Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers: Fifty Of The Grittiest Moments In The History Of Frontier Prospecting - Paperback

by Matthew P. Mayo (Author)

Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers: Fifty of the Grittiest Moments in the History of Frontier Prospecting, offers 50 tales of hard-bitten sourdoughs, petty bandits, outright outlaws, guilt-free gunmen, and murderous money-grubbers as they scrabbled to gain the lands, foodstuffs, and fortunes of wide-eyed greenhorns, gullible and trusting tenderfoots, and slow-on-the-draw gold panners.

Back Jacket

For every forthright Forty-Niner pursuing high fortune and a better life in the streambeds and rocky draws of the West, the history of prospecting the vast frontier offers up hundreds of tales of parasitical people preying on gullible greenhorns and seeking easy access to fortune and fame. The list of such precious-metal-and-gemstone-related larcenies in the Old West and the Far North is legion and long and ripe for the reading. These memorable moments are sometimes humorous, often shocking and brutal, and always all-too-true. Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers offers fifty tales of hard-bitten sourdoughs, petty bandits, outright outlaws, guilt-free gunmen, and murderous money-grubbers as they scrabbled to gain the lands, foodstuffs, and fortunes of wide-eyed greenhorns, gullible and trusting tenderfoots, and slow-on-the-draw gold panners.

Author Biography

Matthew P. Mayo is a Spur Award- and Peacemaker Award-nominated writer whose novels include the Westerns Winters' War; Wrong Town; Hot Lead, Cold Heart; and Dead Man's Ranch. His critically acclaimed non-fiction books include Cowboys, Mountain Men & Grizzly Bears; Bootleggers, Lobstermen & Lumberjacks; and Sourdoughs, Claim Jumpers & Dry Gulchers (all Globe Pequot Press). He haunts the web at matthewmayo.com.