PBA Galleries

Broadside, printed in three columns, signed at the end (in print) by C.H. Chamberlain, president of the miners' association. 17.5x20 cm. (10¾x8¼). First Edition.

Very rare broadside from an important California gold camp, outlining the various laws and agreements by which they regulated their activities. Eberstadt 131:105 describes it as "Crudely printed with newspaper type; a press had been established in the mining camp in 1852. The item is of basic importance, however, not only as the first known separate issue of this press, but as an example of how the California miners - or men beyond the reach of government anywhere else in our States and Territories, for that manner - banded together and enacted and enforced codes of law for their own protection." There are seventeen articles in all, outlining the boundaries of the district; designating what a claim should exist of (one hundred feet square); methods of marking claims; restrictions on diverting water; the admonition that "none but Americans and Europeans who have or shall declare their intentions of becoming citizens, shall hold claims in this district..."; that "neither Asiatics nor South Sea Islanders shall be allowed to mine in this district, either for themselves or for others"; methods of choosing a Miners' Committee; etc. Greenwood 381 locates only three copies - at the California Historical Society, the Bancroft Library, and the Streeter copy, which was sold in the Clifford Sale in 1994 for $2700. OCLC find 8 copies.