In August 1906, Chauncey Canfield committed to his publisher a found text: the diary, ostensibly verified, of one Alfred T. Jackson, a pioneer miner who joined the Gold Rush from his home in Norfolk, Connecticut, migrating to Rock Creek, Nevada County, California, where he cabined and worked. The Diary covers two years of Jackson's life, and provides us with one of the richest documents of a period of perhaps unequaled importance to the expansion of the United States.