Eldorado: Adventures in the Path of Empire

A journalist's eyewitness account of the explosive 1849 California gold rush and his travels through Mexico.

In 1849, a young, wide-eyed reporter from New York ventured West not to seek riches, but to report on the madness and exuberance of the California gold rush. Sent by Horace Greeley, a highly respected New-York Tribune editor, twenty-four-year-old Bayard Taylor traveled through Panama to reach his final destination, San Francisco, which he described as an "amphitheatre of fire" in the night, gleaming with the promise of gold and progress.

In his enthralling and robust narrative, Bayard brings the reader into the wild, lush world of early California, reporting on the nearly overnight growth of townships and infrastructure after the gold rush. During his adventures, Bayard walked one hundred miles from San Francisco to Monterey, and later returned to New York via Mexico by foot, mule, and coach. Bayard describes the characters he met with an honest curiosity--heady gold miners who had once been doctors and lawyers, hospitable Mexicans from all classes of society, and even a highway robber who made off with his books.

Eldorado, which borrows its title from the South American-Spanish legend of a hidden land of gold, is a magnificent tale about the birth of California from a deserted land to a modern city sprawl. At once an account of history and of one man's thrilling adventures, Eldorado transports the reader to the beginning of an era, with all its gold, glitz, and glamour.

Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history--books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.

Bayard Taylor was born in 1825 in Pennsylvania. A relentless writer, he began reading at age four and writing poems at seven. After an apprenticeship with a printer, Taylor approached Horace Greeley of the New-York Tribune and proposed that the newspaper finance his trip to Europe in return for travel letters, which he would later publish as Views A-Foot (1846). After the publication of Eldorado in 1850, Taylor continued to travel the world, becoming secretary of the US delegation in Russia. A few months after being appointed American Minister to Germany, he died at the age of 53 in Berlin, Germany.