"The Luck of Roaring Camp" is a short story by American author Bret Harte. It was first published in the August 1868 issue of the Overland Monthly and helped push Harte to international prominence.[1]
The story is about the birth of a baby boy in a 19th-century gold prospecting camp. The boy's mother, Cherokee Sal, dies in childbirth, so the men of Roaring Camp must raise the boy themselves. Believing the child to be a good luck charm, the miners christen him Thomas Luck. Afterward, they decide to refine their behavior and refrain from gambling and fighting.
Roaring Camp was a real place. It was a gold mining settlement on the Mokelumne River in Amador County, California. It was home to forty-niners seeking gold in and around the river; it is now a privately owned tourist attraction.[2] The story's flood theme may have been inspired by California's Great Flood of 1862, which Harte witnessed.
