The Vault is Slate’s history blog. Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter @slatevault, and find us on Tumblr. Find out more about what this space is all about here. This 1849 map, printed by ...

SULTAN, Snohomish County — With gold at sky-high prices — an ounce goes for about $1,800 — plenty of people are taking up that old venture of gold panning. The U.S. Bureau of Land Management office in ...

Minneapolis — In the classic 1948 Humphrey Bogart movie, “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” an old gold prospector opines that the precious metal is valuable because an ounce represents the sweat and ...