# data[].attributes.body
User ID: castlekids
Password: smart

# data[].attributes.body
username-castlekids
password-smart

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
San Francisco Bay Area Booms: From the Gold Rush to Today in Just 217 Seconds | KQED News

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Saving the Bay - The Aftermath of the Gold Rush: Mining and Mercury in San Francisco Bay

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Chinese hose teams in Deadwood, South Dakota
While browsing the Library of Congress' Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, I came across two wonderful photos of Chinese "hose teams." To commemorate July 4, the teams were competing in a fire hose tournament, also known as a "hub-and-hub" race. The teams raced 300 yards and competed for a $500 prize, a small fortune that would be worth around $13,680 today. As wonderful as these photos are, they also raised one important question: Why were Chinese immigrants in Deadwood, South Dakota, of all places, a town populated with colorful figures including, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, Potato Creek Johnny, Seth Bullock, and Al Swearengen?

The answer?

Founded in 1876 after settlers discovered gold deposits, Deadwood became an important, albeit small, town during the gold rush era.

The gold frenzy had people from all backgrounds, including whites, African Americans-both freed and enslaved-as well as Latin American and Chinese men seeking to make their fortunes. In 1849, Chinese began immigrating to the United States in order to become gold miners in various western states, including California and North and South Dakota.
Chinese immigrants and the Gold Rush
In the beginning, Chinese miners worked for themselves or labored for other miners. Due to an increase in Chinese immigrants, anti-immigrant feeling permeated mining camps and in 1850, the California legislature passed a Foreign Miners License Law, which charged all non-U.S. citizens $20 per month. The law was repealed the following year, but due to these exorbitant fees, Chinese miners left and created America's first "Chinatown" in San Francisco. At the peak of gold rush immigration in 1852, 20,000 Chinese immigrated to California, out of a total of 67,000 people, thus, Chinese immigrants accounted for nearly 30% of all immigrants. In response to the influx of Chinese immigrants, the California legislature passed a new foreign miners' tax of $4 per month.

Although many Chinese settled in California, a small number also settled in other western towns, including Deadwood, South Dakota, where they engaged in a variety of businesses.
Chinese in Deadwood, South Dakota

"Wing Tsue came to the Black Hills with the earliest of gold hunters... In 1876, locating where the city of Deadwood now stands, opening up a business... He had many associates among the whites of the Hills, and with them engaged in numerous mining enterprises, and at the time of his death was interested heavily in mining ground here, and real estate." - The Madison Daily Lender

On October 26, 1921, a newspaper reported the death of Lee Wong, also known as "Wing Tsue."

As described by R. Fosha and C Leatherman in their article, "The Chinese Experience in Deadwood, South Dakota," in Historical Archaeology, (v. 42 no. 3 2008, 97-110), during the height of the Gold Rush, Lee Wong and Hi Kee were two of the most prominent Chinese business owners in Deadwood with their mercantile businesses. As a matter of fact, Lee Wong and Hi Kee sponsored the annual fire hose race that took place during the Fourth of July celebrations.

For Chinese immigrating to the West, the Gold Rush presented a variety of jobs beyond mining for gold. One of the most popular jobs was being a laundry man, as demonstrated in the Dakota Territory 1885 Census Index, in which all of the 23 men recorded with a nativity of China stated that their occupation was either "laundryman," "laundry," or "laundry man." Furthermore, rumor has it that "the laundrymen recovered snippets of gold dust left in the miners' dirty garments and wash water." Other occupations included opening restaurants, gaming halls, opium houses, pharmacies, shoe repair, retail, and dry goods.

In their various occupations, Chinese men had the opportunity to interact with both African Americans and Caucasians in the town of Deadwood. However, despite these exchanges, anti-Chinese sentiment reached an all-time new high in 1854, setting a precedent of anti-foreigner sentiment that eventually culminated in the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act.
People v. Hall
In the 1854 case People v. Hall, the California Supreme Court made a decision regarding the ability of Chinese "and all other people not white" to testify in court. They stated:

"Section 14 of the Criminal Act provides, 'No Black, or Mulatto person, or Indian shall be allowed to give evidence in favor of, or against a White man.'

Held, that the words, Indian, Negro, Black and White, are generic terms, designating race. That, therefore, Chinese and all other people not white, are included in the prohibition from being witnesses against Whites..."

This case regarded an incident in which three white men had murdered a Chinese man. Since the testimony of Chinese witnesses had originally convicted the three white men, they were allowed to walk free due to the ruling in People v. Hall. In cases moving forward, "The reversal made it impossible to prosecute violence against Chinese immigrants."
The Chinese Massacre of 1871 and the Chinese Exclusion Act
As the excitement of "gold fever" faded, Chinese men " worked as agricultural laborers, on railroad construction crews throughout the West, and in low-paying industrial jobs." Most European Americans and other immigrants shied away from these jobs, but in the 1870s, these groups began experiencing financial difficulties. As a result, they began competing with Chinese laborers for these jobs. Yet again, anti-Chinese sentiment simmered and reached its boiling point with The Chinese Massacre of 1871, in which eighteen Chinese men were lynched and killed by a mob of over five hundred in Los Angeles.

In 1882, twenty-eight years after the People v. Hall case, President Chester A. Arthur signed the Chinese Exclusion Act, a federal law that prohibited all immigration of Chinese laborers. Only in 1943, nearly six decades later, did the federal government repeal the act with the Magnuson Act or Chinese Exclusion Repeal Act of 1943.

"The fate of each minority depends upon the extent of justice given to all other groups."

- Ina Sugihara, a leading Nisei activist in the 1940s

I can think of no better quote with which to conclude this blog, as the next post in this series will regard African Americans during the Gold Rush.

To learn more:
Do you want more stories like this? Then subscribe to Inside Adams - it's free!

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Chinese hose teams in Deadwood, South Dakota While browsing the Library of Congress' Prints & Photographs Online Catalog, I came across two wonderful photos of Chinese "hose teams." To commemorate July 4, the teams were competing in a fire hose tournament, also known as a "hub-and-hub" race.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Life of the Miner

Click icon to hear

Miner's Life

F orty-niners rushed to California with visions of gilded promise, but they discovered a harsh reality. Life in the gold fields exposed the miner to loneliness and homesickness, isolation and physical danger, bad food and illness, and even death. More than anything, mining was hard work. Fortune might be right around the corner, but so too was failure. The promises and commitments to remain faithful in body and spirit to families left behind were constantly tested by the struggles and temptations of the moment.

Miners responded to these challenges with humor, resiliency, and sometimes despair. "Escape" from the realities of their conditions might be found in correspondence with home, in community with fellow miners, at a gambling table, or in a bottle of whiskey. The temptations of Saturday night were inevitably followed by the chores and rituals of Sunday morning, as miners contrived to create a semblance of community out of life in the mines.

Top: Sunday Morning in the Mines, by Charles Nahl, Collection of Crocker Art Museum
Middle Left: Log Cabin Rocker, Photo by Christopher Richard
Middle Right: Log Cabin Table, Photo by Christopher Richard
Bottom: Saturday Night at the Mines, by Charles Nahl, Collection of Stanford University Museum of Art

© 1998 Oakland Museum of California. All rights reserved.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Life of the Miner Click icon to hear Miner's Life F orty-niners rushed to California with visions of gilded promise, but they discovered a harsh reality. Life in the gold fields exposed the miner to loneliness and homesickness, isolation and physical danger, bad food and illness, and even death.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The Gold Rush is generally considered to be the period between 1848 and roughly 1860, during which time a flood of Argonauts entered California's mining regions, prospected new areas, and eventually spread their activities to neighboring territories. The most enduring image of the gold rush is the eager, grizzled prospector kneeling alongside a stream with his pick and pan. Mining changed rapidly, however, from an individual endeavor to one based on group effort - hydraulic and drift mining - and, eventually, labor-and-capital industrial ventures - quartz lode mining.

Placer Mining

The Gold Rush period was dominated by placer mining for gold. It was not until hard rock or deep mining spread that other metals, along with gold, were mined. Placer mining refers to mining for gold that nature has freed from its associated rock and left in the form of nuggets, flakes, grains, or dust. Because this process was associated with erosion caused by water flow, gold found through "placering" was located in streambeds or in deposits left in ancient streambeds. During the Gold Rush period, placer mining was heavily dependant on manual labor and the use of water, so its mining sites are typically found along streams, in river canyons, or in tributary canyons. Typical mining equipment during the period included cradles, long toms, sluice boxes, and hand-held equipment (pans, picks, shovels, etc.). As the years passed, more elaborate methods of placer mining (river mining with dams and water-driven pumps, ditch-fed sluicing systems, booming and other nascent versions of hydraulicking, and sinking drifts into ancient gravels) gradually replaced the miner with his pick and pan.

The placer mining methods used in California had been known for centuries. They were employed by the Spanish in the New World, and by miners in Georgia and North Carolina in the 1820s and 1830s. Not surprisingly, miners from those regions were influential in providing information about mining techniques (largely by example) to the largely inexperienced miners of the early years of the Gold Rush (Brereton 1976, 286-302). These included use of the familiar pan (batea), cradle (rocker), long tom, and sluice box. Each was a refinement of the earlier - a cradle handled more auriferous material than did a pan (although a pan was often used as a final step), a long tom was more efficient than a cradle, and a sluice box more efficient (especially when linked in series) than a long tom. Each was eventually also more water- and capital-intensive to develop. Miners used these relatively simple methods to process surface placer deposits, usually near an available water supply.

Hydraulic Mining

As the Argonauts learned about placer deposits, they turned to other methods that had more pronounced effects on the landscape. Miners quickly learned that rich placer deposits might be found in the Tertiary gravels left in the beds of ancient rivers in the mountains. Millions of years old, the gravels were the remnant deposits of ancient rivers that had run through the region at angles to the modern streams, and were marooned as the Sierra Nevada's granitic batholith was uplifted and changed the drainage pattern. Getting at these gold-bearing gravels required application of significantly different methods because they were overlaid with non-productive deposits that needed to be removed. The result was development of two different methods: hydraulic mining and drift mining.

The advent of hydraulic mining was among the major improvements to placer mining methods. It was one that had profound effects on California's environment, leaving lasting scars on the earth, debris in the canyons and rivers, and a complex network of canals and ditches that shifted water to mining areas remote from their sources. Hydraulicking also required the application of investment capital, and employed the paradigm of industrialism (hired labor, resources and services acquired from other companies, etc.).

Hydraulic miners employed water under great pressure to wash away the overburden, and to run gold-bearing gravels through elaborate systems of sluice boxes. The water cannons most often seen in historic photographs, called monitors or "giants," were used to remove the "waste" or overburden; smaller monitors were used to wash the gold-bearing gravels into the mines' sluice systems.

Hydraulic mining's heyday was from the 1860s through the mid-1880s, when one of the nation's first environmental lawsuits led to its strict control and, gradually, to its effective end. The main ditches feeding the hydraulic mines were typically eight to fifteen feet wide at the top, four to six feet wide at the bottom, and three or more feet deep. Steep hillsides and deep ravines were traversed with wooden flumes and heavy iron pipes 20 to 40 inches in diameter. These systems were often converted to use in the state's hydroelectric generating systems after the hydraulic mining era passed (Logan 1981, 194). One of the most famous hydraulic mining sites has been preserved in the Malakoff Diggings State Historic Park; it represents a large example, but is by no means the only one in the region. In Calaveras County, the large and extensive hydraulic pits around Mokelumne Hill mark this type of mining.

Drift Mining

Drift mining, a variant method of exploiting the ancient gravels on high, dry hillsides, involved driving tunnels (drifts) into the gravel beds and then processing the extracted material. It was employed where the overburden was too deep for hydraulicking, or where water was less available. Drift mining took place under the lava cap on Table Mountain near Murphys and into the Tertiary deposits around Mokelumne Hill.

Dredging

The final refinement of placer mining was dredging. Successful dredges are largely a 20th century invention. Although unsuccessful efforts, particularly along the Yuba River, were made in the 1850s, attempts at early dredging were largely abandoned in California by the 1880s. Dredge mining fields were located low in elevation, typically where rivers or major tributary streams emerged from the mountains, such as around Jenny Lind in Calaveras County. The first successful bucket dredges in the United States appeared in Montana at Bannack in 1895. By the first decades of the 20th century dredging became efficient, profitable, and a big business; major investors in dredging companies were among the wealthiest people and corporations in the nation.

Dredging was less financially risky and more profitable than most forms of mining, because modern methods such as test holes could predict production levels with accuracy. A modern dredge would typically run 18 hours a day, seven days a week, on an industrial schedule. The companies maintained machine shops to keep the massive equipment in repair. By 1905 the dredges used a system of revolving screens and shaking tables to separate gold from sand and gravels. The dredges in these locations operated into the mid-1960s.

Such machines caused substantial damage to the environment. Mining historian Spence noted that tailing piles in long rows were the signatures of the industry. He also observed that, because their operation was largely before the era of environmental regulation and its wastes tended to be confined within the mining claim, the industry largely escaped serious regulation. These tailing piles were often mostly sterile gravels and cobbles on which vegetation was slow to grow; requirements for "resoiling" were defeated in court and largely ineffective when attempted. When dredging stopped in California, the available dredging equipment was largely disassembled and shipped to other gold fields around the world.

Quartz Lode / Deep Mining

Miners during the Gold Rush were quick to realize that gold existed in quartz veins, and attempted to mine it. As early as 1849, famed guide and trailblazer Kit Carson discovered the Mariposa Mine with its ore-bearing quartz. Early miners used arrastras and other simple mechanisms to try to release the gold from the rock in which it was found.

Quartz lode mining required the application of six general factors that, for the most part, most forms of simple placer mining did not. First, it required technical engineering expertise to design and build the physical plant for such a mine, both above and below ground. While at first this knowledge was often self-taught, as the years went on such expertise became more and more critical. Second, processing the ore involved the application of heavy equipment coupled with motive power. Ores had to be crushed to release their gold. Power for the crushers came from water wheels, compressed air, and later, electricity. Third, the ore often required chemical treatment, through the application of mercury, acids, cyanide, and other solutions, to release the gold from the compounds in which it was found. Fourth, these mines, particularly the larger examples, needed hired labor to operate; of course, this meant that the mine needed to meet payrolls no matter what the day-to-day yield of the veins brought the company. Fifth, as the years progressed, mining geologists became a requirement at major mines. Finally, the need for technical expertise, heavy equipment, chemical plants, and labor meant that mine owners needed ready access to financial markets and investors to fund development and operations. Investors needed surety that a mine's claims were valid, and that its veins had potential yields to provide return on investment.

Quartz lode development did not experience a smooth upward path. By 1858 there were more than 280 stamp quartz mills, each supplied by one or more veins. But by 1861 only 40 to 50 were still in operation. Numbers fluctuated in the years that followed. Hand drills and black powder were common up to 1868, when miners and mining companies began converting to advancements such as power drills and nitroglycerine-based dynamite. It took decades before these became common. Rock crushers, like the Blake Crusher, were introduced in 1861. As mining historian C.A. Logan remarked, "the self-feeder, the rock breaker, heavier stamps, and increased running speed gave the stamps greatly increased capacity." Likewise, the treatment of mine concentrates became more technologically advanced as the years progressed. By the 1880s the frue vanner and endless rubber belt vanners more efficiently concentrated the stamp mills' output, along with mercury tables, and other equipment. The development of chemical methods such as chlorination, used in conjunction with such concentrators, increased the plants' efficiency further. Chlorination was used until 1896, when the cyanide process came into the industry (Logan 1981:195-196).

From history by Rand Herbert, 2008 A Historical Context and Archaeological Research Design for Mining Properties in California. California Department of Transportation, Sacramento.

References

Brereton, Roslyn
1976 Mining Techniques in the California Goldfields During the 1850s. Pacific Historian 20 no. 3: 286-302.

Limbaugh, Ronald H., and Willard P. Fuller, Jr.
2004 Calaveras Gold: The Impact of Mining on a Mother Lode County. University of Nevada Press, Reno.

Logan, C.A
1981 History of Mining and Milling Methods in California. California Geology, September: 194.

Paul, Rodman W.
1965 California Gold: The Beginning of Mining in the Far West. University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln NB.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Gold Rush is generally considered to be the period between 1848 and roughly 1860, during which time a flood of Argonauts entered California's mining regions, prospected new areas, and eventually spread their activities to neighboring territories. The most enduring image of the gold rush is the eager, grizzled prospector kneeling alongside a stream with his pick and pan.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
You'd think that finding gold on your property would mean the end of all your troubles. But for John Sutter, it was just about the worst thing that could have happened. In the 19th century, Sutter was an entrepreneur and owner of a large tract of land in Coloma, California. He hired a carpenter named James Marshall to build a water wheel for a mill on his property. Then in 1848, Marshall discovered flakes of gold in the river.

Although the two men tried to keep the find a secret, they failed miserably. The news spread like a modern California wildfire. Especially after an enterprising gentleman named Sam Brannan paraded around carrying a vial of gold and announcing the whereabouts of the new discovery. He himself didn't go prospecting. He knew of a smarter way to make his fortune, as we shall see.

In just four years - by 1852 - Sutter would be bankrupt, his property overrun and his livestock stolen by avaricious prospectors. It's hard to exaggerate the enormity of the gold rush's demographic impact on California. In a few short years, it transformed from a sparsely populated, newly acquired territory of the U.S. to a fully formed state with a thriving economy. Between 1848 and 1849, the influx of settlers exploded from just 400 to 90,000.

History of the California Gold Rush

To accommodate the flood of '49ers (as these new, would-be gold miners were called), gold mining towns sprung up all over. Shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses set up in these towns to serve the '49ers and make money of their own. Chaos and disorder were common, as were gambling, prostitution and violence. San Francisco became the center of the booming new economy.

But seen from other angles, the gold rush was not a happy event. In particular, for the indigenous peoples who lived there, it was an unmitigated disaster. Thousands of new immigrants pushed the native populations off their land, depriving them of their hunting grounds. Violent confrontations broke out and the newcomers slaughtered as many as 16,000 of California's first peoples in what amounted to state-sanctioned genocide.

The vast majority of the early gold rush immigrants were men, or at least they appeared to be. In fact, there were numerous instances in which women dressed as men. "This phenomenon was so common in gold rush California that when a newspaper photographer advertised for a 'lad' to help him, he was compelled to specify that 'no young women in disguise need apply,'" Clare Sears, associate professor of sociology at San Francisco State University, says via email.

Meanwhile, the mining camps were populated almost exclusively by men, or at least by people dressed as men. At camp dances, this led to a cross-gender practice. "Several men became women for the night, wearing a sackcloth patch to indicate their new gender," Sears says.

Who Got Rich?

Many prospectors did well at first. There was a lot of gold to be found. There are estimates that over the course of the gold rush 1,750 pounds (793.7 kilograms) of the buttery metal were unearthed. But few people were able to hold on to their newfound wealth. Life in a boomtown was notoriously expensive and there were so many ways to lose what you'd found - alcohol, brothels and gambling being the chief enticements.

Still, there were a few characters who got rich and stayed that way. One of them was George Hearst, the father of publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst. By the time he died, George Hearst was worth $19 million, but interestingly he didn't prospect for gold when he arrived in California. Instead, he mined quartz. Building on his earnings, he went on to invest in silver mines across the country, amassing a vast fortune and ending up a U.S. Senator.

Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau probably didn't strike it rich, but he must have made enough to afford the exorbitant cost of living in gold-crazed California because he stuck it out there for years and ended up running a hotel. Charbonneau was an intriguing figure, in part because he was the son of the famous Sacagawea and a Frenchman named Toussaint Charbonneau. As a child, he accompanied his parents on the Lewis and Clark expedition, and after his mother's death he was adopted by Clark.

One of Charbonneau's fellow prospectors ended up running the hotel with him. The man's name was Jim Beckwourth, and his story is at least as colorful. Born a slave, Beckwourth was freed by his master, who was also his father, and headed west where he became a successful fur trapper. Living with the Crow Nation for years, he married several Crow women and was anointed a war chief. He was also credited with discovering the Beckwourth Pass through the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and for helping to establish the Beckwourth Trail, which thousands followed on their way to California.

The Merchant Millionaires

The people who really made money on the California Gold Rush were merchants. Take Levi Strauss. When he heard news of the California Gold Rush, he headed to San Francisco where he established his wholesale dry goods business in 1853. Then in 1872, Strauss partnered with one of his customers, a Reno, Nevada, tailor named Jacob Davis, who was designing heavy cotton work pants hammered with rivets in the pocket corners to make them more durable. The company, "Levi Strauss & Co." couldn't sell enough of their "waist high overalls" to the miners, lumberjacks and farmers. And, well, you know the rest of the story.

And remember Sam Brannan from the beginning of our story - the one who basically kicked off the gold rush by paraded around with that vial of precious metal? Rather than staking a claim on the gold, Brannan bought up all the equipment that prospectors would need; then, when the rush began, re-sold the merchandise at a steep markup. His store made enormous profits, selling as much as $5,000 (about $155,000 in 2020 dollars) in goods per day to miners. He became California's first millionaire, perfectly illustrating the old maxim, "during a gold rush, sell shovels."

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Who Really Struck It Rich During the California Gold Rush?

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
You'd think that finding gold on your property would mean the end of all your troubles. But for John Sutter, it was just about the worst thing that could have happened. In the 19th century, Sutter was an entrepreneur and owner of a large tract of land in Coloma, California.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Not Even Past: Social Vulnerability and the Legacy of Redlining

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Not Even Past maps redlining maps from the 1930s with maps of health dispartities today, showing enduring contours of marked inequality in American cities over the past century.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The California Gold Rush of 1849 | Coloma, California

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
After James Marshall discovered gold in Coloma, he tried to keep his discovery a secret. But the secret was too big to keep. The laborers at the sawmill had close friends working at Sutter’s Fort.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
The California Gold Rush (1848-1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy, and the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood, in the Compromise of 1850.

Learn more about the California Gold Rush through historical newspapers from our archives. Explore newspaper articles, headlines, images, and other primary sources below.

Articles and Clippings about the California Gold Rush

Topics Westward Expansion
The views and opinions expressed in these newspaper articles and clippings are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of Newspapers.com or Ancestry.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
California Gold Rush - Topics on Newspapers.com

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The California Gold Rush (1848-1855) began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The California Gold Rush | American Experience | PBS

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The discovery of gold in1848 unleashed the largest migration in United States history and drew people from a dozen countries to form a multi-ethnic society in California.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
Sutter's Mill

On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Jersey, found flakes of gold in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California.

At the time, Marshall was working to build a water-powered sawmill owned by John Sutter, a German-born Swiss citizen and founder of a colony of Nueva Helvetia (New Switzerland, which would later become the city of Sacramento). As Marshall later recalled of his historic discovery: "It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold."

Did you know? Miners extracted more than 750,000 pounds of gold during the California Gold Rush.

Days after Marshall's discovery at Sutter's Mill, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, ending the Mexican-American War and leaving California in the hands of the United States-a remarkable twist of fate with important ramifications for an America eager for westward expansion.

At the time, 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).

Sutter, in fact, had enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them as a free source of labor and makeshift militia to defend his territory and expand his empire.

Gold Fever Strikes

Though Marshall and Sutter tried to keep news of the discovery under wraps, word got out, and by mid-March at least one newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were being turned up at Sutter's Mill. Though the initial reaction in San Francisco was disbelief, storekeeper Sam Brannan set off a frenzy when he paraded through town displaying a vial of gold obtained from Sutter's Creek.

By mid-June, shops and businesses stood empty, as some three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had abandoned the city for the gold mines, and the number of miners in the area ballooned to some 4,000 by August.

As news reports-many wildly overblown-of the easy fortunes being made in California spread worldwide, some of the first migrants to arrive were those from lands accessible by boat, such as Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii), Mexico, Chile, Peru and China.

Polk Spreads Gold Fever

When the news reached the East Coast, press reports were initially skeptical. Gold fever kicked off nationwide in earnest, however, after December 1848, when President James K. Polk announced the positive results of a report made by Colonel Richard Mason, California's military governor, in his inaugural address.

As Polk wrote, "The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief 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) with gold fever borrowed money, mortgaged their property or spent their life savings to make the arduous journey 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 alone.

Thousands of would-be gold miners, known as 49ers for the year they arrived, traveled overland across the mountains or by sea, sailing to Panama or even around Cape Horn, the southernmost point of South America.

By the end of the year, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000, (as compared with 20,000 at the end 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 ever more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, alcoholism, prostitution and violence. San Francisco, for its part, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new frontier.

Gold Rush Politics

The Gold Rush undoubtedly sped up California's admission to the Union as the 31st state. In late 1849, California applied to enter the Union with a constitution that barred the Southern system of racial slavery, provoking a crisis in Congress between proponents of slavery and anti-slavery politicians.

According to the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Kentucky's Senator Henry Clay, California was allowed to enter as a free state, while the territories of Utah and New Mexico were left to decide the legal status of slavery for themselves.

California's Mines

After 1850, the surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to arrive. Mining had always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck as much as skill and hard work. Moreover, the average daily take for an independent miner working with his pick and shovel had by then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848.

As gold became more and more difficult to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, it had reached its peak by 1852, when some $81 million was pulled from the ground. After that year, the total take declined gradually, leveling off to around $45 million per year by 1857. Settlement in California continued, however, and by the end of the decade the state's population was 380,000.

Impact of the Gold 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 brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's landscape.

Dams designed to supply water to mine sites in summer altered the course of rivers away from farmland, while sediment from mines clogged others. The logging industry in the area was born from the need to construct extensive canals and feed boilers at mines, further consuming natural resources.

In 1884, hydraulic mining was outlawed by court order, and soon agriculture became the dominant industry in California, and it remains so today. While a few mines and Gold Rush towns remain, much of the heritage of that era is preserved at places such as Bodie State Historic Park, a decaying ghost town, and at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, where Sutter's Mill once stood.

Sources

Environmental Impact of the Gold Rush. Calisphere.org.
After the Gold Rush. National Geographic.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gold Rush: California, Date & Sutter's Mill - HISTORY

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Gold Rush in California started in 1848 after gold was found at Sutter's Mill. Within a year, hundreds of thousands of 49ers seeking fortune poured into the state.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
How did the discovery of gold affect California

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Gold Rush of 1848 with John Sutter and James Marshall

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Marshall Gold Discovery State Park Travel Guide | Sutter's Mill | California Travel Tips

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The Emperor of California – The Curious History of John Sutter

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
4th Grade California Statehood: The Effects Of The Gold Rush

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
The California Gold Rush cartoon 1849 (The Wild West)