Free Republic

NEVADA, Iowa: The ethanol boom of recent years — which spurred a frenzy of distillery construction, record corn prices, rising food prices and hopes of a new future for rural America — may be fading. Only last year, farmers here spoke of a biofuel gold rush, and they rejoiced as prices for ethanol and the corn used to produce it set records. But companies and farm cooperatives have built so many distilleries so quickly that the ethanol market is suddenly plagued by a glut, in part because the means to distribute it have not kept pace. The average national ethanol...

On January 24 1848, James W Marshall discovered gold in a lumber mill (Sutter's Mill) tailrace along the American River. Although John Sutter tried to keep this fact quiet, fearing the loss of his agricultural empire, word got out and hundreds of thousands of people came to California, looking for gold. The people, known as Forty-Niners, came from everywhere. Some did exceptionally well and others returned home penniless. The early 49'ers panned for gold along stream beds and eventually larger-scale placer mining became more common. As the romance and excitment of the original Gold Rush dwindled away, gold mining techniques...

There's no physical evidence that the family who gave the Donner Party its name had anything to do with the cannibalism the ill-fated pioneers have been associated with for a century and a half, two scientists said Thursday. Cannibalism has been documented at the Sierra Nevada site where most of the Donner Party's 81 members were trapped during the brutal winter of 1846-47, but 21 people, including all the members of the George and Jacob Donner families, were stuck six miles away because a broken axle had delayed them. No cooked human bones were found among the thousands of fragments...

VANCOUVER, B.C. -- A historian and the owners of a casino under construction in central British Columbia are trying their luck at re-creating the area's gold-rush era Cariboo camel convoy. It's an effort to draw tourists, but also to do a serious historical inquiry into how camels were used in the Cariboo region during the gold rush between 1858 and 1871. "Camels are so exciting and crazy as a thing to celebrate, we just thought it was perfect," said Jim Savage, an owner of the Jack O' Clubs musical theater casino, slated to open this summer in Wells. Savage said...