ImageMagick and RMagick

I've been pulling my hair for the last two days trying to figure this one out....

I've followed both the the tutorials for installing ImageMagick and RMagick on DreamHost.

After creating a local gem repo and installing ImageMagick I move onto to install the RMagick gem and I receive this error:

midas:~/src> gem install -l rmagick-1.15.12.gem -- --build-opts --prefix=$HOME/local
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: Error installing rmagick-1.15.12.gem:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.

/usr/bin/ruby1.8 gem_extconf.rb install -l rmagick-1.15.12.gem -- --build-opts --prefix=/home/gmelton/local

sh configure --prefix=/home/gmelton/local

Configuring RMagick 1.15.12
checking for gcc... gcc
checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out
checking whether the C compiler works... yes
checking whether we are cross compiling... no
checking for suffix of executables...
checking for suffix of object files... o
checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes
checking whether gcc accepts -g... yes
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C89... none needed
checking for gcc option to accept ISO C99... -std=gnu99
checking for gcc -std=gnu99 option to accept ISO Standard C... (cached) -std=gnu99
checking for ruby... /usr/bin/ruby
checking Ruby version... 1.8.5
checking for Magick-config... no
checking for GraphicsMagick-config... no
configure: error: Can't install RMagick. Can't find Magick-config or GraphicsMagick-config program.
RMagick configuration failed with status 1.


Gem files will remain installed in /home/gmelton/gems/gems/rmagick-1.15.12 for inspection.
Results logged to /home/.wimple/gmelton/gems/gems/rmagick-1.15.12/gem_make.out

Now, everything I've read mentions I need to install either imagemagick-dev and/or libmagick<version number>-dev since the missing files reside in either of these packages.

Has anyone else come across this problem? Both of the solutions below involve using the built-in package managers to install -- which require sudo access. I'm stuck!

Please help...

Greg

Possible solutions:
http://escapegoat.org/2007/10/5/installing-rmagick-with-ruby-on-debian/
http://209.85.173.104/search?q=cache:dcH34dr7SWsJ:www.linuxconsultingteam.com/+Can't+find+Magick-config+or+GraphicsMagick-config+program&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=18&gl=us&client=firefox-a