Like many gold-seekers who made their way to California, the Frinks found more stability and profit in catering to the residents of Sacramento than in searching for gold themselves. 7 This longer Indigenous history and contemporary reality was not part of publications like Margaret Frink’s. However, it made enough of an impression for Margaret to call it “a sublime, strange, and wonderful scene – one of nature’s most interesting works.” 6 While the City of Rocks acted as a noteworthy guidepost for Anglo-American colonizers on their westward march, it had been part of the homelands of multiple Native tribes, including Shoshone and Paiute peoples, for much longer. She described the place as “a stone village composed of huge, isolated rocks of various and singular shapes, some resembling cottages, others steeples and domes.” Perhaps for this reason, she preferred to call it “Pyramid City.” The couple spent little time at the City of Rocks, merely passing through in the middle of their day. 5Īccording to the diary, the Frinks arrived on Wednesday, July 17 at the City of Rocks in Idaho. Leaving Indiana on March 30, 1850, Margaret and Ledyard Frink traveled by wagon 2,418 miles to arrive in Sacramento, California on September 7, 1850, two days before California was admitted to the Union as the 31st state. 4 The Frinks caught “gold fever” in December 1849 and made plans to move to California the following spring. 3 When gold was discovered in California in January 1848, the news flew around the world enticing tens of thousands of Americans to travel west in hopes of striking it rich. 2 At twenty-two, she married Ledyard Frink, and the couple eventually settled in Martinsville, Indiana. On April 25, 1817, Margaret Ann was born to Joseph and Mary Alsip in Frederick, Maryland. Her published diary and its treatment of western landmarks, like the City of Rocks, exemplify the “tender violence” of Anglo-American cultural production and the ways that such writings contributed to the erasure of Native nations in Anglo-American imaginations during the Gold Rush era. Frink’s own description of daily life in 1850 was ultimately published after her death under the title Journal of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold-seekers. Personal letters of travelers were widely shared, and middle-class women and men penned accounts. ![]() Americans on the East Coast and in the Midwest were keenly interested in stories about the Gold Rush. ![]() Margaret Frink, who joined the Californian Gold Rush in the mid-nineteenth century, provides a glimpse of what life was like on the journey west through her meticulously kept diary. Ledyard Frink During a Journey Across the Plains from Martinsville, Indiana, to Sacramento, California, from March 30, 1850, to September 7, 1850. Margaret Frink, Journal of the Adventures of a Party of California Gold-seekers: Under the Guidance of Mr.
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