http://www.historichwy49.com/hisphotos.html

With a brief glance at the homepage for this site, it would appear that the goal of the site is to display photographs of the Gold Rush in California. If one looks at the site further though, it is actually a travel site for the Highway 49 area. The site offers some photographs from the period but also states that “some photos and drawings are available framed or on t-shirts in our general store”. This plug to buy shirts from their store with the photograph or drawing on the shirt detracts from the point, in my mind, from the point of having an historical resource but on the type of site that this site is, an advertisement for shirts is commonplace. Right below the t-shirt advertisement is a rights statement for Fair Use of photographs which reads

“Research: photos may be downloaded at no charge for use in non profit, educational research projects for students and teachers. Please email us with your name, educational affiliation, project name and a list of photos used. Please give credit under each photo: ‘Photo Credit historichwy49.com'”

By including this, the site can brush off more than fair use as the problem of the user who uses the photos. Overall, this site is not a great resource for historical research but as others has noted about Wikipedia, it could be a good starting place for research about the gold rush.