PUBLICATIONS | MODEST FORTUNES

MODEST FORTUNES
Mining in Northern Baja California
by Donald Chaput, William M. Mason, and David Zarate Loperena

Volume 51 of the Baja California Travels Series, Dawson's Book Shop
Published by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
248 pages, 58 illustrations, foldout map, glossary, bibliography, index, 1992. Edition of 700.
Price $70.00 cloth cover (ISBN 0-938644-28-9)

Photograph Credit
David Goldbaum rocking for gold. Zarate Family Archives

Northern Baja California remained largely unexplored and undeveloped well into the twentieth century. What knowledge there was of the land was accumulated mainly by intrepid prospectors and the miners and entrepreneurs that followed them. This volume presents a diversity of rarely seen, and in many cases unpublished, historical records and accounts of mining. The authors have combined extensive field work with their acquisition of source materials, which include letters and diaries, newspaper articles, corporation records, and government documents. The careers of some of the leading mining figures are surveyed and many of the region's numerous mining districts are profiled. For the most part, however, Modest Fortunes is told in the voices of those who were present during the Baja California mining years.