The Book Prize Index

Roaring Camp: The Social World of the California Gold Rush

Susan Lee Johnson

"Susan Lee Johnson's Roaring Camp explores the dynamic social world created by the gold rush in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Stockton. In it we find Mexican families like the Murrietas who worked the mines, did the wash, and rose up against Anglo rule. There are the California Indians who tried to maintain their customary practices even while helping to construct the sawmill at Sutter's fort where gold was discovered in 1848. We enter the all-male households of the diggings, the mines where the men worked, and the fandango houses where they played. At places like Casa de los Amigos in Stockton, the Long Tom Saloon in Sonora, and Madame Clement's in Mariposa, California, gold found its way out of the hands of men from around the world into the hands of women from Mexico, Chile, and France.".

HistoryAmerican History · medium confidenceAmerican History81 signalsLlm Classifier: American History -> American HistoryKeyword Classifier: Gender & Sexuality -> Gender & SexualityTopic Classifier: LGBTQ History & Life -> Gender & SexualityLGBTQ History & LifeGender & FeminismLatin America & the CaribbeanRegional & Local History

Award History

1 wins · 1 total

AwardYearResultCategory / Notes
Bancroft PrizeMajor2001WinnerOfficial source
View all award history (1)
Experimental book profileGenerated by GPT-5.4 nano · may contain inaccuracies

This is an unverified interpretation of the catalog description, offered as an opt-in discovery experiment—not as bibliographic fact.

  1. 01 Central figures

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

  2. 02 Central places

    None extracted with sufficient confidence.

    These suggestions did not meet the normal display threshold and are more likely to be wrong.

    • Sutter's fort60%
    • Stockton55%
    • Sonora45%

  3. 03 Suggested argument

    No argument inferred with sufficient confidence.

    This suggestion did not meet the normal display threshold and is more likely to be wrong.

    The book argues that gold-rush social life in the Sierra Nevada foothills east of Stockton was shaped by intertwined communities—especially Mexican families, Indigenous people, and women—through labor, households, and entertainment sites that redistributed wealth.

    Model confidence 42%

  4. 04 Reading orientation

    55 / 100 academic

    Trade / academic crossover

    An estimate of intended readership and scholarly apparatus—not quality or importance.

Confidence percentages are the model's own estimates. Profile confidence: 55%.