gold rush opinion essay

How gold rushes helped make the modern world

David Myers Research Fellow in History, La Trobe University

Associate Professor of Modern US History, University of Oxford

Disclosure statement

Benjamin Wilson Mountford’s gold rush research has been supported by an Allan Martin Award from the Australian Historical Association

Stephen Tuffnell's research has been funded by the British Academy.

La Trobe University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

University of Oxford provides funding as a member of The Conversation UK.

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This year is the 170th anniversary of one of the most significant events in world history: the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. On January 24, 1848, while inspecting a mill race for his employer John Sutter, James Marshall glimpsed something glimmering in the cold winter water. “Boys,” he announced, brandishing a nugget to his fellow workers, “I believe I have found a gold mine!”

Marshall had pulled the starting trigger on a global rush that set the world in motion. The impact was sudden – and dramatic. In 1848 California’s non-Indian population was around 14,000; it soared to almost 100,000 by the end of 1849, and to 300,000 by the end of 1853. Some of these people now stare back at us enigmatically through daguerreotypes and tintypes. From Mexico and the Hawaiian Islands; from South and Central America; from Australia and New Zealand; from Southeastern China; from Western and Eastern Europe, arrivals made their way to the golden state.

Looking back later, Mark Twain famously described those who rushed for gold as

a driving, vigorous restless population … an assemblage of two hundred thousand young men – not simpering, dainty, kid-gloved weaklings, but stalwart, muscular, dauntless young braves…

“The only population of the kind that the world has ever seen gathered together”, Twain reflected , it was “not likely that the world will ever see its like again”.

Arriving at Ballarat in 1895, Twain saw first-hand the incredible economic, political, and social legacies of the Australian gold rushes, which had begun in 1851 and triggered a second global scramble in pursuit of the precious yellow mineral.

Read more: Eureka! X-ray vision can find hidden gold

“The smaller discoveries made in the colony of New South Wales three months before,” he observed, “had already started emigrants towards Australia; they had been coming as a stream.” But with the discovery of Victoria’s fabulous gold reserves, which were literally Californian in scale, “they came as a flood”.

Between Sutter’s Mill in January 1848, and the Klondyke (in remote Northwestern Canada) in the late 1890s, the 19th century was regularly subject to such flooding. Across Australasia, Russia, North America, and Southern Africa, 19th century gold discoveries triggered great tidal waves of human, material, and financial movement. New goldfields were inundated by fresh arrivals from around the globe: miners and merchants, bankers and builders, engineers and entrepreneurs, farmers and fossickers, priests and prostitutes, saints and sinners.

As the force of the initial wave began to recede, many drifted back to more settled lives in the lands from which they hailed. Others found themselves marooned, and so put down roots in the golden states. Others still, having managed to ride the momentum of the gold wave further inland, toiled on new mineral fields, new farm and pastoral lands, and built settlements, towns and cities. Others again, little attracted to the idea of settling, caught the backwash out across the ocean – and simply kept rushing.

From 1851, for instance, as the golden tide swept towards NSW and Victoria, some 10,000 fortune seekers left North America and bobbed around in the wash to be deposited in Britain’s Antipodean colonies alongside fellow diggers from all over the world.

Gold and global history

The discovery of the precious metal at Sutter’s Mill in January 1848 was a turning point in global history. The rush for gold redirected the technologies of communication and transportation and accelerated and expanded the reach of the American and British Empires.

Telegraph wires, steamships, and railroads followed in their wake; minor ports became major international metropolises for goods and migrants (such as Melbourne and San Francisco) and interior towns and camps became instant cities (think Johannesburg, Denver and Boise). This development was accompanied by accelerated mobility – of goods, people, credit – and anxieties over the erosion of middle class mores around respectability and domesticity.

Read more: All that glitters: why our obsession with putting gold on food is nothing new

But gold’s new global connections also brought new forms of destruction and exclusion. The human, economic, and cultural waves that swept through the gold regions could be profoundly destructive to Indigenous and other settled communities, and to the natural environment upon which their material, cultural, and social lives depended. Many of the world’s environments are gold rush landscapes, violently transformed by excavation, piles of tailings, and the reconfiguration of rivers.

As early as 1849, Punch magazine depicted the spectacle of the earth being hollowed out by gold mining. In the “jaundice regions of California”, the great London journal satirised: “The crust of the earth is already nearly gone … those who wish to pick up the crumbs must proceed at once to California.” As a result, the world appeared to be tipping off its axis.

In the US and beyond, scholars, museum curators, and many family historians have shown us that despite the overwhelmingly male populations of the gold regions, we cannot understand their history as simply “pale and male”. Chinese miners alone constituted more than 25% of the world’s goldseekers, and they now jostle with white miners alongside women, Indigenous and other minority communities in our understanding of the rushes – just as they did on the diggings themselves.

Rushes in the present

The gold rushes are not mere historic footnotes – they continue to influence the world in which we live today. Short-term profits have yielded long-term loss. Gold rush pollution has been just as enduring as the gold rushes’ cultural legacy. Historic pollution has had long-range impacts that environmental agencies and businesses alike continue to grapple with.

Read more: The world protests as Amazon forests are opened to mining

At the abandoned Berkley pit mine in Butte, Montana, the water is so saturated with heavy metals that copper can be extracted directly from it. Illegal mining in the Amazon is adding to the pressures on delicate ecosystems and fragile communities struggling to adapt to climate change.

The phenomenon of rushing is hardly alien to the modern world either - shale gas fracking is an industry of rushes. In the US, the industry has transformed Williston, North Dakota, a city of high rents, ad hoc urban development, and an overwhelmingly young male population – quintessential features of the gold rush city.

Read more: Why increasing shale gas production won’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions

In September last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that a new gold rush was under way in Texas: for sand, the vital ingredient in the compound of chemicals and water that is blasted underground to open energy-bearing rock. A rush of community action against fracking’s contamination of groundwater has followed.

The world of the gold rushes, then, is not a distant era of interest only to historians. For better or worse, the rushes are a foundation of many of the patterns of economic, industrial, and environmental change central to our modern-day world of movement.

Benjamin Mountford and Stephen Tuffnell’s forthcoming edited collection A Global History of Gold Rushes will be published by University of California Press in October 2018. A sample of their work can also be found in the forthcoming volume Pay Dirt! New Discoveries on the Victorian Goldfields (Ballarat Heritage Services, 2018).

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The California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush was the mass migration of Americans and others to California in search of gold, which was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in 1848. It led to California's statehood and is one of the most important events tied to America’s Manifest Destiny and how it shaped the United States.

President James K. Polk announced the discovery of gold in California in December 1848. Image Source:  National Portrait Gallery .

What was the California Gold Rush? A Summary of the Event that Transformed the Nation

The California Gold Rush, a pivotal event in American history, started on January 24, 1848, when James W. Marshall stumbled upon gold nuggets while working at Sutter’s Mill in the Sacramento Valley.

At the time the Marshall found the gold, the population of California was about 1,000 people — not including the Native American Indians. By the end of 1849, California’s population skyrocketed to an estimated 100,000 people. By 1854, roughly 300,000 people had moved to California, helping fulfill Manifest Destiny through Westward Expansion .

The discovery came just 10 days after the United States officially acquired California in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , which formally ended the Mexican-American War .

News of the discovery spread quickly, triggering a massive influx of prospectors in the summer of 1848. The first gold-seekers came from various places, including Oregon, Hawaii, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and China. From there, the news spread eastward, across the Great Plains, the Midwest, the Southeast, and the East Coast.

In December 1848, President James K. Polk officially announced gold had been discovered in California — “The Golden State.”

Soon after, Americans living on the East Coast started moving West in search of their fortunes. They loaded their wagons and crossed the Oregon Trail , California Trail , and others as they made their way to California. These people became known as “The 49ers.”

Entrepreneur Sam Brannan further fueled excitement by parading through San Francisco with a vial of gold, sparking a rush of people seeking fortune. The 49ers borrowed money, mortgaged homes, and risked their savings for the chance at prosperity.

California’s population surge led to the establishment of numerous towns in the Sierra Nevada Region, with San Francisco evolving into a bustling frontier metropolis. However, the overcrowded and lawless mining camps led to a rise in crime, gambling, alcoholism, and violence.

Mining for gold was hard work, but the promise of wealth drove the 49ers. However, as the surface gold diminished, many people were forced to go to work for mining companies that were drilling to find deeper deposits of the precious metal.

The California Gold Rush affected both society and the environment, displacing Indian Tribes and causing flooding.

Although gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, the peak years were in the early 1850s, with millions of dollars worth of gold being extracted annually. The economic boom helped bring California into the Union as the 31st state, following the Compromise of 1850 .

The California Gold Rush changed nearly everything about the region, including the landscape, economy, and people. It transformed California’s landscape and gave rise to an agricultural economy populated by a diverse, multi-ethnic society.

Today, sites like Bodie State Historic Park and Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park remain as monuments to the California Gold Rush and the ‘49ers.

California Gold Rush Facts

1. The California Gold Rush started on January 24, 1848, when gold nuggets were discovered at Sutter’s Mill in the Sacramento Valley.

2. The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill unleashed the largest migration in United States history, drawing people from various countries to California to seek their fortunes.

3. The California Gold Rush led to a significant population boom in California, with the non-native population reaching nearly 100,000 by the end of 1849, compared to just 1,000 before the discovery.

4. News of the gold discovery spread worldwide, attracting people from places accessible by boat, such as Oregon, Hawaii, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and China, even before the news reached the East Coast of the United States.

5. The prospect of wealth forever altered the life expectations of those who rushed to California, with many individuals borrowing money, mortgaging their homes, or spending their life savings to join the gold rush.

6. San Francisco experienced rapid growth during the Gold Rush and became an important port city.

7. Gold mining was time-consuming and dangerous work, and as the surface gold diminished, miners joined larger mining companies that utilized advanced techniques, such as hydraulic mining, to extract deeper gold deposits.

8. The California Gold Rush had significant social and environmental impacts, leading to the displacement and devastation of Indian Tribes and causing extensive environmental damage due to large-scale mining operations.

9. California’s admission to the Union as the 31st state was expedited by the Gold Rush, following the Compromise of 1850, which allowed California to enter as a free state.

10. The people who moved to California in 1849 are known as “49ers.” By the end of 1849, there were roughly 50,000 49ers in California.

11. The name “Death Valley” was given to the barren region southeast of San Francisco by a group of 49ers who were lost in the valley when they tried to take a shortcut through the mountains in 1849.

California Gold Rush — History, Impact, and Legacy

John sutter, his mill, and the epicenter of the gold rush.

John Sutter, a Swiss immigrant, moved to California in 1839. A the time, it was known as “Alta California” and was a province of Mexico. Sutter was given permission by Mexican authorities to establish a colony in the Sacramento Valley, along with nearly 50,000 acres of land. Soon after, Sutter started building Fort Sutter at “New Helvetia.”

In the latter part of 1844, California revolted against Mexico and Sutter helped raise men to defend the Mexican government. Around the time the Mexican-American War started , hostilities in California led to the Bear Flag Revolt. Americans took control of portions of Alta California, which was followed by a takeover by the U.S. Army, led by John C. Fremont , and the U.S. Navy, led by Commodore Robert F. Stockton. On July 11, 1846, the American Flag was raised over Sutter’s Fort.

By 1847, Sutter was expecting an influx of settlers in the region and decided to build a mill and go into the lumber business. He intended to sell timber to settlers and businessmen for homes and buildings. In order to start his lumber business, he brought in James W. Mashall as a partner in the venture.

James Marshall Discovers Gold at Sutter’s Mill

Marshall had been part of Stephen Watts Kearny’s Mormon Battalion and hired a group of Mormons to help him build the mill. Originally from New Jersey, Marshall was a carpenter by trade. 

Sutter’s Mill was built during the winter of 1847–1848 at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near present-day Coloma, California.

The initial discovery of gold that sparked the California Gold Rush took place on January 24, 1848, when Marshall saw flakes of gold in a pool of water and then found small gold nuggets. It set off a series of events leading to the massive migration of prospectors to California in search of riches.

Recalling his discovery, Marshall said, “It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold.”

Sam Brannan Fuels the California Gold Rush

News of the gold discovery spread rapidly through California and beyond. Initially met with disbelief in San Francisco, the discovery was confirmed when entrepreneur Sam Brannan paraded through town displaying a vial of gold obtained from Sutter’s Creek. 

This caused a frenzy, and by mid-June, most of the male population of San Francisco had left for the gold mines. The news also reached places accessible by ship, leading to thousands of immigrants from countries like the Sandwich Islands, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and China flocking to California during the summer and fall of 1848.

The California Gold Rush and Manifest Destiny

The California Gold Rush was one of the most significant events associated with Manifest Destiny — the westward expansion of the United States. 

President James K. Polk, who firmly believed it was the nation’s right to spread from sea to sea, publicly announced on December 5, 1948, that gold had been found in California. Polk waited to make his announcement until the discovery was verified by Colonel Richard Mason, the Military Governor of California. Polk delivered the announcement as part of his State of the Union Address.

It triggered the largest migration in U.S. history, with hundreds of thousands of people traveling to California seeking wealth and opportunity. Tens of thousands of people headed to California, traveling in Wagon Trains across the Overland Trails.

Economically, the California Gold Rush fueled the U.S. economy with millions of dollars worth of gold extracted from the region. It also spurred the idea of a cross-country railroad line, which would eventually link the East Coast and the West Coast.

Impact on Native American Indians

The large influx of prospectors and settlers during the California Gold Rush had a devastating impact on the Native American Tribes living in the region and across the Great Plains

The influx of prospectors and settlers disrupted their way of life and brought disease, which led leading to a dramatic decline in the population of tribes from the Great Plains to the West Coast.

In California, the effect was devastating. The Indian population had already been reduced by half since the arrival of the Spanish in 1769 and declined further because of disease, starvation, and violence. 

Some Indians were also forced to work for prospectors and mining companies, further distancing them from their way of life.

It is estimated the California Gold Rush led to the deaths of as many as 120,000 Indians.

Mining Towns Created by the Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush contributed to the rapid growth and development of San Francisco and other towns in California, often referred to as “Mining Towns.”

San Francisco experienced a population explosion. Although it is estimated that three-quarters of its male population left for the gold mines, thousands of immigrants arrived in the area seeking their fortune. This influx of people created a thriving economy in San Francisco and turned it into a bustling city on the frontier. 

Throughout California, gold mining towns sprouted up with shops, saloons, brothels, and other businesses seeking to cater to the needs of the gold seekers. Some of the towns were Bodie, Placerville, and Darwin.

California and the Compromise of 1850

The California Gold Rush influenced the political landscape of California and its admission as a state to the Union.

The massive population growth led to California applying for statehood in late 1849. However, the issue of slavery caused a crisis in Congress, with debates between proponents of slavery and anti-slavery politicians. 

California’s application for statehood was part of the larger Compromise of 1850 , which was proposed by Henry Clay, the illustrious politician from Kentucky. Clay was a veteran of crafting compromises that supported the growth and development of the nation, including the Missouri Compromise of 1820 and the Compromise Tariff of 1833 .

The Compromise of 1850 allowed California to enter the Union as a Free State. However, other territories were allowed to follow the concept of “Popular Sovereignty” and decide the legal status of slavery for themselves.

Mining Techniques and Advancements

The California Gold Rush led to significant changes in mining techniques over time.

In the early days of the Gold Rush, “placer mining” was the primary technique used by prospectors. They panned for gold using simple tools like a pick, shovel, pan, and water to separate the alluvial deposits from the gold. 

As surface gold became scarce, miners turned to more advanced methods like sluice boxes, which used water to wash away lighter material, leaving the heavier gold particles behind. 

By 1853, hydraulic mining became the main method of mining, involving the use of high-pressure water streams to wash away hillsides and access deeper gold deposits. Hydraulic mining caused severe environmental damage, leading to soil erosion and flooding.

Environmental Impact

The California Gold Rush has significant environmental consequences, particularly with regard to hydraulic mining and its impact on the landscape.

Hydraulic mining required the use of high-pressure water streams to wash away hillsides and access gold deposits, leading to severe soil erosion and flooding. 

The landscape was devastated, and rivers were choked with sediment that affected farmland and natural habitats. 

In response to these environmental impacts, hydraulic mining was outlawed by court order in 1884, and agriculture became the dominant industry in California.

California Gold Rush Significance

The California Gold Rush is important to United States history because of the role it played in the westward expansion of the nation, growth of the economy, and establishment of California as a state. However, it also had long-lasting effects on the environment and devastating effects on the Native American Indian Tribes in the Trans-Mississippi Region and the West.

Common Questions About the California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush, in simple terms, was a significant event that occurred in the mid-19th century when large amounts of gold were discovered in California, leading to a massive influx of people seeking to find gold and wealth. The discovery at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 triggered a rush of prospectors from various countries, creating a diverse society in the goldfields and shaping California’s history and economy.

The California Gold Rush started when James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill on January 24, 1848. While working on a water-powered sawmill for John Sutter, Marshall found gold nuggets in a pool of water, leading to the news of the gold discovery spreading rapidly. This event unleashed the largest migration in U.S. history, with people from various countries seeking wealth in California.

The California Gold Rush did not have a specific end date. It started in 1848 with the discovery of gold and peaked in 1852. However, gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, and by 1857, the annual gold take leveled off to around $45 million. While surface gold had largely disappeared, industrialized mining techniques persisted until 1884, when hydraulic mining was outlawed due to its environmental impact.

The California Gold Rush had a wide-ranging impact on various aspects. It led to the largest migration in U.S. history, dramatically increasing California’s population. The influx of prospectors disrupted the lives of Native American Tribes, leading to a significant decline in their population. Economically, the Gold Rush fueled the U.S. economy with billions of dollars worth of gold extracted. It also influenced California’s development, shaping towns and cities like San Francisco.

The California Gold Rush is connected to the Civil War through the Compromise of 1850. It was a series of legislative measures that aimed to address the balance between Slave States and Free States following the Mexican-American War . As a part of this compromise, California was admitted as a Free State, while the status of slavery in other territories was decided through Popular Sovereignty.

California Gold Rush APUSH Notes and Study Guide

Use the following links and videos to study Manifest Destiny, the Overland Trails, and the Mexican-American War for the AP US History Exam. Also, be sure to look at our Guide to the AP US History Exam .

California Gold Rush Definition APUSH

The California Gold Rush was a period of rapid economic growth and expansion in California that started in 1848 with the discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The gold rush, which attracted thousands of people from around the world, had a significant impact on the state’s economy and led to the rapid growth of California’s population. The people involved in the gold rush are known as the ‘49ers. The California Gold Rush is an important moment in the history of the United States and is remembered as a symbol of Manifest Destiny.

California Gold Rush Video for APUSH Notes

This video from Heimler’s History discusses Manifest Destiny, including the California Gold Rush.

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Historical Impact of the California Gold Rush

Historical Context of the Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush of 1849-1855 radically transformed California, the United States and the world. It prompted one of the largest migrations in U.S. history, with hundreds of thousands of migrants across the United States and the globe coming to California to find gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. This led to the establishment of boomtowns, rapid economic growth and prosperity, as well as the building of railroads, churches and banks to accommodate the newcomers. The significant increase in population and infrastructure allowed California to qualify for statehood in 1850, only a few years after it was ceded by Mexico, and facilitated U.S. expansion to the American West.

The California Gold Rush took place against the backdrop of the Industrial Revolution and served as an accelerant for U.S. economic development in the 19th Century. The influx of gold resulted in the expansion of manufacturing and the service industries, as many entrepreneurial newcomers took advantage of the demand for mining materials, lumber, clothing and transportation. Agriculture and retail also experienced exponential growth during the Gold Rush and led to California becoming an economic powerhouse by the end of the century. Some of today’s most recognizable brands, businesses, and icons got their start during the Gold Rush. Henry Wells and William Fargo saw an opportunity to provide financial services to gold seekers and started a bank, Wells Fargo & Co.; Levi Strauss, a German immigrant, identified miners’ need for sturdy clothing and created canvas pants that would withstand the punishing hours involved in gold mining; and American humorist, Mark Twain, got his start in San Francisco, where he initially joined his brother is prospecting for gold but ended up finding greater success as a reporter for The San Francisco Call. For historians and students alike, learning more about the California Gold Rush can help explain the development of the American West and how California came to be.

In February 1848, Mexico ceded California to the United States through the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which effectively ended the Mexican-American War. The treaty granted over one million square miles of land to the United States, which included present-day Nevada, Wyoming, and New Mexico. At the time, the United States was influenced by significant expansionist sentiment, with President James Polk having won the presidency in 1845 running on a strong expansionist platform. Many Americans believed in what was called “Manifest Destiny,” or, the idea that the United States’ Westward expansion and acquisition of lands on the North American continent were both inevitable and justifiable.

California’s Gold Rush and the fledgling territory’s rapid increase in wealth and population necessitated a civilian government to maintain the public order and prompted its speedy entry into the United States in 1850. By contrast, territories such as New Mexico and Arizona didn’t become states until 1912. California also boasted a community armed with a strong sense of ambition and civic duty; within a year, California sent representatives to Washington with a draft constitution to request statehood.

Brief History of the Gold Rush

For all its significance, the onset of the Gold Rush originated from a seemingly innocuous event. In January 1848, James Marshall, a carpenter, was building a sawmill for Swiss immigrant and pioneer John Sutter at Sutter’s Fort, a trade and agricultural colony, when he spotted something shiny in the American River. Not sure of what he had found, he collected the apparent gold flecks and ran some rudimentary tests on them—including biting them and hitting them with a hammer. When their appearance did not change, Marshall confirmed they were genuine gold and quickly notified John Sutter. Sensing that the discovery would negatively impact the building of his sawmill and bring a large number of squatters to his land, Sutter swore all his employees to secrecy. However, news of the discovery quickly got out and spread across the region, including nearby San Francisco (known as Yerba Buena at the time). Soon, gold seekers from across the region swarmed Sutter’s Fort, and just as Sutter had feared, his employees all left to look for gold. By many accounts, once news of the discovery reached San Francisco, the city quickly emptied, with workers deserting their workplaces, stores and ships to look for gold.

Within a few months, news of the gold discovery expanded beyond the region, with the Baltimore Sun becoming the first American newspaper to report on it in late summer. In the fall, the New York Herald ran a subsequent story on the gold discovery and by December, President Polk announced to Congress that significant amounts of gold were being discovered in California. The year 1849 prompted a massive migration to California from many parts of the country as well as places as far as China, Chile and France. The migrants, dubbed the “forty-niners” for the year of their trip, flocked to cities such as San Francisco and present-day Sacramento, which were experiencing unprecedented development. The population of San Francisco, for example, exploded from 500 in 1847 to more than 150,000 in 1852.

Effects of the Gold Rush

With the massive influx of migrants, California underwent a radical transformation in a very short amount of time. It changed from a sparsely populated region to a territory with enough people to constitute a state. At the time, the population of California was still predominantly Mexican; however, the arrival of many U.S. migrants quickly reshaped the local demographics. The newcomers often wanted to keep in touch with family around the United States and pushed for the development of new communication and transportation tools that would help them bridge the distance.

The famed Pony Express was created to send mail and parcels from California to the Midwest within a two-week period using ponies. Businessman and founder of the California Star newspaper, Samuel Brannan, created a delivery mail service called the California Star Express that connected California and Missouri. While the Gold Rush allowed some of the earlier prospectors to become rich, it was the ensuing economic development that sprang up around the industry that would prove most profitable; new businesses designed to satisfy the needs of gold prospectors and the mining industry would ultimately result in prosperity for merchants. The increased investment in the emerging California economy would have a lasting impact on both California and the United States.

Effects on Manufacturing and Industry

The Gold Rush led to an explosion in manufacturing for mining machinery and equipment for hydraulic operations, which were often used in the mining process and had previously been supplied by the East before the Gold Rush prompted newer, more immediate demand. The Gold Rush also led to increased production of lumber and the creation of new flour mills. The need for clothing increased dramatically, and the leather industry experienced significant growth. Wholesale and retail developed at this time and were instrumental in helping meet the growing demands of consumers.

Effects on the Development of Agriculture

The rapid development of agriculture—thanks to heightened demand and the availability of more sophisticated tools—was another major outcome of the Gold Rush. In fact, many who did not succeed in mining turned to California’s “green gold”— taking full advantage of the state’s favorable climate to produce massive amounts of fruits, vegetables and grains in order to feed denizens of the mining communities. Enterprising newcomers from Europe also saw an opportunity to satisfy demands for wine. They planted the first orchards and vineyards, and soon they were not only supplying locally but also exporting to other countries; California varietals remain some of the most sought-after and highly regarded wines to this day.

International Effects of the Gold Rush

California-based businesses weren’t the only ones benefiting from the Gold Rush, as foreign producers and manufacturers found new markets for their products in the United States. Agricultural producers in Chile suddenly had new consumers for their fruit; China started exporting significant amounts of sugar, and Norway eyed California for opportunities to expand its naval shipping industry. All this economic expansion necessitated new financial services, and several banks would also grow out of the Gold Rush and its aftermath.

Effects on Transportation

The fervor surrounding the Gold Rush led to a revolution in transportation. New roads, bridges, ferries, wagons and steamships were created to help prospectors reach California, which was fairly isolated at the time. The accelerated development of transportation culminated in the building of the isthmus across the Panama Canal, which significantly hastened travel time to California. San Francisco—which experienced the largest economic boom at the time—saw its rapid modernization and economic development rewarded, as it was chosen as the site for the western terminus for the first transatlantic railroad, which linked the East Coast with California through Omaha and revolutionized transport and commerce.

Suddenly, California became the hub of a new Pacific market, and as Friedrich Engels wrote to his collaborator, Karl Marx, the new economy and markets arising from the Gold Rush seemed to “come out of nothing.”

Negative Outcomes of the Gold Rush

The Gold Rush was not beneficial to all, however. It led to increased violence against Native Americans, tens of thousands of whom are estimated to have lost their lives in clashes with settlers. Later in the Gold Rush, immigrants from China often experienced intense discrimination. During the 19th century, China struggled economically, and thousands of young Chinese men immigrated to California in the hopes of earning enough money to support their families back home. Some Americans—unfairly convinced that these Chinese immigrants were taking revenue and employment opportunities away from other Americans—pushed to place restrictions on Chinese immigration and to create a tax on all foreign miners working in California.

The Gold Rush also had a severe environmental impact. Rivers became clogged with sediment; forests were ravaged to produce timber; biodiversity was compromised and soil was polluted with chemicals from the mining process. Additionally, the Gold Rush created a severe lack of labor in the non-gold mining industries of not just California, but areas such as Great Britain, China and Hawaii—all of which experienced mass emigration in the wake of Gold Fever. Finally, while the Gold Rush helped boost the international economy as businesses in other countries sought to meet the demands of gold prospectors, the increasing amount of gold in circulation resulted in higher prices for commodities as well as inflationary shock, as the monetary standard of the time was backed by precious metals.

The Gold Rush significantly influenced the history of California and the United States. It created a lasting impact by propelling significant industrial and agricultural development and helped shape the course of California’s development by spurring its economic growth and facilitating its transition to statehood. The Gold Rush also led foreign businesses to flourish as they expanded the export of their goods and services to the booming new consumer markets in California. Today, the effects of the Gold Rush can still be observed in California. The state’s slogan, “Eureka!” (“I found it!”) is a nod to Gold Rush prospectors. The Gold Rush also attracted dreamers, adventurers and vagabonds from all over the world and epitomized much of what came to be known as the American Dream. Many scholars and theorists have drawn parallels between the spirit of the Gold Rush and the ongoing technological and entrepreneurial boom experienced in Silicon Valley. It is therefore vital for students of history to form an understanding of the geopolitical, economic and social effects of such movements in the United States.

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The American West: A New Interpretive History , Google Books

Gold Nugget , The National Museum of American History

California Gold: An Authentic History of the First Find With the Names of Those Interested in the Discovery , The Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco

California Admission Day September 9, 1850 , California Department of Parks and Recreation

The Golden Skein: California's Gold-Rush Transportation Network , JSTOR

Samuel Brannan , PBS

The California Gold Rush, National Park Service

After the Gold Rush: Migration of gold-seekers helped shape California's future , National Geographic California Gold Rush , Encyclopedia Britannica

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The Gold Rush Era, 1848-1865

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Collection California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849 to 1900

From gold rush to golden state.

The first federal census conducted in California in 1860 counted 308,000 residents--population had almost tripled since 1847. While gold mining was still an important factor in the state economy, Californians were finding other ways to earn a living. By the mid 1850s, the state's farms had made California self-sufficient in raising wheat. Cattle ranching flourished, and by 1860, local ranches produced four times as many cows as they had in 1848. Still, everyone in the booming state was painfully aware of the difficulties of bringing goods in and sending them out: there was still no rail link to the eastern United States.

There were other, more ominous signs of the transition from the Gold Rush boom to the problems of a permanent society. Even in the 1850s, as the limits of the gold bonanza for single, independent miners became apparent, white "American" miners were resentful of the other national groups represented in the camps. While they usually accepted non-English-speaking Europeans, they had less tolerance for Latin American miners and none at all for Chinese. In 1850, the new California legislature adopted a Foreign Miners License Law, charging all non-U.S. citizens $20 per month. This fee proved unreasonably high, and the law was repealed the next year. Before the law was repealed, however, many Chinese left the mining camps, moving to San Francisco, where they soon established themselves in the city's business community and created America's first "Chinatown." But many more came to the "Mountain of Gold." The height of Gold Rush immigration came in 1852: of the 67,000 people who came to California that year, 20,000 were from China. Chinese miners who continued their search for gold found increasingly harsh treatment at the hands of their fellow miners. The legislature adopted a new foreign miners' tax of $4 per month, and anti-Chinese feeling surfaced in many mining camps.

At last the railroads came, and the end of California's physical isolation from the rest of the United States not only changed the economy but altered anti-Chinese attitudes. Debate on the route of a transcontinental railroad was unable to overcome disagreement over whether the railway should follow a northern or a southern path, until the coming of the Civil War in 1861. With the slave states part of the Confederacy, this sectional stumbling block vanished. Indeed, the construction of the railroad may have been the most important immediate effect of that war on California. Although a California battalion served in Virginia and other California troops were sent to New Mexico, most volunteers who enlisted never left the state and spent their military service guarding federal installations. California wheat and wool from California sheep did their part for the Union effort as well.

In January 1863 work began on the Central Pacific line that was to run east from Sacramento and link California with the East. On May 10, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, it joined its sister road extending from the East, the Union Pacific. But completion of the Central Pacific rested on the use of Chinese laborers. At one time, more than 10,000 Chinese worked on the line. White workers proved unreliable, unwilling to face the dangers and grueling work when rumors of new gold and silver strikes promised easier alternatives. The Chinese, on the other hand, demonstrated physical courage and intellectual resourcefulness in meeting the challenges of laying track and handling the high explosives needed to blast routes through the Sierras. Many also helped build the Northwest Pacific and Southern Pacific lines. In 1870, there were 63,000 Chinese in the United States, almost all in California.

The railroads the Chinese built, however, contributed to a situation in which racial bias became still more ugly. As railroads spread throughout the state, California's economy and population patterns quickly changed. Easy access to rail lines made citrus growing and other large scale agricultural pursuits an important element in the state economy.

Farming in California never resembled the model seen in the Midwest or the Plains, where homesteaders could acquire cheap government land for family farms. Once it became clear that the United States would control California in 1846, the Mexican governor Pío Pico hurriedly signed 800 land grants, giving them fraudulent dates so that they would appear to precede the American takeover. Even earlier land grants tended to be vague and contradictory in wording, no matter what other claims they had to validity, and this meant that much of the best land for farming and ranching lay with old grants that were to be challenged in the courts over decades. Only the well-to-do could afford to spend this much time and money, and would-be small farmers usually had to content themselves with being squatters or giving up their dreams. This pattern was strengthened with the coming of the major rail lines: much of the remaining public land went to the railroads as subsidies for constructing their lines.

Farming in California was therefore always commercial farming, the patterns of land ownership reinforced by the need to invest substantial money in irrigation and reclamation. Irrigation, in turn, did not become feasible during the boom of canals and stream diversion in mining. Thus it was not until the 1860s that large scale, irrigated farming became common. When major rail construction ended in the early 1870s, Chinese laborers moved easily into agriculture, proving themselves skilled farm workers and enterprising operators of small garden farms of their own. The expansion of irrigation canals in Southern California also drew the Chinese to these farms, making this group of immigrants a statewide phenomenon.

Accordingly, hostility to the Chinese spread from the northern mining camps to farming regions and factory sites throughout the state. Anti-Chinese sentiment was exacerbated by the fact that the transcontinental railroad had ended California's comparative insulation from economic cycles in the rest of the United States. A national depression in the mid 1870s struck California, where labor leaders like Denis Kearney fired anti-Chinese feeling. In 1882, Congress passed the first Chinese Exclusion Act, which barred further Chinese immigration for ten years.

The California Gold Rush’ History Essay

The gold rush changed the history of California. The primary purpose of the paper is to discuss the peculiarities of the gold rush and the impact it had on people’s life.

On January 24, 1848, James Marshall, built a sawmill for John Sutter on the American River in California (Friedman 34). He found the gold nugget. He told about his discovery Sutter, who tested samples and confirmed that it is almost pure gold.

John Sutter wanted to keep everything in secret; he realized that the discovery of gold would cause a stir and prevent him on his way towards developing of the agricultural settlement New Helvetia. He allowed his employees to take gold, but he asked not to inform the world regarding the discovery of precious metal. Very soon the news spread, due to a businessman and journalist Samuel Brennan.

On August 19, 1848, the newspaper The New York Herald published the first report on the discovered gold in California and the gold rush transformed to the global stage (Friedman 61). Thousands of immigrants from around the world traveled to California in search of gold. The period from 1848 till 1855 is considered to be the most famous gold rush (Maxwell-Long 81).

The majority of the residents of San Francisco gave up their jobs and moved to the American River. Thousands of people aimed to get to California; however, it was not so easy those times. There were two ways to get to California, namely by sea or be land. Those treasure seekers, who decided to come to California by sea, were called the Argonauts. They had to either go around South America (journey lasted from five to eight months) or get to the Isthmus of Panama, cross it and wait for the ship to go to the North. By land people travelled through the California trail, from Oregon or Mexico, however, it is worth noting that these roads were difficult and dangerous.

Among those who arrived in California at the end of 1848 or at the beginning of 1849, there were a couple of thousand of Americans, who came from the Northwest of the United States, many Latin Americans (including people from Mexico, Peru, and Chile), residents of Hawaii and China (Maxwell-Long 73). People from all over the world traveled to California. It is believed that by the end of 1849 in California came about ninety thousand of people, and by 1855 more than three hundred thousand.

Not so many people became rich due to the gold rush. Simple and relatively easy production of gold was possible only in the beginning of the gold rush when the precious metal could be collected with ease. Because of this fact, the revenues dropped significantly despite the discovery of additional gold fields.

Gradually, technologies of production became more sophisticated; the expensive equipment was an essential factor. By about mid-fifties of the XIX century, the prospectors who used primitive equipment realized that it is impossible to obtain the goal using old techniques. It stimulated the development of technologies that improved and advanced the production of gold. Later such technologies were used in gold rushes in Colorado, Montana, and Alaska (Maxwell-Long 101).

It is believed that many more people in California made impressive amounts of money during the gold rush, engaged in trade rather than just gold mining. Clothes, equipment, and houses were very expensive. Merchants who sold clothes were popular.

It is commonly believed that the gold rush stimulated the invention of jeans. Jeans are the part of clothes that is the most popular nowadays. It is difficult to imagine life without jeans now, and not so many people know that jeans were invented due to the gold rush. In March 1853, Levi Strauss came to California (Lusted 82). He successfully sold clothes in New York, however, was sure that California would offer new opportunities for his business.

In 1848, son of John Sutter founded Sacramento on the territory where the first Californian gold was found. Within a few years the new city became one of the economic and transportation centers in California, and in 1854, the city became the capital of the state.

Free from immigrants who aimed to become rich and were obsessed with the gold rush, the city developed rapidly. New roads, houses, churches, hotels, and shops were built with impressive speed. In the rapidly growing California legislature was convened and adopted a constitution, and on September 9, 1850, California became the thirty-first state of the USA (Lusted 25). There are still people in California who aim to find gold. However, nowadays it is related to the entertainment and hobbies.

During the period of the gold rush, more than one hundred and twenty-five million ounces of gold (nearly four thousand tons) valued at more than 50 billion of dollars was produced in California. The biggest gold nugget found in California had a weight 195 pounds (Lusted 43).

In conclusion, it should be pointed out that it was a gold rush that has transformed California from a distant and little-known region in one of the richest states in the United States, laying the foundation for its future prosperity.

Works Cited

Friedman, Mel. The California Gold Rush . New York: Children’s, 2010. Print.

Lusted, Marcia. The California Gold Rush: A History Perspectives Book . Ann Arbor: Perspectives Library, 2015. Print.

Maxwell-Long, Thomas. Daily Life during the California Gold Rush . Santa Barbara: ABC CLIO, 2014. Print.

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California Gold Rush

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Introduction

Early in 1848 James W. Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, picked up some glittering flakes from the American River at the site of a sawmill he was building near Coloma, California. He gathered up the pieces and sped to the office of the mill’s owner, John Sutter . Urging Sutter to secrecy, Marshall showed him his findings. Sutter tested the flakes and confirmed Marshall’s suspicion: gold had been found in California . Within months, Marshall’s discovery was made public, bringing a flood of fortune seekers to the region. The California Gold Rush would transform California and fuel the westward push of the United States.

In the years that followed Marshall’s discovery, California’s population exploded. The promise of wealth and a new life lured people from around the world to California. American gold seekers traveled west from the Eastern states, migrating in such vast numbers that their passage stimulated advancements in transcontinental travel. People of diverse backgrounds and ethnicities came to California, selling their property and getting loans to afford the journey. Along the way, they risked danger and disease for a chance at gaining riches.

In 1849 alone, $10 million worth of gold was pulled from the ground, and over the next few years this number grew. In view of the huge amounts of money that could be made, and the rising lawlessness in mining settlements, politicians pushed to speed up the process of statehood. In 1850 California became the 31st state. The Gold Rush peaked in 1852, when $81 million worth of gold was extracted in California. Afterward, the number slowly declined. By the end of the 1850s the Gold Rush was over, but its legacy would continue to influence California—and the country—in the years to come.

People of the Gold Rush

Word of Marshall’s find was carried by overland travelers and by ships that stopped at the California coast. The earliest gold seekers came from Oregon, Mexico, and South America, especially Chile and Peru. Then news spread across the Pacific, drawing hopeful miners from the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), China, and Australia. Later they were joined by Europeans, particularly from Germany, Ireland, and France.

Back in the United States, the first accounts of California gold in East Coast newspapers were skeptical. It was not until President James K. Polk confirmed the early discoveries in late 1848 that the Gold Rush ignited in the United States. The tens of thousands who rushed to California in 1849 came to be called the Forty-niners. Altogether, they numbered about 80,000. By 1853 the number of fortune seekers would rise to 250,000.

Women on the Goldfields

About 95 percent of the Forty-niners were men, typically white men from the Eastern states. Married men usually left their families at home in the East, with the promise of returning with riches. In 1850 women made up less than 10 percent of California’s population.

Despite their small numbers, women participated in the Gold Rush in many ways. Because many of the men who came west were accustomed to having their wives clean and cook for them, they paid women to perform these tasks. Some women made a living by running boardinghouses, where they housed and cooked for miners. With so few women in California, those who did live there found their skills and company to be in high demand.

Gold Rush women were divided socially and labeled as either “bad” or “good.” They were held to a different moral standard than men. Women who had nontraditional lifestyles or jobs were thought of as immoral and labeled “bad.” One of the most famous “bad” women of the Gold Rush was Miss Ah Toy, a Chinese prostitute and businesswoman who lived in San Francisco.

American Indians

The influx of gold seekers had serious consequences for the many Native American peoples of California. The people whose ancestors had lived on the land for thousands of years shared little of the prosperity brought to California by the Gold Rush. Many American Indians were involved in the Gold Rush from its earliest days but were mistreated by white settlers and forced to work for them.

California’s Indians were devastated by the many diseases that were brought by migrants during the late 1840s and throughout the 1850s. Smallpox, measles, and cholera spread quickly because the Indians had no immunity to them. Before the Gold Rush, Indians made up most of California’s population, numbering about 150,000. By 1870, however, only 30,000 Indians remained. It has been estimated that disease was responsible for 60 percent of the American Indian population losses during the mid-1800s. Those who survived still felt the impact of the Gold Rush. The settlements that arose and the environmental impact of gold mining made traditional Native American lifestyles very difficult or impossible to maintain.

The Journey

Whether coming from within the United States or from abroad, those who made the journey to California faced many risks. There were a number of routes to take to California. Chinese miners sailed across the Pacific Ocean, spending up to two months making the trip in small boats. The three main routes used by American gold seekers were the Oregon-California Trail, the Cape Horn route, and the Panama shortcut.

None of the routes to California was free from challenges or expense. Trips could cost $400 or more (a substantial sum at the time) and lasted several months. Each of the routes attracted a different demographic of gold seekers. Those traveling with families usually made the journey overland because it was too expensive or too cramped to do so on a ship. People traveling overland could expect six months of hardship and many unpredictable accidents along the way. Thousands of people died before reaching their destination. The sea voyage around Cape Horn could last up to eight months. Although the route through Panama offered the shortest travel time (as little as a month), it required braving the many threats of the Panama jungle.

The Oregon-California Trail

The Oregon-California Trail stretched more than 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) from Missouri to Oregon and California. By wagon , the journey could take upwards of six months to complete. The starting point of the trail was Independence, Missouri. Heavy wagons pulled by oxen, mules, or horses usually set off in wagon trains. These were groups of wagons that made the long, hard journey together. Banding together as a team offered advantages in terms of safety along the trail. A large wagon train could intimidate bandits or hostile American Indians who might consider attacking a lone wagon.

People in wagon trains also relied on each other for support when problems arose. The varied terrain across the country was a constant challenge for travelers. In wagon trains people could share supplies or lend a hand pushing the wagon or carrying loads across tough passes. In good conditions, a wagon could cover 12 to 20 miles (19 to 32 kilometers) in a day. However, if the roads were muddy or there were rivers to cross, they were lucky to cover 5 miles (8 kilometers). Other difficulties of the journey included accidents and illness. Among the common trail diseases were cholera , smallpox , tuberculosis , diphtheria , typhoid fever , and scurvy.

Despite the many dangers along the way, by the end of 1849 more than 6,000 wagons carrying 40,000 people had traveled to California across the Oregon-California Trail.

The Cape Horn Route

The longest route to California was the sea voyage around Cape Horn , at the southern tip of South America. Gold seekers first boarded a ship on the East Coast of the United States, in New York City or Boston , Massachusetts. The ship traveled south around Cape Horn and then north to California, where passengers would get off at San Francisco . The voyage took about six months. The Cape Horn route covered 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 kilometers). During this lengthy trip, passengers faced illness, hunger, and poor nutrition. Ships traveling the Cape Horn route were often very crowded, which caused sickness to spread quickly.

The Panama Shortcut

A third route involved both sea and overland travel. The first step of the journey was to board a ship departing from the East Coast of the United States and sailing to the Atlantic coast of Panama , in Central America. Then travelers crossed the Isthmus of Panama, the strip of land that connects North America and South America. They canoed up the Chagres River, in central Panama. Then they rode a mule through the jungle to reach Panama City on the Pacific coast. There they boarded a ship to San Francisco.

By taking the Panama shortcut, gold seekers could cut about 8,000 miles (13,000 kilometers) and a few months off the Cape Horn route. Unfortunately, the advantages of the Panama shortcut came at a very steep price. Diseases such as yellow fever and malaria were a huge threat to travelers through Panama.

Transcontinental Travel

The huge demand for transportation to California gave rise to important developments in transcontinental travel. The influx of travelers through Panama inspired the creation of the Panama Railroad. Stretching from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, it was the world’s first transcontinental railroad. Construction began in 1850 and was completed five years later. In 1863, a few years after the end of the Gold Rush, workers began building the first transcontinental railroad in the United States. It was completed in 1869. When the Panama Canal was built in the early 20th century, it closely followed the route of the Panama Railroad. Though only about 51 miles (82 kilometers) long, the canal had a huge impact on world trade.

Life on the Goldfields

The drive to get to California as quickly as possible was spurred by the fact that people were claiming mining territories on a first-come-first-served basis. Before it achieved statehood, California had no laws or government. In 1848 there was also no federal law to regulate mining. People came to California thinking that gold was free for the taking.

Rules about rights to property and how miners interacted were governed by a miners’ code. This code was a system for managing property rights through the staking of claims. Miners did not own the property they claimed. However, the first person to get to a site, discover gold, and mine it was entitled to the gold he found. A person could maintain his claim to a site only if he notified other miners that it belonged to him. A miner’s claim to a site lasted only as long as the miner continued to work it. If a person left his mining site, he lost his claim to it. The site was considered free to be claimed by a new miner. Taking over a marked site that was not being worked was called “claim jumping.”

Miners usually claimed a site and left within a short period of time. The California Gold Rush was truly a race to find the site that would yield the most gold. Since no one knew exactly where the gold was or how much could be found, a miner would typically abandon an unproductive site quickly and then claim another.

Mining Towns

As mining camps began to form, each district established a set of rules. Without a government or other authority to enforce these rules, however, property claims were not very secure. The miners’ code worked only if people were willing to follow it. Many property rights were maintained only with the threat of violence, and disputes over claims were frequently settled with weapons rather than diplomacy. California’s mining districts were thought of as lawless, violent, and immoral places.

Many men came to California with the attitude that the laws that governed their behavior at home did not apply to them out west. Miners could spend 12 to 16 hours a day, six days a week doing hard physical labor at their claim sites. They spent their Sundays off in mining towns, playing as hard as they worked. Alcohol was readily available in mining towns and so was opium . Without authorities to keep people in check, drunken bar brawls and petty fights could end in murder. Mining towns also presented men with plenty of opportunities to gamble.

Men in mining towns outnumbered women nine to one. The lack of women meant that mining town society was rougher and rowdier than in the East. Mining towns were, however, far more ethnically diverse than most towns in the United States during the mid-1800s. Chinese, Mexican, African American, and American Indian people interacted with each other and with white Americans to a degree that was unmatched in the East. Prejudice and racism were common, however, and some of the violence that occurred in mining towns was racially driven.

Racial Discrimination and Violence

By early 1849 an estimated 6,000 Mexicans had come to California seeking gold. California had been part of Mexico until the United States took control at the end of the Mexican-American War just a year earlier. Nevertheless, Mexican miners were treated as outsiders and often suffered discrimination. The tension between Mexican and American miners was heightened by the fact that many Mexican miners were more experienced and successful than the Americans. In 1850 California passed a Foreign Miners Tax, which forced non-American miners to pay $20 a month to the state. This tax targeted Mexican miners in an effort to drive them out of California.

In 1852 the government imposed a new Foreign Miners Tax, this time aimed at removing the Chinese. Many people had left China because of the poor economic conditions that followed the first Opium War (1839–42). The number of Chinese immigrants grew so much during the 1850s that they made up a fifth of the population in California’s mining towns.

Some African American Forty-niners arrived in California as free people looking to make their own fortunes. Others were slaves brought by their owners. Free African American miners did not have full rights as American citizens and were often mistreated by white American miners. In 1850 California joined the Union as a free state, and many slaves gained their freedom. Nevertheless, slavery continued in some areas.

In 1848 American Indians made up about half of the gold diggers in California. They were expected to perform the hardest labor for the lowest price. In 1850 the California legislature passed the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. The act created a list of American Indian crimes and punishments and denied Indians the right to testify in court. Under the terms of the act, American Indians could be seized and forced to do involuntary labor. In effect, the act allowed white people to enslave Indians. An amendment to the act in 1860 allowed whites to take orphaned Indian children as slaves and force them to serve until they reached 35 to 40 years of age.

The Indians suffered the worst of the racial violence that occurred during the Gold Rush. When the Forty-niners flooded California, they overran Indian lands. Most white Americans felt that the Indians stood in the way of progress. They believed in Manifest Destiny —the idea that it was their divine right and duty to spread Protestant and democratic ideals across the continent. Indian communities were attacked by groups of miners who wanted to stake claims on their land. In some instances, entire villages were murdered. Many Indians were forced to march to reservations , where conditions were dismal and many people starved.

Tragically, the abuse of American Indians was widely accepted and even encouraged. In certain California districts, miners were paid for Indians’ body parts and scalps. The popular attitude among whites was that Indian lives were worthless. Gold Rush miners did not just deny American Indians their right to land, they denied their right to life. The belief in white superiority and Manifest Destiny was supported by the U.S. government’s brutal treatment of American Indians across the country.

Mining Methods

Immigrants and American settlers were lured west by newspaper advertisements claiming that California was a land of “inexhaustible gold mines” where anybody could strike it rich. These ads often made light of the challenges that miners would face when they arrived. Few of the people who came to California were prepared for the grueling realities of gold mining. Some men spent hours standing knee-deep in frigid creeks as they hopefully panned for gold. Others faced extreme risks digging and blasting for gold. Most of the Forty-niners had no mining experience or skills and had to learn through trial and error. Even with very hard work, few miners actually achieved the success they dreamed of.

During the 1850s the amount of available gold began to decline. New mining techniques evolved to reach the gold that remained further below the surface. As mining technology advanced, the character of gold mining in California changed. Mining by individuals who worked their own claims was replaced by large-scale industrial mining. Rather than seeking their own fortunes, miners were hired to work in mines owned by corporations. The new mining techniques employed by these companies had a devastating impact on California’s environment and landscape.

Early Techniques

Panning was the simplest way of collecting gold. It involved scooping soil or gravel from the bottom of a stream into a shallow pan. The miner would then swirl the water in the pan so that the heavier pieces of gold would sink to the bottom while the lighter material—dirt and gravel—would come to the surface. The miner tilted the pan to allow the dirt and gravel to wash away, leaving only the gold behind. Panning was the slowest and least effective method of collecting gold. Miners could typically get through 50 pans in a day and collect only a small amount of gold.

The rocker, or cradle, was a machine developed to speed up this process. A rocker was a long wooden box mounted on two curved pieces of wood similar to the curved runners of a rocking chair or baby’s cradle. The box was set at a downward angle. The miner shoveled dirt into the box and then poured water over it. The material was sifted by rocking the box from side to side. As the material was washed along, barriers called riffles captured pieces of gold, which were then collected by hand.

Later devices used the same concept as the rocker but improved on it. The long tom was bigger than the rocker and therefore could handle more material. It also contained a sheet of metal with holes in it to aid the sifting process. The long tom evolved into the sluice box, an even longer version of the same device. A sluice box was placed in a running stream, making it more efficient than devices in which water had to be supplied by hand.

Hydraulic Mining

Hydraulic mining involved using jets of water to break apart hard rock to reach the gold ore inside. The water was piped through a hose and blasted out through a nozzle. The powerful stream was shot at a hillside, breaking the hard rock into pieces. The water and blasted rock flowed through sluice boxes to collect the gold. The unwanted material was washed or dumped into nearby streams and rivers.

Hydraulic mining permanently changed the landscape of northern California. The debris left behind from blasting the Sierra Nevada mountains clogged rivers and streams flowing toward San Francisco Bay. Along with blocking navigation on these rivers, the debris caused them to frequently overflow their banks. Flooding spread silt and sand over farmland in the Sacramento Valley, which was disastrous for many farmers. Mining debris also killed wildlife in the rivers and upset the natural balance of ecosystems.

Hydraulic mining was very profitable, and for some time the environmental damage it caused was overlooked because of the gold that it yielded. In time, however, the mounting issues it created led to an outcry against its use. Hydraulic mining was eventually ended as it became too problematic and too expensive.

The Gold Rush Legacy

The Gold Rush transformed the people, culture, economy, and landscape of California in profound ways. California was rapidly converted from a rural, inaccessible region to a populous territory filled with booming towns and cities. The Gold Rush spurred advancements in transportation, which made transcontinental travel in the United States easier than ever before. The influx of immigrants to California made it a place of multiculturalism and ethnic diversity.

In the years that followed the Gold Rush, the period and the changes it brought about were somewhat romanticized by white Americans. This chapter of U.S. history was often told as the story of single, white, American men risking everything to go west and claim their fortunes. The American miners were portrayed as daring, hardworking, and admirable symbols of Manifest Destiny . However, white American miners represented only one version of the Gold Rush story.

Alternative Perspectives

For many white Americans, the Gold Rush represented the fulfillment of Manifest Destiny. The West was “civilized” according to the common ideals of their society at the time: the American Indians were almost entirely removed, the environment was dominated and its resources plundered, and the American way of life was spread from coast to coast.

To understand the Gold Rush more fully, however, it is necessary to acknowledge alternative perspectives on the era. The discovery of gold in California fueled the region’s growth and economy. However, destructive mining techniques permanently damaged the environment. The Gold Rush drew enormous numbers of immigrants from around the world, making California one of the most culturally diverse places in the United States. However, competition between ethnic groups gave rise to oppression and violence.

Government-sanctioned discrimination against Mexican and Chinese miners and the exploitation of American Indians are clear evidence that the period was not a golden age for everyone involved. Discriminatory laws against immigrant miners and the taxes that were demanded of them illustrate how minority groups were denied social, political, and economic equality. For California’s Indians in particular, the Gold Rush was a tragedy. In the stampede to stake claims, Indians were systematically murdered and driven off their lands. Diseases wreaked havoc on their populations, and laws allowed white Americans to enslave them. The romanticized picture of the era has to be balanced with the viewpoints of the Indians and other groups who suffered because of the miners’ lust for gold.

The Slavery Question and the Civil War

The Gold Rush, and the growth it brought, thrust California into the heated national debate over slavery . At the start of the 1850s, the African American population in California numbered fewer than 1,000. Nevertheless, California’s position regarding slavery would weigh heavily in the tense relationship between the Northern and Southern states.

On September 9, 1850, California joined the United States as the 31st state. The process of granting statehood to California had been accelerated in light of the population explosion brought on by the Gold Rush. Another factor was the lawlessness that was growing there in the absence of an official state government. Although there was much momentum to bring California into the Union, there was also much controversy over its status in regard to slavery. At the time, the country had equal numbers of free states, where slavery was illegal, and slave states, where slavery was allowed. California petitioned Congress to enter the Union as a free state, which would have upset the balance of free and slave states. The dispute threatened to break up the Union.

After months of debate, Congress finally passed the Compromise of 1850 . The South agreed to allow California to enter the Union as a free state and accepted the prohibition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia. In return, the North allowed New Mexico and Utah to organize as territories with no mention of slavery and gave the South a stronger fugitive slave law .

The Compromise of 1850 postponed but could not prevent war between the North and the South. After the American Civil War began in 1861, California’s gold proved to be an important resource for the Union. In that time of crisis, gold shipments from the Sierra Nevada funded the U.S. government and its war effort. This contribution to the Union victory was yet another legacy of the Gold Rush.

Additional Reading

Benoit, Peter. The California Gold Rush. New York, NY: Children’s Press, 2013. Collins, Terry. Stake a Claim!: Nickolas Flux and the California Gold Rush. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2014. Hall, Brianna. Strike It Rich! The Story of the California Gold Rush. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2015. Maxwell-Long, Thomas. Daily Life During the California Gold Rush. Santa Barbara, CA: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 2014. Micklos, John, Jr. A Primary Source History of the Gold Rush. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2016. Onsgard, Bethany. Life During the California Gold Rush. Minneapolis, MN: Core Library, 2015. Raum, Elizabeth. The California Gold Rush: An Interactive History Adventure. Mankato, MN: Capstone Press, 2016.

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Central Question

Do american actions against california native americans during the gold rush meet the united nations definition of genocide, introductory essay, california indian history and genocide.

The history of California was already thousands of years old by the time Europeans came to stay in 1769. Long after the first Indigenous people made California their home, their descendants numbered in the hundreds of thousands and lived in hundreds of densely settled independent nations. Colonizing newcomers of European descent found Native Californians thriving in a world of abundance and relative peace, but the colonizers did not mean to leave California as they found it. In a relatively short period of time—just an instant in the long sweep of human history in America—they violently undid the work of generations of Native Californians.

In California, a series of colonizing societies posed threats to Indians. The Spanish forced coastal Native people to give up their land and to labor for the people who took it. Instead of working to sustain their own communities’ independence and prosperity, Native Californians worked at new industries like cattle ranching and European-style farming to support the colony. When California was part of Mexico, ranchers raided independent villages for laborers and took control of more Indian land. Colonists made it harder for Indians to make a living from the gathering, fishing, and hunting they had historically relied upon. This made the Indians poorer and less secure. Colonists had already inflicted violence, poverty, and hardship on thousands of people by the time gold was discovered in 1848. After that, when Americans arrived in large numbers and claimed California as a state, more California Indians faced even greater danger.

Americans took control of California by law and by violence. American citizens were confident that they had the right to use physical force to secure their own rights and to take Indians’ land because of their race. They knew their government would support them. In the United States in the mid-1800s, “race” was the idea that human diversity could be explained by perceived or imagined differences in peoples’ physical features and that these differences should determine one’s place in society. It was a way of determining who had power. Those whom the law treated as “white” stood to gain the full benefits of property ownership, citizenship, and political freedom (if they were male), as well as the ability to act with authority when it came to “nonwhite” people. White citizens in California saw Indians not as members of distinct and independent nations, but as a lower race of people within American society. As such, state laws empowered whites to act forcefully against Native and other nonwhite people. One of California’s first laws denied Indians equal protection under the law. That law also set up a system that allowed citizens to keep Indians as laborers without paying them, have them arrested and then put to work if they were not already employed by a white citizen, and use corporal punishment on them. By law in California, white citizens could not be convicted based on Indians’ trial testimony, which assured white citizens that their mistreatment of Indians would not be prosecuted as a crime.

Citizens also used violence to terrorize entire communities of California Indians. Groups of white citizens attacked Indian villagers to “punish” suspected thieves, to keep Indians away from citizens’ property, and to capture Indian children. The state and federal governments often paid the attackers and so encouraged more attacks. Almost from the moment they began, white citizens understood and even cheered these attacks as attempts to destroy or “exterminate” California Indians. Americans displaced California Indians from their lands and homes, denied them access to traditional life-sustaining resources, carried out mass murder against them, enacted a system of forced labor that led to the kidnapping and enslavement of Indian children, and generally subjected them to a sustained climate of terror.

Historians have written that American violence against California Indians was similar to other historical examples of organized and government-supported violence against specific groups of people. Even before the word “genocide” was defined during World War II, surviving California Indians knew that they had endured world-shattering violence at the hands of Americans. In the 1930s, the Pomo man William Benson published the first historical article by a California Indian on what scholars would later call the California Indian genocide. For his evidence, he talked to survivors of two 1850 American attacks on Pomo villages in Northern California. Benson ended his account not with the violence itself but with a survivor’s grief. After the attack, when one man realized that he was “not to see my mother and sister but to see their blood scattered over the ground like water,” he was overwhelmed and “sat down under a tree and cryed all day.”

In the years that followed, that man and other grieving survivors set to work on the difficult task of remaking the kinds of Indian communities in which Benson was later born, grew up, and lived his entire life. By the time Benson published his article, eighty years after the gold rush, California had more tribes than any other state in the country, but for every Indian person living in the state, there were nearly three hundred non-Indians. California Indians owned almost nothing of what would become the wealthiest state in the country. Survivors and their communities dealt with these legacies of nearly unimaginable destruction as they continued new chapters in the long history of California’s Indian people.

Dr. Khal Schneider

Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria California State University, Sacramento

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The Gold Rush: As Good as Gold

By Lucy Sante

Jun 11, 2012

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W atching The Gold Rush (1925) is a weirdly communal experience, even if you are taking it in on a small screen alone in your room, because it was one of the first truly worldwide cultural phenomena, and it has enjoyed an unusually extended life for a film. Watching along with you, spectrally, are most of a century’s worth of people, in every corner of the globe, in opulent movie palaces and slum storefronts, on state-of-the-art equipment and sheets hung from trees. Its humor and poetry transcend cultural and historical boundaries, and there has never been a time when that was in doubt. It remains the highest-grossing silent comedy. When The Gold Rush was released in England, BBC Radio broadcast ten solid minutes of audience laughter from the premiere. When it opened in Berlin, one sequence—the famous dance of the rolls—was so wildly received that it was run back and played again, a rare instance of a cinematic encore.

The Tramp—small, innocent, beleaguered, romantic, oblivious, resourceful, idealistic—lives inside everyone, but Charlie Chaplin made him manifest, with humor that is never cruel, never aggressive, and always speaks to our best selves. The Gold Rush takes the Tramp, in his longest outing to date, from rags to riches, thus combining the pleasure of laughing at his pratfalls with that of vicariously sharing in his eventual good fortune—and what could have more universal appeal? Here as elsewhere, the jokes build on situations everyone can identify with—and quickly raise the stakes. Who doesn’t feel an empathetic blush when Charlie’s pants start to fall down as he dances with the girl of his dreams? Or breathe a sigh of relief when he finds a convenient rope and manages to slip it around his waist without her noticing? It takes only a beat, however, for everyone to see that a large, hapless dog is tied to the end of that rope and is being swung around the dance floor. And then everyone involuntarily braces for Charlie’s inevitable tumble. The sequence occupies only a minute, but in that time, the audience has experienced with near physical intensity a fall, a rise, and another fall—with a wildly unexpected gag planted right in the middle. That combination is Chaplin’s basic comedic formula, the DNA of his pictures.

In 1925, Charlie Chaplin—Charlot in France, Small Mustache in China—was the world’s most recognizable figure of any sort. His career as the Tramp was just eleven years old, having begun with Kid Auto Races at Venice in February 1914. A little later that year, a Chicago reporter wrote: “You can’t keep your eyes off his feet. Those big shoes are buttoned with fifty million eyes.” His salary from Mack Sennett’s Keystone back then was $150 a week; three years later, his agreement with the First National Exhibitors’ Circuit assured him an annual payment of over a million dollars and made him the highest-paid employee in the world. At First National, he began to break out of the two-reel format, making two hour-long pictures, The Kid (1921)—considered his first feature—and The Pilgrim (1923). In 1918, he founded United Artists with Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, and D. W. Griffith, and in 1923 he directed the feature A Woman of Paris under its aegis. A drama and a vehicle for Edna Purviance, it was undeservedly a flop; Chaplin appeared only in a brief uncredited cameo. In making it, Chaplin may have wanted to prove his versatility and establish his credentials as a serious artist—his résumé would eventually include credits for choreography, compos­ing, and singing in addition to directing, producing, writing, editing, and, of course, acting—but it was time to give the public what it wanted, in the form of an even longer feature featuring the Tramp.

The Gold Rush is unique among Chaplin’s silent-era films in that he began production with a more or less complete story. (His working methods only fully came to light posthumously, as a result of the outtakes collected and analyzed by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill for their 1983 television series Unknown Chaplin. Chaplin, singularly, was able to use the studio as his sketch pad, beginning vaguely with an image and then filming, retaking, undoing, and revising as a story gradually began to take shape, resulting in such extraordinary shooting ratios as The Kid ’s 53 to 1.) He was spurred by reading a book about the tragic Donner Party of 1846–47, and then by looking through Douglas Fairbanks’s collection of stereoscope cards, which included a series on the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897–99. He re-created the latter with astonishing fidelity in the opening shots, showing the crossing of the Chilkoot Pass, which was arranged by assistant director Eddie Sutherland, using six hundred extras (apparently hobos Sutherland had rounded up in Sacramento), in the Sierra Nevada range, near Truckee, California. Chaplin had intended to shoot all of the exteriors on location, but although at least two other scenes were filmed there and discarded (except for one shot of Charlie sliding down a hillside, which remains), the rest of the picture was filmed on elaborate sets—made from wood, burlap, chicken wire, plaster, salt, and flour—in his studio on the southeast corner of La Brea and Sunset in Hollywood.

Production covered seventeen months, from spring 1924 to summer 1925. Fifteen-year-old Lita Grey (who was twelve when she appeared in The Kid ) was originally cast as the female lead. She became pregnant, however, so Chaplin married her instead and, after shutting down production for three months, substituted Georgia Hale, who had starred in Josef von Sternberg’s debut film, The Salvation Hunters. (During the course of the production, the marriage fell apart, after a son had been born and with a second one on the way, and Hale replaced Grey in Chaplin’s affections as well.) The other three principals, Mack Swain (Big Jim McKay), Tom Murray (Black Larsen), and Henry Bergman (Hank Curtis), had all appeared in The Pilgrim, the previous Tramp movie. Swain, whom James Agee memorably described as looking like “a hairy mushroom,” had made many shorts with Chaplin at Keystone; when his career flagged in the early 1920s, Chaplin rescued him. Bergman, a veteran vaudevillian, appeared in almost every Chaplin movie from 1916 to 1936, and in addition worked as assistant director on City Lights (1931). Near the end of his life, Chaplin set him up with a restaurant.

The story is a stew of elements drawn from dime novels, Jack London, and nineteenth-century blood-and-thunder melodrama, conventions that at the time of the picture’s release were as familiar to audiences as their own homes. The Gold Rush wasn’t the first time Chaplin inserted the Tramp into a historical framework—that would have been 1918’s Shoulder Arms, if not 1917’s The Immigrant —but by 1925, the Klondike had entered the realm of romantic adventure, even though it lay within living memory. Chaplin’s Tramp is here called the Lone Prospector, his costume unaltered except for the knapsack on his back, with attached pickax and frying pan. We are introduced to him as he slides along a precipitous mountain path with his trademark waddle, completely unaware of the bear that briefly shadows him (and will later reappear). As ever, only perhaps more so, he is the little man in a world populated by giants, kin to Till Eulenspiegel, Svejk, Josef K., Happy Hooligan, Popeye—the audience’s surrogate amid the confusion of the early twentieth century, before the tide turned toward supermen around the time of World War II. He has washed up in the Yukon the way thousands of others did, out of dreams and unclear ambitions, although he is motivated by romance—in both senses—rather than greed. Even at the end, when, having hitched a ride on Big Jim’s good fortune, he sports two fur coats, one atop the other, you sense that this is less a matter of mere luxury than of banishing cold, including the cold of his immediate past.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, for a movie inspired in part by the Donner pioneers (who, stranded in the mountains for months by snow, turned to cannibalism for sustenance), some of the most memorable sequences involve food. When the Lone Prospector is starving in the cabin with Big Jim, he resorts to boiling his shoe. After sacrificing the upper to Jim, he makes his own meal of the sole, nails, and laces, rolling the laces on his fork like spaghetti and relishing each individual nail as if they were the bones of a quail (the shoe and laces were made of black licorice, the nails of hard candy). Big Jim later hallucinates the Lone Prospector turning into a giant chicken (played by Chaplin in a chicken suit; the transitions were all done in the camera by his extraordinary cinematographer, Roland Totheroh). And when the Lone Prospector falls asleep waiting for Georgia and her friends to come over for New Year’s Eve dinner, he dreams of entertaining them with a soft-shoe dance staged with rolls impaled on forks, a turn first briefly employed on-screen by Fatty Arbuckle in The Rough House (1917) but made iconic here.

And there is so much else. No one who has seen the picture can easily forget the cabin, come to rest on the lip of a chasm, teetering back and forth as Charlie and Big Jim move from one side to the other within (the transitions between the full-size set and the miniature are immaculate). Charlie’s victory—by proxy—in the dance hall brawl is one of the classic little-man triumphs. (The dance hall scenes by themselves provide a startling trip into the past, with their cast of authentic-seeming mushers and adventurers.) And the Lone Prospector’s snow shoveling technique, when he is raising funds for the dinner—he piles all the snow from one doorstep onto that of the storefront to the left, then solicits work from that establishment—would almost by itself have made a two-reeler in the preceding decade.

In 1942, Chaplin reissued The Gold Rush for an audience that—even though only seventeen years had elapsed since the picture’s initial release, and only six since the defiantly (near) silent Modern Times —had mostly never seen a silent movie. There was no television then, after all, and no revival houses to make such works available. He therefore chose to guide the audience through the experience by means of an explicit score and an orotund narration—Chaplin’s own—that is drawn from the same half-remembered well of Victorian instruction as, say, Edward Everett Horton’s voice-over for Jay Ward’s animated Fractured Fairy Tales shorts. He also eliminated a subplot (the bounder Jack’s cruel hoax) and truncated the ending, which perhaps did suffer from romantic overload as a result of his actual liaison with Georgia Hale. But very little is finally sacrificed; there is no downside. (It was also Chaplin’s preferred version.) The rerelease helpfully came in the middle of the war; it helped extend Chaplin’s franchise to another generation; and, perhaps most importantly, it helped preserve the footage of the original, which remains as crystal-clear, economical, and direct as anything ever committed to celluloid.

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Home — Essay Samples — History — Californian Gold Rush — History of the Gold Rush in California

History of The Gold Rush in California

• Categories: American History Californian Gold Rush Mexico

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Words: 1504 |

Published: Nov 5, 2020

Words: 1504 | Pages: 3 | 8 min read

Table of contents

History of california, heading west, life in gold rush california, works cited.

• Brands, H. W. (2011). The age of gold: The California Gold Rush and the new American dream. Knopf.
• Burns, R. W. (2004). Gold in the shadow of slavery: Ethiopia and California in the 1850s. The American Historical Review, 109(3), 692-719.
• Deverell, W. F., & Igler, D. (2014). A companion to California history. Wiley Blackwell.
• Gudde, E. G. (1998). California gold camp names: Origins of geographic names of interest to gold-seekers. University of California Press.
• Hittell, T. H. (2011). A history of the city of San Francisco and incidentally of the state of California. Applewood Books.
• Lingenfelter, R. E. (1978). The rush to California: A bibliography of the literature on the gold rush in California and the overland journey to the gold fields, 1848-1852. University of California Press.
• Rawls, J. J. (1999). California: An interpretive history. McGraw-Hill Education.
• Rohrbough, M. J. (1998). Days of gold: The California Gold Rush and the American nation. University of California Press.
• Sides, H. (2006). Blood and thunder: An epic of the American West. Anchor Books.
• Starr, K. (2005). California: A history. Modern Library.

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Klondike Gold Rush

By: History.com Editors

Updated: August 11, 2023 | Original: January 17, 2018

The Klondike Gold Rush, often called the Yukon Gold Rush, was a mass exodus of prospecting migrants from their hometowns to the Canadian Yukon Territory and Alaska after gold was discovered there in 1896. The idea of striking it rich led over 100,000 people from all walks of life to abandon their homes and embark on an extended, life-threatening journey across treacherous, icy valleys and harrowing rocky terrain.

Less than half of those who started the trek to the Yukon arrived; those who got there safely stood little chance of finding gold. While the Klondike Gold Rush invigorated the economy of the Pacific Northwest, it also devastated the local environment and had a negative impact on many Yukon Natives.

Gold Rush Alaska

Starting in the 1870s, prospectors trickled into the Yukon in search of gold. By 1896, around 1,500 prospectors panned for gold along the Yukon River basin—one of them was American George Carmack.

On August 16, 1896, Carmack, along with Jim Mason and Tagish Charlie, later Dawson Charlie (Kaa Goox), both Tagish First Nation members— discovered Yukon gold on Rabbit Creek (later renamed Bonanza Creek), a Klondike River tributary that ran through both Alaskan and Yukon Territory.

Little did they know their discovery would spur a massive gold rush.

Conditions in the Yukon were harsh and made communication with the outside world difficult at best. As a result, word didn’t get out about the Klondike gold discovery until 1897.

Once it did, however, droves of people known as stampeders headed north, searching for Yukon gold and a wealthier fate. Most had no idea where they were going or what they’d face along the way.

Gold Mining Equipment

Canadian authorities required every stampeder to have a year’s worth of gold mining equipment and supplies before crossing the Canadian border such as:

• warm clothes and outerwear
• moccasins and boots
• blankets and towels
• mosquito netting
• personal care items
• first aid items
• candles and matches
• approximately 1,000 pounds of food
• tools and mining equipment
• camping equipment

Getting to Yukon Territory was no easy task, especially while hauling a literal ton of supplies. For the first leg of the journey, well-stocked stampeders traveled to port cities in the Pacific Northwest and boarded boats headed north to the Alaskan town of Skagway which took them to the White Pass Trail, or Dyea which took them to the Chilkoot Trail.

Dead Horse Trail

The next leg of the trip was the most difficult no matter which trail a stampeder chose. The White Pass was not as steep or rugged as the Chilkoot, but it was new, narrow, clogged, and slippery with mud. Many animals became stuck and died, earning the trail the nickname, “The Dead Horse Trail.” It’s estimated 3,000 horses died on White Pass.

The Chilkoot Trail was steep, icy and snowy. Although pack animals were used to haul supplies for much of the stampeders’ journey, once they reached Chilkoot Trail they had to abandon the animals and carry their supplies the rest of the way. This usually required making several trips up and down a frozen slope, including 1,500 steps carved of snow and ice known as the “golden staircase.”

Daunted, many prospectors gave up at this point and headed home. One eyewitness reported, “It is impossible to give one an idea of the slowness with which things are moving. It takes a day to go four or five miles and back; it takes a dollar to do what ten cents would do at home.”

The final leg of the journey was also treacherous and slow-going. After crossing Chilkoot or White Pass, prospectors had to build or rent boats and brave hundreds of miles of winding Yukon River rapids to reach Dawson City in the Yukon Territory, Canada, where they hoped to set up camp and stake their claims. Many people died during the river trip.

Gold Mining in Alaska

Only about 30,000 weary stampeders finally arrived in Dawson City. Most were gravely disappointed to learn reports of available Klondike gold were greatly exaggerated. For many, thoughts of gold and wealth had sustained them during their grueling journey. Learning they’d come so far for nothing was too much to bear and they immediately booked passage home.

Miners who came to the Yukon in the winter had to wait months for the ground to thaw. They set up makeshift camps in Dawson and endured the harsh winter as best they could. With so many bodies crammed into a small area and sanitary facilities lacking, sickness, disease and death from infectious illness were commonplace.

Other people stayed in Dawson and attempted to mine gold—they usually came up empty-handed. But instead of returning home, they took advantage of Dawson’s booming infrastructure and worked in or opened saloons, supply stores, banks, brothels and restaurants. Most of the town’s merchants made their fortunes off the never-ending supply of miners arriving consumed with gold fever.

The Enslaved Native Americans Who Made The Gold Rush Possible

Native Californians were treated abominably in the area where gold was first discovered.

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On January 24, 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter’s Mill in Northern California. Get the facts on the rush for gold that followed.

Alaska’s Native American History The first people migrated to Alaska around 15,000 years ago, during the Ice Age. At that time, a frozen land bridge known as Beringia extended from Siberia to eastern Alaska, and migrants followed herds of animals across it. These people split into two groups: One group stayed in Beringia, while the […]

The Effects of the Gold Rush

Although the discovery of Yukon gold made a few lucky miners rich beyond their wildest dreams, many people made their fortunes off the backs of the miners chasing those dreams. Even so, the adventurous stampede for gold united people of all walks of life in a common goal.

The influx of people to Dawson turned it into a legitimate city. It also led to a population boom in Yukon Territory, Alberta, British Columbia and Vancouver. The Klondike Gold Rush is credited for helping the United States out of a depression. Still, it had a horrific impact on the local environment, causing massive soil erosion, water contamination, deforestation and loss of native wildlife, among other things.

The gold rush also severely impacted the Native people. While some made money off miners by working as guides and helping haul supplies, they also fell victim to new diseases such as smallpox and the introduction of casual drinking and drunkenness. The population of some Natives such as the Han declined rapidly as their hunting and fishing grounds were ruined.

Klondike Gold Rush Ends

The Klondike Gold Rush slowed by the end of 1898 as word got out there was little gold left to be had. Countless miners had already left Yukon Territory penniless, leaving gold-mining cities such as Dawson and Skagway rapidly declining.

The Klondike Gold Rush ended in 1899 with the discovery of gold in Nome, Alaska . The find reignited the pipe dreams of many dejected miners who quickly forgot the hardships they’d just endured and couldn’t wait to set out on a new adventure.

HISTORY Vault: Gold Rush Money

The 1849 Gold Rush spawned a rogue economy where miners, merchants, and bankers schemed to reap the riches of a lawless land. See how the Wild West economy was finally tamed by a new money standard at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution.

Gold Rush. Dawsoncity.ca. Impact of the Klondike Gold Rush. Alaskaweb.org. Klondike Gold Rush Yukon Territory 1897. Adventure Learning Foundation. La Ruee Vers L’Or Du Klondike Gold Rush. Yukon Archives. Klondike Gold Rush. The Canadian Encyclopedia. The Klondike Gold Rush. University of Washington Libraries. The White Pass. National Park Service National Historical Park Alaska. Ton of Goods. National Park Service National Historical Park Alaska. What Was the Klondike Gold Rush? National Park Service National Historical Park Alaska.

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