When the Rich Went West

"It is the easiest thing in the world to make a living here if a man is industrious; but I am more and more hopeless of our ever making enough money over farming here to come home again. It is the old story—want of capital. No one out here expects to be rich; one can make a living, but nothing more,” wrote Ethel Hertslet, who arrived in Lake County, California, in 1885 from England. What possessed people like Ethel to begin a new life in a foreign land? It’s called the American West,