Gold Gulch, located within the World's Fairgrounds in Balboa Park, was a 21-acre (8.5 ha) Old Westmining town and ghost town re-creation for fairgoers to experience the atmosphere of a mining boomtown.[2]Gold Gulch was described in the Exposition Guide Book as "a moviefied" version of riproaring '49 days.[3]
Gold Gulch occupied the canyon between the House of Charm and Pepper Grove, southeast of the Spreckels Organ Pavilion. It was composed of a dance hall and a music hall, rustic unpainted shacks, a brick bank with iron-barred windows, a "Chinese restaurant and laundry", and a hanging tree with a "dummy" hanging. Barkers lured visitors to a shooting gallery where a visiting "sharpshooter" hitting the bull's eye put all the lights out in the Gulch.[1] An "Indian Village" was nearby, with trading posts and events.
Gold Gulch charged no admission, but its shops and attractions did. "One could have coffee in a tin cup, beer 'by the scupper,' badges and rings made from horseshoe nails by the blacksmith, and have a photograph taken with fake beard, six shooter gun prop, a ten galloncowboy hat on a mine-pack burro."[3]
