David E. Hayes-Bautista is a Distinguished Professor of Medicine and the director of the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. He is also the author of El Cinco de Mayo: An American Tradition. Cynthia L. Chamberlin is the historian, editor, and translator at the Center for the Study of Latino Health and Culture at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. She is also the coauthor of a number of CESLAC's publications on the history of Latinos in California.Paul Bryan Gray is a California lawyer and historian and the author of A Clamor for Equality: Emergence and Exile of Californio Activist Francisco P. Ramírez.

"David E. Hayes-Bautista and Cynthia L. Chamberlin convincingly contest the fable of a California emptied of Latinos in the wake of the 1849 Gold Rush. The book's recovery of Mexican prospector Justo Veytia's diary gives voice to a population of historical actors rarely acknowledged in previous studies of the US West." - Anna M. Nogar, coeditor of El feliz ingenio neomexicano: Felipe M. Chacón and Poesía y prosa"This gem of a book offers a poignant glimpse into the life and times of Justo Veytia, a twenty-eight-year-old Guadalajara native whose quest for California gold took him on a two-year odyssey that left him penniless, yet undaunted. Veytia's journal, translated and richly annotated, chronicles the "Latino Big Bang" - that formative moment when Latino migration and labor changed the course of California history." - John M. Nieto-Phillips, author of The Language of Blood: The Making of Spanish-American Identity in New Mexico, 1880s-1930s

• PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroduction. The Latino Big Bang in California and Justo Veytia, a Mexican ’49erDavid E. Hayes-BautistaSpanish Text of Justo Veytia’s DiaryEnglish Translation of Justo Veytia’s DiaryEpilogue. After Justo Veytia Returned to Mexico, 1850–2022Luis Jaime Veytia OrozcoAppendix 1. Relative Population Composition Factors for San Francisco, Los Angeles, San Luis Obispo, and Tuolumne Counties and Combined Counties for 1850, 1860, and 1870 CensusesAppendix 2. Data to Estimate Latinos as Percent of California Population, 1860 and 1870NotesIndex