“The Six Hoaxes of Edgar Allan Poe”. The final “Gold Rush” one was perhaps the most interesting, and then only for the motive…

My sincere opinion is that nine persons out of ten (even among the best informed) will believe the [hoax newspaper interview, a new way to cheaply ‘make’ gold] thus, acting as a sudden, although of course a very temporary, check to the gold fever, it will create a stir to some purpose.

So he may actually have changed history there, very subtly. By ensuring that slightly less young men carrying ‘the gullibility gene’ were headed west from Boston, during those vital few weeks of spring 1849. The paper, The Flag of Our Union, was a popular cheap Saturday ‘family miscellany’ newspaper, then two years’ strong.