When on May 12, 1848, Sam Brannan walked down San Francisco's Market Street, holding high a bottle of gold dust and shouting, "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" he initiated the great California Gold Rush. As prospectors flooded into California, they also caused a surge in crime. In Crimewave author Matt Bernstein presents twenty-four of the most audacious and chaotic incidents in the Far West, bringing to light stories from frontier California that have too long remained hidden.

Benjamin Franklin Washington, great-grandnephew of George Washington himself, fought in the Sacramento Riot of 1850 and participated in a duel against a rival newspaper editor in San Francisco. Lucius Fairchild, who would become a Civil War hero, witnessed the rise of a vigilance committee in San Andreas and its deadly aftermath. Charles Cora, a New Orleans gambler, helped spark the largest vigilance committee in American history when he gunned down a US marshal on a crowded San Francisco street. The gold in the streams and mountains attracted prospectors, but criminals found other ways to enrich themselves. Through crooked games of chance, highway robbery, outright assassination, and schemes so devious they almost defy the imagination, the men and women that rushed to California brought the best and worst elements to a land already inhabited by wolves, mountain lions, and grizzly bears.

The result was a cultural phenomenon, the Wild West in California, a story rich with bloodshed, betrayal, and naked ambition. As the Gold Rush gave way to the Civil War, the silver seventies, and the close of the frontier, the violence only increased. Every day proved a gamble. But that didn't stop men from taking outrageous chances, for the promise of riches often outweighed the risk, so long as one was quick on the draw.