Devil's Ford

Devil's Ford is a novella by the American writer Bret Harte (1836–1902), first published in book form in 1887 and often issued together with his A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready. It is one of the most representative novellas in Harte's "California gold rush" series. The story takes place in a fictional California mining town called Devil's Ford during the gold rush era. Overnight, news of gold in the vein makes the town suddenly rich, and the miners begin planning fountains, public buildings, and various comically ambitious town improvements. Philip Carr, a professionally trained engineer from the East, moves there with his two grown daughters, Christie and Jessie. He tries to pit advanced technology against the locals' experience-based mining methods, and the arrival of the two daughters causes no small stir among the rough miners; Harte's recurring character "Whiskey Dick" and others also appear. Meanwhile, Carr secretly squanders the family fortune through several rash mining investments, and two young co-owners of the shares go to great lengths to keep the girls from discovering their father's failure, nearly ruining themselves in the process. With Harte's characteristic gentle irony and local color, the novella depicts the illusions brought by sudden wealth, the mismatch between respectability and embarrassment, and the loyalty and calculation within a mining community. Compact in length and told in nine chapters, it is an accessible introduction to Harte's Western fiction.