I'm Laura Norton, and this is one strange thing, the show where we search the nation's news archives for stories that can't quite be explained.

Just a heads up on this episode, it's a little gorier than usual, so listener discretion

is advised.

Ah, strangers.

The American education system has a number of quirks, but our indutable favorite is this.

We all spend time in our K through eight years learning the local history of our region,

but depending on where you lived, you've spent that time on very different topics.

In the Northeast, you likely focus for far too long on the 13 colonies, and in the West, you heard an awful lot about gold rushes.

And what better way to commemorate a golden anniversary, our 50th 50th 50-0 episode, than a story about about gold and what the idea of it does to people.

One strange thing's intrepid producer grew up in California and remembers not one, but

several field trips having to do with gold in them their hills, and them there rivers, and them there canyons.

The rush of prospectors to Northern California and Sutter's Mill in 1849 built the West

for better or worse, and it did build in some ugly ways, surely.

We're talking about land occupation and a frenzied, often deadly search for the chance to

strike it rich after all.

But for the pioneers creeping their way west, the promise of gold meant hope.

As many children of the western states have since learned firsthand at Cheezily themed sleepaway

camps, the life of a gold rusher was not easy.

If you were lucky, and that's lucky in the barest, most technical sense of the word, you'd

settle in a mining town, where your chances of having a roof over your head

were decent, and your chances at finding and keeping any gold were slim.

Alternately, you'd rough it, literally, outside.

...