Memoir and Writings of Jacob M. Pike

Eighteen-year-old Jacob Pike jumped ship in San Francisco on February 4, 1850, during the California Gold Rush. Chasing big dreams in the Golden Stater over the next decades, he experienced success and failure as a gold miner, storekeeper, tobacco merchant, restaurateur, and innkeeper. Financial blows, he wrote, "always gave him more energy." Better than any monetary reward, he left as his legacy his handwritten memoir for the enjoyment of future generations.