November 7, 2015 to January 10, 2016

Gold Fever! Untold Stories of the California Gold Rush was a traveling exhibition developed by Exhibit Envoy and the California Council for the Humanities, in collaboration with the Oakland Museum of California.

The exhibit featured twenty-four photomural panels that included fascinating text alongside reproductions of primary documents, photographs, daguerreotypes, and Gold Rush-era paintings. Other items on display included models of objects in common use during the period, including some hands-on artifacts for students to explore. All this was supplemented at the Grace Hudson Museum with Gold Rush-related mining equipment, photos, and documents from Grace Hudson’s own family.

The show spotlighted the remarkable stories of emigrants from all parts of the world who came to the area during the tumultuous and colorful Gold Rush era. These included individual women, Native Americans, adventurers, gold seekers, and Californios (the original Spanish-speaking colonists of California, or their descendants). The exhibit also examined the impact James Marshall’s discovery of gold continues to have on all of California’s people, cultures, environment, politics, and economy.