Gold Rush Adventures Dyslexia Series

About this curriculum

The stories in this series examine the various ways in which people traveled to California to find gold, as well as the discoveries they made along the way, which often included insight into the kinds of riches they truly wanted from life. A Special Series of Books for Children Who Struggle to Read In the year 1848, the United States had been an independent nation for almost three quarters of a century, and yet much of the American West was still unsettled. Explorers had reached the Pacific Coast and had established settlements in Washington, Oregon, and California, but many of them traveled by ship because the 3,000-mile overland route was dangerous, winding through treacherous terrain (not the least of which was the Rocky Mountains) and the territories of hostile Native American tribes. As a result, West Coast settlements like San Francisco and Sacramento were generally small and sparsely populated. That changed when James Marshall found gold—by accident—while overseeing construction of a mill near Sutter’s Fort, a thriving colony established by John Sutter, who hoped to turn the region into a booming metropolis of prosperity and peace, with himself as governor of it all…