Gold! Gold from the American River by Don Brown

This is an outline map of California. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Voyage of Vasco Núñez de Balboa in 1513. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

What's sad is a lot of people left the wives to go get gold in California, the American River.   What's weird is the ships went the long way around instead of walking across the land at the Isthmus of Panama.  Some of the people when they were headed off to get the gold, they stopped in a city and they liked that city so much they just stayed.  One of those people is my great, great, great grandpa, William Morley Black.    A lot of people died on the way there.  They really littered.  They panned for gold.

Why America is special to me.

We can do all kinds of things in America. We don't have a bad king like in other countries. We can grow stuff here. And that we can choose what job we want to do. America