After several months in mining country near Stockton, Kip left California predicting the collapse not only of gold fever but of any significant future the state due to “a climate presenting the most insufferable extremes of heat and cold,” worthless soil, scarcity of water, and the growing threat of cholera in what was already a “stronghold of dysentery”. He returned east, settled into legal work in Albany, and married, in 1852, Harriet L. Van Rensselaer, daughter of Gen. John Sanders Van Rensselaer and member of an even more prominent New York family than his own.
After several months in mining regions near Stockton, Kip left California anticipating the collapse not only of gold fever but of any substantial future for the state due to “a climate presenting the most unbearable extremes of heat and cold,” barren land, water scarcity, and the growing threat of cholera in what was already a “stronghold of dysentery”. He returned east, settled into legal work in Albany, and married, in 1852, Harriet L. Van Rensselaer, daughter of Gen. John Sanders Van Rensselaer and member of an even more prominent New York family than his own.