This book carries the story of the world's first gold rush from 1849 through the free-for-all decades of the 1860s and 70's and on to the climactic year 1884. J. S. Holliday describes California's transformation from the quietude of a Mexican hinterland to the forefront of entrepreneurial capitalism.

He follows gold mining's swift evolution from treasure hunt to vast industry, traces the prodigal plunder of California's virgin rivers and abundant forests, and describes improvised feats of engineering, breathtaking in their scope and execution.

Holliday also conjures the ambitious, often ruthless Californians whose rush for riches rapidly changed the state: the Silver Kings of the Comstock Lode, the timber barons of the Sierra forests, the Big Four who built the first transcontinental railroad, and the lesser profit-seekers who owned steamboats, pack mules, gambling dens, and bordellos - and, most important for California's future, the farmers who prospered by feeding the rapidly growing population.

The central theme of Rush for Riches is how, after decades of careless freedom, the miners were finally reined in by the farmers, and how their once mutually dependent relationship soured into hostility.