club was a tough, thorny plant that grew all along the Yukon and down
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to the California coast. It was tall, dense, and a pain in the butt to harvest
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but it worked great as a spice. assuming you picked the leaves when they were young
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and under two inches long. With a nickname like Alaskan ginseng, you'd think it'd be energizing and refreshing
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To some extent, it was. In her cookbook, Gold Rush Grub, From Turpentine Stew to Hoochinoe
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Anne Chattanoe described the plant's unique flavor variations. It could be nibbled raw
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The buds taste like intensely herbal celery leaves. Cooked, they are reminiscent of the edible bases
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of artichoke leaves. Hey, at least it's better than eating thistles. If celery-flavored plants weren't your thing
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there was always nettle soup. Nettles are one of the first plants to show signs of growth after snow melts
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So cooking them became common practice throughout the gold rush. Native Americans used the tough and fibrous stems
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of the plant to weave baskets and make fishing nets. But the leaves made a pretty good soup
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tasting like spinach or cabbage when cooked. Nettles served as a good alternative to otherwise unavailable greens
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And the soup could be thickened with starch or mixed with spices to give it a bit of a kick
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But these original plant-based meals were only the tip of the culinary iceberg
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Settlers came from all over the world to seek their fortune in the gold rush
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Many of them brought their traditional recipes with them. Take the case of the Cornish pasty
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With a recipe hailing from Cornwall, England, the Cornish pasty is essentially a savory meat pie
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They contain meat and potatoes that are wrapped in a pastry shell prior to being cooked
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Once cooked, the edges of the pasty are crimped, and it resembles an apple turnover
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In a traditional pasty, the filling is usually minced meat and vegetables that are cooked prior
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to being placed in the shell. The dish is still quite popular today in the town of Grass Valley
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California, where it's a prominent fixture at restaurants and eateries all over the city
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Speaking of meat pies... If you were looking for meat during the Yukon Gold Rush
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the most likely way to get it was by hunting the moose of the Great White North
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Moose lived in large numbers throughout the Great Alaskan Wilderness at the time
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making them prime game for the prospectors who went out there. Eating the meat was a different story
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While some ate it normally, others made savory moose meat pies. One recipe used cubes of moose steak as its base
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Another called for the layering of ground moose meat, potatoes, celery, and onions in a pan
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to make a sort of moose meat casserole. Moose meat has a unique texture and flavor
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making it a special treat for hungry prospectors in the Yukon Territory
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Searching the hills for gold wasn't the only thing folks were doing during California's gold rush
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They picked up another food-related practice, egg poaching. Chicken eggs were scarce in California
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costing up to $1 per egg. Stores put up eggs wanted signs in their windows
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An 1857 ad in the Sonoma County Journal read, wanted butter and eggs for which the highest price will be paid To say San Franciscans wanted eggs would be an understatement The Farallon Islands just off the coast of San Francisco were home to large seabird populations
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that became a prime target for hungry businessmen looking to make a profit off the birds' valuable eggs
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A San Francisco pharmacist, Doc Robinson, sailed to the islands with his brother-in-law to poach the eggs
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There, they faced difficult terrain and slick rocks that were hard to climb
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You know, because of all the bird guano covering them. Despite losing half of their haul on the return trip
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they still pocketed $3,000 from selling the eggs they actually managed to bring back
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Robinson swore to never return. But that didn't stop other poachers from waging an all-out war with each other
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over retrieving eggs from the island. The eggs of a small penguin-like bird called the myrrh
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were highly sought after due to being twice the size of a chicken egg. These eggs almost single-handedly led
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to a three-decade-long fight over the egging rights to the islands. Six men sailed to the islands and staked a claim of possession
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under the name Pacific Egg Company in 1851. This angered everyone else, and the egg wars became increasingly violent
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until the government stepped in to give Pacific Egg Company rights to the island
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And that went over about as well as you might expect. Fights over the eggs continued to decimate bird populations
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and wreak havoc on the environment. Eventually, chicken farmers came along. and effectively ended the 30-year-long struggle over the Farallon Islands
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And the mer population is thriving today. English monkey is another name for the common Welsh dish, Welsh rabbit
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The story goes that the name Welsh rabbit was originally intended as an insult from the English to the Welsh
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When the Welsh settlers headed to the US to participate in the gold rush
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they struck back at the English by calling the dish English monkey
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Take that, Great Britain. Neither Welsh rabbit nor English monkey contains any rabbits or monkeys
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Instead, it's a kind of cheese sauce with breadcrumbs, cheese, milk, and eggs
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The sauce gets poured over crackers or thick slices of toast. And you eat it with a knife and fork
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Classy. Pass the Grey Poupon, please. The dish doesn't take long to make, either
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According to an 1897 cookbook called Practical Vegetarian Cookery, just soak a cup full of breadcrumbs in milk for 10 minutes
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melt some butter over it, and add some cheese. Stir in an egg, salt, and some soda, then serve on wafers
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The cheesy and somewhat pasty consistency notwithstanding, the dish is a popular pub food in Great Britain
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and is enjoyed best with a pint of your favorite beer. For two years in the mid-1800s, Colorado had its own gold rush
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The Pikes Peak gold rush brought a cadre of miners to the mountain state
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What they didn't account for, though, were the harsh, high altitude conditions and the extremely frigid winters
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Colorado winters are the worst. But if there's one thing Colorado mountains are known for, it's the bighorn sheep
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And if there's one thing prospectors in the area were known for, it was being hungry
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You can probably see where this is going. Prospectors hunted the bighorn sheep, stockpiled them, and sold the meat and furs at trading posts
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There was a high demand for the muscular animals, and their meat was roasted over fires
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This ended up with the sheep being hunted almost to the point of extinction. That, along with habitat destruction
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further reduced their numbers to the point that hunting them today is highly regulated
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