![]() Immediately after its discovery, a great number of hopeful inventors headed to the Maze. While you have no doubt seen inventions powered by steam and ghost rock wherever you’re from, you must understand the impact this amazing mineral has had on California and the Maze. When burned, the strange stuff gives off a ghostly-white vapor and howls like the Devil Himself, so the first survivors of the quake who discovered it called it “ghost rock.” This new fundament burns a hundred times hotter and longer than coal. In fact, the sundered landscape had cracked open to reveal a new mineral heretofore undiscovered. Magnificent new beasts such as the Maze dragon, were discovered in those troubled waters, but more amazing was the discovery of what some at first thought was simple coal. In its wake was left the “Maze,” a labyrinth of jagged mesas towering over the flooded sea-channels below. That’s what happened in 1868 when California fell into the sea.Īn earthquake the likes of which he world has never seen before or since shattered the west coast from Mexicali to Oregon. Now imagine the power of a mineral twice as valuable and a thousand times more useful than gold. ![]() Men like Wyatt Earp, Wild Bill Hickock, and Bill Pickett were forged in this harsh land, drawn westward by the lure of gold or the notion they would bring law and order to this wild, reckless land. ![]() The migration of hundreds of thousands of settlers looking to partake in this miracle was what formed the early history of the “Old West.” The dangers of the frontier, the Indians, outlaws, burning deserts, and freezing mountains, created the legendary gunfighters, adventurers, and heroes that so many read about in the dime novels and penny dreadfuls. Gold was discovered there in ‘49 and the tales of those who had become millionaires overnight were the stuff of legend. We should begin our tale with the Great Quake of ‘68, for the quake-and what was revealed when it split the entire west coast of America apart-has shaped our country, and indeed our world, more than any other single event.Ĭalifornia had long been a land of dreams. ![]()
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