Talk Like A Grizzled Prospector Day

What the day is

Talk Like A Grizzled Prospector Day is observed on January 24, which is the date James Marshall found gold at Sutter's Mill in California in 1848.

Origin and background

The prospector voice everybody can do, the wheezing drawl with consarn it and thar's gold in them thar hills, is not a recording of how anyone actually spoke. It is a screen accent, assembled for westerns and cartoons in the twentieth century and passed between performers until it became a fixed character. Actual gold rush camps were among the most linguistically mixed places on the continent, drawing people from across the eastern United States, Mexico, Chile, China, Ireland, France and Australia. There was no single prospector accent because there was no single prospector.

The reality was also less romantic than the character suggests. Most who came did not get rich. The arithmetic favored the people selling to miners rather than the miners, which is why the lasting fortunes of the period belong to merchants, shippers and outfitters. Food and tools at the diggings cost many times what they did in eastern cities, and a great many prospectors worked hard for a year and left poorer than they arrived.

The consequences for California were enormous and not uniformly good. The non-native population grew explosively within a couple of years, San Francisco transformed from a small settlement into a city, and statehood followed in 1850. For the Native peoples of California the same period was catastrophic, bringing displacement, disease and state-sanctioned killings, and that is part of the same history as the panning and the beards.

How to take part

• Do the voice, cheerfully, and know it is a cartoon rather than a record.
• Read about who actually profited, which is a better business lesson than most.
• Try panning if you are anywhere it is offered. The technique is genuinely satisfying.
• Look up where your local gold rush was, since most regions had one.
• Read the Native Californian side of the period, which is usually left out of it.