By Simone Gallorini

"A hidden world still unknown”. It is the reality found in the American West by Alessandro Trojani, professor from the school of Political and Formation Science of the University of Florence and the creator of the project “Italians in the Gold Rush and Beyond”, financed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, California State University at Long Beach and San Bernardino, in collaboration with Nevada State University at Reno and the University of California at Los Angeles.


But how was the idea born for this research?

“Incidentally, the idea emerged in 1999 from an exchange of e-mails regarding the events during the 150 years of the Gold Rush in the U.S.A. It hit me that during these manisfestations of the past one speaks of all the ethnic groups except the Italians.

Were there any of them?

I verified this through some contacts at American universities and then I departed”, explains Trojani. The result of the research was almost surprising. “I found a hidden world from which emerged like the tops of an iceberg: ranches, managed directly by Italians, but above all many services like stores and hotels. The Italians in the Far West were not only the Giovanni Martinis (who carried orders during the legendary battle of Little Big Horne where Custer died), and searchers of gold. The Italians occupied themselves with the matters of an active society, that of the boom and ghost town, the ghost towns which were born and died suddenly”. Many people chose “California because it was conceived at that time to be the Tuscany of the U.S.A. From the climatic point of view, it is a very Mediterranean state with the difference of free land. Many of them arrived by ship, a small part by land with carovans before the railway was completed.
Besides this, there was gold discovered the 24th of January, 1848, it was an event that upset the history of the Western world almost as much as the French Revolution”.

The newness of the project allowed for the adoption of modern technology for on-site research: from the photo-camera to the computer, from the digital videocamera to the Internet, from the GIS to the satellite navigator GPS, “fundamental to move in the U.S.A”. Motivated from a true “personal mission” that brought him to invest a lot of private capital, Trojani toured the American West, visiting the Italian communities and universities, discovering a forgotten Italian reality.

“Not one Italian wrote something about this, there are no diaries, they were more interested to do than to remember—explains Trojani. A paper memory doesn’t exist; therefore, the oral tradition becomes fundamental. But there is a documentation that one can reconstruct through familiar letters, official documents of local institutions, cemetary visits, and ghost towns”.


By then arrived at phase three, the project saw the realization of a system capable of managing information of various types, above all multimedia from which the portal IGRB.NET represents the collection point of the first reference. For 2005, the objectives are to continue the research with two different missions in the U.S.A. The first is in June, when Professor Trojani will travel across New Mexico, Arizona, and Utah to research Italian roots. The second mission will take place in August and September, when Trojani will lead a scientific team (constituted of graduates and students) to the ghost towns and cemetaries located across Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Nevada, and California, retracing legendary routes like the Oregon Trail and the California Trail.

On a technological level, one must perfect the territorial system GIS that permits one to geographically position in the West all the collections of study during the years.

Web Sources:

Italians in the Gold Rush and Beyond - IGRB (Official Website)
University of Florence - (Official Website)
California State University - (Official Website)

For further info about this experience contact: Simone Gallorini

Special thanks to Professor Alessandro Trojani

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