Today, his son, Nick Prebalick owns and operates a tour company called California Gold Panning that allows tourists to try their luck at mining for gold. The business helps supplement the families ...

Sandwiched between the Louisiana Purchase in 1803 and the Civil War in 1861, the California Gold ... mining was the hardest kind of labor. They moved rock, dug dirt and waded into freezing streams.

Seeking gold ... Those streams directed upon an ordinary wooden building would speedily unroof and demolish it," wrote a reporter for the San Francisco Daily Alta. Hydraulic mining required ...