During the peak years of the gold rush, the population of indigenous people in California dropped from some 150,000 to roughly 31,000, according to the International Indian Treaty Council.

During the peak years of the gold rush, the population of indigenous people in California dropped from some 150,000 to roughly 31,000, according to the International Indian Treaty Council.

Gold mining in California is often romanticized as a brief and technologically simple story. But it left a devastating environmental legacy that the state is still trying to clean up. On Jan. 24 ...