When it comes to teaching the Gold Rush, Landels Elementary School never skimps. Each May, teachers, parents and students venture to Stevens Creek Park, where they erect an elaborate mining town, complete with general store, bank, jail and saloon.
Students usually learn about the Gold Rush in the fourth grade, when they study California history.
Published by Houghton Mifflin in 1991, the book devotes 11 large-type pages to the Gold Rush and mining. It describes the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill in 1848 and the long, often-difficult, journey miners made to California to stake their claims. Most of the text is written from the perspective of miners, detailing both the exaltation a few experienced and the misery, hard work and dashed hopes that most endured. Teachers are told to encourage students to play the role of miners, pretending to stake claims, write diaries or pan for gold. There is a fair amount of human drama in the two chapters covering that era.