By the Great Horn Spoon!

By the Great Horn Spoon! focuses on a momentous event that changed the history of America, particularly its westernmost regions: the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855. When rich deposits of gold were discovered at a construction site about 100 miles from the small port town of San Francisco in 1848, “gold fever” swept the country. Once news of gold reached the densely populated East Coast, thousands of Easterners, both rich and poor, rushed to what had, until recently, been a remote, virtually lawless region. As the novel relates, “Men were buying picks and shovels and trying to get from the east coast to the west—as soon as possible and all at once” (2).

Crude trappings of civilization followed this influx of “forty-niners” (miners) in the form of hastily built roads, hotels, stores, hospitals, brothels, barrooms, gambling dens, and more. Fleischman describes dirt streets lined with shacks “raised on wood pilings” that “looked as if they had just walked to town,” like many of the residents themselves (114). According to written history, the resulting population shift was likely unprecedented in America: Approximately 300,000 newcomers flooded northern California in just a few years, and the once-small San Francisco exploded from roughly 1,000 full-time residents in 1848 to 25,000 in 1850 (Holliday, J. . “Rush for riches: gold fever and the making of California.” Internet Archive, University of California Press, 1999, p. 51). These new residents, many of whom decided to stay after mining and panning for gold, originated from all over the world, some from as far away as China. Among these residents were thousands of entrepreneurs who established hotels, stores, and other businesses to cater to gold-seekers. These merchants and business owners often fared better than miners, few of whom got rich. 

With the advent of the Gold Rush, America’s lawless West captured the global imagination as never before, becoming “the Wild West”: a place of legend and romance, where wealth, adventure, and opportunity beckoned, and where people could leave their pasts behind and reinvent themselves. In By the Great Horn Spoon!, Jack, Praiseworthy, and Arabella do just that, leaving behind their stagnant lives in Boston for the California Dream. Their aspirations of material wealth are short-lived; however, as was the case with many new Californians, it is not gold that keeps them in California but other freedoms. For example, Praiseworthy discovers an affinity for law practice, and finally realizes his dream of marrying Arabella, his former employer.