What are some good non-fiction books or stories of people mining in the early American West? Accounts from California/Alaska Gold Rush, searching for oil or other precious metals in the early days.

by Scientific_85
retarredroof

You can find numerous first-hand accounts and histories of the California gold rush at the Library of Congress California Gold Rush collection.

Some of my favorites:

A Yankee trader in the gold rush; the letters of Franklin A. Buck

California and a trip across the plains, in the spring of 1850, being a daily record of incidents of the trip ...

The argonauts of 'forty-nine, some recollections of the plains and the diggings...

A trip to the gold mines