ABSTRACT
The symbolic spike rests in peace at a Stanford University museum. But the disregard of Chinese workers haunts California, a project in which that university’s founder, spike driver Leland Stanford, played an essential role. Equally essential to building California were other economic and political actors. Figuring prominently among them were Famine Irish and their descendants. The 1848 discovery of gold had brought to the Sierra Nevada people from all walks of life, from everywhere in the United States and across the world. California located the Jacksonian dream—it was a land of rugged pioneers, independent small producers, and hardy miners. New England Protestant Brahmins long had regarded California as a battleground in the fight to stop the spread of Catholicism in the United States. But “the Roman Catholic presence was too strong,” Kevin Starr writes. Put to the choice, Anglo-American settlers allied with the Spanish-speaking Californio, whose Christianity set him apart from most Chinese and Native Americans.
