Weekly Trinity Journal (Weaverville, Calif.)

• 1857–1879
• Newspaper

Historic newspapers carry the language, views and graphic reporting of their time, including racist content. They are shown to teen and adult profiles.

1,139 issues from 1857 to 1879, published in Weaverville, California, digitised for Chronicling America.

The California Gold Rush was short lived, but its impact was profound and enduring. Between 1848 and the mid-1850s hundreds of thousands of people moved into the state in search of easily accessible gold deposits. Most of these “49ers” settled in the Sierra Nevada region near the border with Nevada, but there was also an influx of prospectors into the northern counties of Siskiyou, Shasta, and Trinity, particularly after gold was discovered in Yreka in 1851. Often considered a second gold rush, the lesser-known “northern” mines that sprung up in this region that extended into southern Oregon were more isolated and rugged than those in the Sierra Nevada “Mother Lode.” Most of the camps associated with them were also short lived. Though gold mining remained a prominent part of the regional economy for decades, the rush had largely ended by the 1860s. Most settlements were abandoned and forgotten, and only a few cities survived into the latter part of the century.

California “mining newspapers,” as they were called by early chronicler Helen Giffen, sprang up quickly in the comparatively few northern mining towns. Not only were they some of the earliest papers printed in the state, collectively they chronicled a region as it transitioned from often lawless and violent mining camps into more permanent settlements with organized governments and law enforcement. They also recorded the changing nature of mining and, as Giffen notes, “advocated mining and land reforms that were…

Genres

News

Published in

Weaverville, California, United States

Language

English

Collection

Chronicling America

Licence or status

None stated by the archive

Rights

The Library of Congress believes that the newspapers in Chronicling America are in the public domain or have no known copyright restrictions. Newspapers published in the United States more than 95 years ago are in the public domain in their entirety.

Credit

Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers, Library of Congress and the National Endowment for the Humanities

Who can read it

Teens profiles and older (placed by Invisible Network from what the archive says; archives give no ratings)

Archive

Library of Congress