Alva Review-Courier -

“All that glitters is not gold.”

That line from Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” tells us that things that seem most valuable on the surface are often deceptive. Such was the gold rush to California in 1848-1851.

Visiting The Elegant Toad Thrift Store, where you go for things to find you, I brought home a copy of Daniel B. Woods' journal, “Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings.” Published after his return to Philadelphia in the fall of 1851, it is a tragic tale of suffering in the riverbeds and gorges on the West side of the Sierra Nevada Range.

Frontier justice was served when a criminal was...