How to Read a Dryed Up Creek Bed for Gold
The California Gold Blitz was sparked by the discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848 and was arguably i of the almost pregnant events to shape American history during the first one-half of the 19th century. Every bit news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled past sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000 (compared with the pre-1848 figure of less than 1,000). A total of $ii billion worth of precious metal was extracted from the area during the Golden Rush, which peaked in 1852. .
Discovery at Sutter's Mill
On Jan 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Bailiwick of jersey, found flakes of gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains almost Coloma, California. At the time, Marshall was working to build a water-powered sawmill owned by John Sutter, a German language-born Swiss citizen and founder of a colony of Nueva Helvetia (New Switzerland, which would after become the city of Sacramento. Every bit Marshall later recalled of his historic discovery: "Information technology made my middle thump, for I was certain information technology was aureate."
Days after Marshall's discovery at Sutter'southward Mill, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American State of war and leaving California in the hands of the United States. At the fourth dimension, the population of the territory consisted of 6,500 Californios (people of Spanish or Mexican descent); 700 foreigners (primarily Americans); and 150,000 Native Americans (barely half the number that had been there when Spanish settlers arrived in 1769). In fact, Sutter had enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them every bit a free source of labor and makeshift militia to defend his territory and aggrandize his empire.
Effects of the California Gold Rush: Gold Fever
Though Marshall and Sutter tried to keep news of the discovery under wraps, word got out, and by mid-March at least 1 newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were existence turned up at Sutter's Mill. Though the initial reaction in San Francisco was atheism, storekeeper Sam Brannan set off a frenzy when he paraded through boondocks displaying a vial of gold obtained from Sutter's Creek. By mid-June, some three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had left town for the gilded mines, and the number of miners in the area reached 4,000 by August.
Equally news spread of the fortunes being fabricated in California, some of the kickoff migrants to go far were those from lands accessible by boat, such as Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (at present Hawaii), United mexican states, Chile, Peru and fifty-fifty China. When the news reached the East Coast, press reports were initially skeptical. Gold fever kicked off there in earnest, however, subsequently December 1848, when President James M. Polk announced the positive results of a report fabricated by Colonel Richard Mason, California's military machine governor, in his inaugural address. Every bit Polk wrote, "The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary graphic symbol equally would scarcely command conventionalities were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service."
The '49ers Come to California
Throughout 1849, people around the United States (mostly men) borrowed money, mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journeying to California. In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and hometowns; in turn, women left behind took on new responsibilities such as running farms or businesses and caring for their children lonely. Thousands of would-be golden miners, known as '49ers, traveled overland across the mountains or past sea, sailing to Panama or fifty-fifty around Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America.
By the finish of the yr, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000, (as compared with 20,000 at the stop of 1848 and around 800 in March 1848). To accommodate the needs of the '49ers, gold mining towns had sprung up all over the region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses seeking to make their own Gold Rush fortune. The overcrowded chaos of the mining camps and towns grew e'er more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, prostitution and violence. San Francisco, for its role, developed a bustling economy and became the central urban center of the new frontier.
The Aureate Rush undoubtedly sped up California's admission to the Spousal relationship as the 31st land. In late 1849, California practical to enter the Marriage with a constitution that barred the Southern system of racial slavery, provoking a crunch in Congress between proponents of slavery and anti-slavery politicians. According to the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Kentucky's Senator Henry Dirt, California was immune to enter every bit a gratis state, while the territories of Utah and New United mexican states were left open to decide the question for themselves.
California'due south Mines After the Gold Rush
Later on 1850, the surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to make it. Mining had e'er been difficult and unsafe labor, and striking it rich required expert luck every bit much as skill and difficult work. Moreover, the average daily take for an independent miner working with his selection and shovel had by then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848. As gold became more and more than difficult to achieve, the growing industrialization of mining drove more than and more miners from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits merely destroyed much of the region's mural.
Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, information technology had reached its peak by 1852, when some $81 one thousand thousand was pulled from the ground. Afterwards that twelvemonth, the total have declined gradually, leveling off to around $45 million per year by 1857. Settlement in California continued, however, and past the end of the decade the state's population was 380,000.
Ecology Impact of the Gilded Rush
New mining methods and the population boom in the wake of the California Gold Rush permanently altered the landscape of California. The technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region'southward landscape. Dams designed to supply h2o to mine sites in summer altered the course of rivers abroad from farmland, while sediment from mines clogged others. The logging industry was born from the need to construct all-encompassing canals and feed boilers at mines, further consuming natural resource.
Sources
Ecology Impact of the Golden Rush. Calisphere.org.
After the Golden Rush. National Geographic.
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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/gold-rush-of-1849
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