Hunting for Gold: Reminiscences of Personal Experience and Research in the Early Days of the Pacific Coast from Alaska to Panama

"Hunting for Gold is a prime piece of Californiana and a fascinating look into the life of a man who knew that a dreamer lives on forever while the toiler dies in a day." -San Francisco Examiner, April 23, 1972
Major William Downie was one of the most noted pioneers of '49." - The National Tribune, 1/25/1894
"Downie's life's history is closely identified with the history of the Pacific Coast." -The Morning Call (San Francisco), 2/13/1892
"William Downie the well known pioneer and miner died suddenly yesterday...his experiences...he recently detailed in a very interesting book entitled 'Hunting for Gold.'" -Oakland Tribune, Dec. 28, 1893

Hunting for gold in California, British Columbia, Panama, and Alaska, why did William Downie give choose a life of a dreamer hoping to strike it rich, and was he ultimately rewarded beyond all expectations in his quest for gold?

Major William Downie was the author of the 1893 book "Hunting for Gold." Downie was the founder of the mining camp of Downieville, Sierra Co., California, now a flourishing town, and his narrative is of the kind that furnishes many a novelist with his "raw material," so overflowing are his pages with local color and with good frontier stories. It deserves a place among the best of Pacific coast pioneer reminiscences.

As a practical miner, Major Downie was without a peer, and even to this day his authority is acknowledged. These pages tell of the days when this experience was gained; the days on the Yuba, the days of hardships in the snow-clad Sierras; the adventures in British Columbia and Alaska; and the weird search for gold in the Indian graves of Panama.

About the author:
William Downie was born in 1819 and died December 27, 1893. He was a prospector and explorer involved in the gold rushes in California and British Columbia of the mid-19th Century.
In gold rush-era California, Major Downie led an expedition up the North Fork of the Yuba River after having arrived in San Francisco on 27 June 1849. On 5 Oct. he led a group of African American sailors and one Irish lad eventually reaching the forks of the North Yuba.
Downieville, California was adopted as the town name in a local election.
Downie explored British Columbia at the request of Governor James Douglas. In 1858 he investigated the route from Bute Inlet to the Cariboo via the Homathko River, an attempted development of which led to the Chilcotin War a few years later. At the onset of the Big Bend Gold Rush of 1865, Downie travelled up the Columbia River before steamboat service on that route began.

Then in 1874, Downie left for Panama where he sought gold and silver by grave robbing. He then visited Alaska.
Downie died on 27 Dec. 1893 on board the steamer City of Puebla just before disembarking in San Francisco from Victoria, British Columbia.

Legacy
Downieville, California is named for Major Downie. Also named for him is the former goldrush boomtown of Downie Creek, British Columbia, at the confluence of the stream of the same name with the Columbia River and adjacent to the vanished boomtown of La Porte, both at the heart of the Big Bend goldfields.

Dettagli