They crossed the Pacific fleeing civil war and famine, chasing Gam Saan — "Gold Mountain." What they built is still under your feet: the railroad grade over the Sierra, the fisheries of Monterey Bay, the case law that protects every American born on this soil. What they received was a tax designed to bleed them, courts closed to their testimony, mobs, arson, roughly two hundred expulsions across the West, and the first federal law in American history to ban a people by name. Gold Mountain tells that story in twelve episodes — and follows it all the way to the Supreme Court's birthright-citizenship ruling of June 2026, which still stands on the shoulders of a San Francisco cook's son named Wong Kim Ark. The series: 1. Gold Mountain (Gam Saan) — why they left Guangdong, and how fast the 1850 welcome curdled 2. "Not a Chinaman's Chance" — the Foreign Miners' Tax and People v. Hall, a license for robbery and murder 3. The Baskets of Cape Horn — the railroad, the nitroglycerin, and the legend that filled an unrecorded history 4. The Snow Tunnels — the Donner Summit winter, the avalanches, and the death ledger no one kept 5. Sampans on the Bay — the families of Point Alones invent Monterey Bay commercial fishing 6. "The Chinese Must Go!" — the 1871 Los Angeles massacre and the politics of the scapegoat 7. The Exclusion Act — anatomy of the first race-based federal immigration ban 8. Driven Out — Rock Springs, Tacoma, Seattle, Hells Canyon: the purge of 1885–87 9. Born in San Francisco — Yick Wo, Wong Kim Ark, and the courtroom fight that never stopped 10. The Fire at Point Alones — May 16, 1906: a village burns while the town cheers 11. The Poems on the Wall — Angel Island, the interrogations, and the verses carved in wood 12. The Walk of Remembrance — erasure, rediscovery, apology, and why remembering matters now This is the story of essential labor and institutional hatred existing side by side for decades — and of a community that endured, fought back in court, and finally, a century late, began to be remembered. If we don't remember, we won't understand our reality today. 🎙 This series is AI-narrated (NotebookLM), produced from a fully sourced research dossier for each episode. ▶ Full series: youtube.com/playlist?list=PLL9wIg2_b_t4 🔔 Subscribe: youtube.com/@LetsRethinkHistory?sub_confirmation=1 👍 Like and Subscribe, it really helps the channel reach others. #History #GoldMountain #ReThinkHistory