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The Gold Rush Oyster
John McCabe

 Intro
 USA
 •Gold Rush
 •Willapa Bay
 France
 •Coste
 England
 Equipment
 Boats
 Navigational option: 
Focus on Willapa Bay


In the winter of 1848, a rumor spread in the eastern United States purporting that gold could easily be found in far away place called California. Although it sounded good, few people paid much mind to such fantastic stories. Just getting to California presented a choice between "bad" and "worse". There was no rail connection to the West Coast. Travelling over land for thousands of miles with stories of hostile Indians abounding did not sound particularly appealing. Spending months and months aboard some type of sail boat, travelling clear down and around the tip of South America, traversing the dangerous straits of Magellan, and then heading back up the Pacific side of the American continents to California did not sound much better - particularly since yellow fever as a travel companion was not uncommon. The well known short cut across Panama to get to the continent's Pacific side, meant drudging though snake and bug infested rain forests with a good chance of catching malaria and cholera. Things really had not changed all that much in that neck of the woods since the days of the Conquistador Vasco Núñez de Balboa. He lost more than half his men crossing this area back in 1513. Once the Pacific side was reached, one could only hope that a boat might show up for passage the rest of the way up the western coast. Incidentally, the famous Captain Ned Wakeman, who boldly steamed the pirated side-wheeler New World away from its mooring on the Hudson River and proceeded all the way to San Francisco, happened to stop in at the Pacific side of the Isthmus in June of 1850. Besides two marshals foolishly hoping to arrest him, he found the little port packed with frustrated California bound gold prospectors, unable to complete the journey up to San Francisco. Wakeman offered anybody with $300 to their name (lots of money in those days) fair passage for the rest of the way up the coast. After boarding 217 happy new passengers, Wakeman and his crew were rich. The New World had left New York waters some time in April 1850 and arrived in San Francisco on July 11 of the same year. Hence, all the above travel choices were not only miserable, but also very expensive to boot.

However, when President Polk personally confirmed the rumor on December 5, 1848, in a message to Congress, the gold fever spread like wildfire. About a half-million people from all over North America and even other parts of the world closed up shop, left their farm, quit their job, kissed their sweethearts and families good bye and headed out. They are remembered cohesively as the "49ers", even though a bunch of these fortune seekers never even got there until the 50s.

There was gold alright. With some luck and lots of elbow grease plenty of it could be found in creeks, rivers and mines. However, finding "the finer things in life" out in the Mother Lode Country was usually a bit of a challenge for the gold hunters. Mark Twain, in his delightful story "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County", proves that the life of these men did include at least some good entertainment. Watching frogs jump around over in Angels Camp was likely a nice change and lots of fun, but after weeks and months of hard work in the gold fields of California, the average 49er was more than ready for a real taste of civilization. San Francisco offered just that.

San Francisco had plenty of all the things that money could buy. Opportunities for great entertainment, fine dining, Champagne, new clothing and clean sheets (on a real nice bed for a change) abounded. Many of the gold prospectors had come from the East Coast and fondly remembered the succulent Eastern oysters back home. On the West Coast, they quickly became acquainted with a new kind of oyster. Although this unusual oyster seemed disappointingly small compared to what they were used to, it more than made up for its size with superb taste. Initially, it had no particular name, except maybe "oyster". In later years this oyster would have many names like California oyster, Yaquina oyster, Rock oyster, Shoalwater oyster or "Shoalie", and more. About 40 years later, in 1889, this oyster would be officially christened the "Olympia oyster". However, in those early days it really didn't matter what this oyster was called "officially", as it was the only type of oyster available to the prospectors anyway.

We owe one of the most famous oyster recipes in America to the Gold Rush: the Hangtown Fry. As one of the stories goes (I picked the one that sounds the most dramatic of course), a man was due to be hanged in Hangtown (later Placerville, Ca.) for deeds of surely the most dastardly type. The choice of the traditional last meal was offered to him. Wisely, he chose a dish consisting of expensive and hard to find ingredients in any mining town - even in Hangtown, which soon was to become an important supply center for many surrounding mining camps. By choosing eggs, bacon and oysters as ingredients, he managed to delay meeting his maker at the end of a noose for a little while, as the cook first had to try to find all the precious ingredients necessary. Placerville still exists today and this truly delicious dish is still served there. It surely tastes no better anywhere else in the world other than the place this recipe was originally conceived.

Although any kind of oyster used in the preparation of this dish will lead to a delightful culinary experience, for purists, the key to a truly authentic dish is the adherence to the precise nature of its original ingredients. The name "Placerville" became official in 1854. Before then, in the times it had been called "Hangtown, Old Hangtown, Dry Diggings...", only one specific oyster species could have contributed to the original magnificent recipe: the Olympia oyster! Eastern oysters did not start turning up in any kind of quantity until canned goods became more commonplace in the late 60s and live Eastern oysters first started showing up after the completion of the transcontinental railroad line in 1869. Considering that the recipe was later adjusted to match the much larger meat sizes of the Eastern oyster (and much later the Pacific oyster), it stands to reason that the quantity of individual Olympia Oyster meats to be used in the recipe must, at the very least, be five fold of that of Eastern or Pacific oysters. If the recipe calls for a pint of oyster meats, then there could easily be ten times the amount of Olympia oysters present. I decided to test the famous recipe with Olympia oysters for a change. The result proved the purists correct beyond any doubt. Prepared with this oysters species, I found the taste of the dish to be distinctly different, almost decadently tasty and highly satisfying. I also found the dish to be considerably more costly to prepare, particularly since the Olympia oysters seem almost as hard to find today as they were in the Gold Rush days. Thus, should you ever decide to order a "real" Hangtown Fry, please try to remember that.

The gold miners were simply crazy about the tasty Olympia Oyster. They literally loved it to death. By 1851, the natural oyster beds around San Francisco had already been depleted. Fishmongers in San Francisco were quick to respond to the shortage, particularly since gold miners would at times pay up to a silver dollar a piece for these tasty morsels. New oysters suppliers urgently needed to be found. They finally found suppliers in a place way up north called "Shoalwater Bay" (today's Willapa Bay).

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