Daniel B. Woods

Born in 1809, Daniel B. Woods is generally identified in library and book records as Daniel Bates Woods. He is best known for Sixteen Months at the Gold Diggings, a memoir based on his own journey from Philadelphia to California during the Gold Rush, including his travel across Mexico and his time in the mining regions before returning home in late 1850.

What makes his writing stand out is its immediacy. Rather than offering a distant history, he wrote from experience, describing the long travel routes, rough camp life, and the mix of ambition and exhaustion that shaped the gold fields. That firsthand perspective has helped keep the book in circulation through libraries, archives, and reprints.

Available sources also identify him as a Baptist minister, and records commonly list his lifespan as 1809–1892. Beyond those broad details, reliable biographical information appears limited, so his reputation today rests mainly on the enduring value of his Gold Rush narrative.