Dimensions: 10 x 14.7 cm. (3.9 x 5.7″)

Publisher/Editor: Royal Pictures, Colton

Condition: Postally unused, backside empty. Good condition with some signs of age.

Notes: The prospector – a composite of many from across the eastern half of the United States – had heard the stories from the gold fields of California early in that year of 1849. Young men, with little future in impoverished rural communities and fields in the East and the Old South, spoke of little else. They said that miners had already dug several million dollars worth of gold out of California’s hills and mountains (at a time when a dollar had 25 times the value of today’s dollar). Why, a preacher himself had said that one party had found more than 76 thousand dollars worth of gold in less than two months. One man, he had said, had found more than five thousand dollars worth in two months. A 14-year-old boy had found more than three thousand dollars worth in only 54 days. A woman – a mere woman – had found two thousand dollars worth in six weeks. Surely any man willing to work hard could get rich. That’s what everybody said. (desertusa.com)