CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH

The California Gold Rush (1848–1855) was a period in American history which 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—mostly by sailing ships and covered wagons—some
300,000 gold-seekers (called "forty-niners", as in "1849") to California. While most of the
newly arrived wereAmericans, the Gold Rush also attracted some tens of thousands
from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. At first, loose gold nuggets could be picked
up off the ground, and since there was no law regarding property rights in the goldfields, a
system of "staking claims" was developed. In 1849, a state constitution, governorship, and
legislature were established, and as part of the Compromise of 1850, California officially
became a US state. Agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the
needs of the settlers. Roads and other towns were built throughout the new state, and new
methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service. By
1869, railroads were built across the country from California to the eastern United States.

The California Gold Rush was a particularly violent period for the new settlers of the Wild
West. After the initial boom had ended, explicitly anti-foreign and racist attacks, laws and
confiscatory taxes sought to drive out foreigners, especially Chinese and Latin
American immigrants.[3][4] The toll on internal migrants was also severe: roughly one in twelve
perished due to the extraordinarily high crime rates and the resulting vigilantism.[5] While the
total of gold recovered would be worth tens of billions of US dollars today, eventually the
technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required in order to
mine the gold, causing increasingly important mining companies to take over the industry
and leading to great wealth for a few. Many of those who had had to rely on simple gathering
methods, such as gold panning, returned home with only a little more than they had originally
started with.

A radical decrease in the native population that had begun during the Spanish/Mexican era
was exacerbated by the major American/European population influx and lawless conditions
of the Gold Rush. Much of the reduction was due to disease, but some new arrivals openly
advocated genocide against Native Americans. Peter Burnett, California's first governor,
declared that California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two
options towards California Indians, extinction or removal. The State of California directly paid
out $25,000 in bounties for Indian scalps with varying prices for adult male, adult female, and
child sizes. It also provided the basis for the enslavement and trafficking of Native American
labor, particularly that of young women and children, which was carried on as a legal
business enterprise. Miners, loggers, and settlers formed vigilante groups and
local militias to hunt the Natives, regularly raiding villages to supply the demand. The Native
population of California, once perhaps as high as 705,000 in numbers, but by 1845 already
down to some 150,000, further spiraled downward until by 1890 it had reached below 20,000
HISTORY
The California Gold Rush began at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma. On January 24, 1848, James
W. Marshall, a foreman working forSacramento pioneer John Sutter, found shiny metal in
the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter on the American River. Marshall
brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two privately tested the metal. After the tests
showed that it was gold, Sutter expressed dismay: he wanted to keep the news quiet because
he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empireif there were a mass
search for gold.

However, rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San
Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. The most famous quote of
the California Gold Rush was by Brannan; after he had hurriedly set up a store to sell gold
prospecting supplies, Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a
vial of gold, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!

Previous to the discovery of gold, California was the Mexican territory of Alta California. This
region had been under the control of Spanish speaking people since Europeans arrived in
California, first under control of the Spanish Empire before being passed down to Mexican
control after a successful campaign for independence. Most large outposts of civilization at
this time were located along the coast fromSan Diego up to San Francisco where they were
concentrated away from the areas that gold would eventually be found. The majority of non-
natives living in Alta California at this time were Spanish speaking mestizos from either a
Spanish possession or Spain itself. American and European settlers did began moving to
Alta California in the years preceding the gold rush, but they tended to settle in these
established regions and were a minority of the population.

Due to the expansive size of the territory and its distance from the central Mexican
government located in Mexico, the people living in Alta California had a shaky relationship
with the central government powers. This rocky relationship peaked in 1836 when Juan
Bautista Alvarado led a rebellion and took the office of governor, this would happen again in
1845, these acts of rebellion allowed Alta California to have more freedom in their own
government in the final years of Mexican rule. The revolt and annexation of Texas gave Alta
California the opportunity to begin its own fight for freedom. With the help of the United States
armed forces during the Mexican–American War American Settlers were able to defeat the
Mexican Army and a Californio militia leading up to the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe
Hidalgo on February 2, 1848, less than two weeks after the discovery of gold.

On August 19, 1848, the New York Herald was the first major newspaper on the East Coast
to report the discovery of gold. On December 5, 1848, President James Polkconfirmed the
discovery of gold in an address to Congress. Soon, waves of immigrants from around the
world, later called the "forty-niners," invaded the Gold Country of California or "Mother Lode".
As Sutter had feared, he was ruined; his workers left in search of gold, and squatters took
over his land and stole his crops and cattle.
San Francisco had been a tiny settlement before the rush began. When residents learned
about the discovery, it at first became a ghost town of abandoned ships and
businesses,[22] but then boomed as merchants and new people arrived. The population of
San Francisco exploded from perhaps about 1,000[23] in 1848 to 25,000 full-time residents by
1850.[24] Miners lived in tents, wood shanties, or deck cabins removed from abandoned
ships.[25]

In what has been referred to as the "first world-class gold rush,"[26] there was no easy way to
get to California; forty-niners faced hardship and often death on the way. At first,
most Argonauts, as they were also known, traveled by sea. From the East Coast, a sailing
voyage around the tip of South America would take five to eight months,[27] and cover some
18,000 nautical miles (33,000 kilometres). An alternative was to sail to the Atlantic side of
the Isthmus of Panama, take canoes and mules for a week through the jungle, and then on
the Pacific side, wait for a ship sailing for San Francisco.[28] There was also a route across
Mexico starting at Veracruz. Many gold-seekers took the overland route across the
continental United States, particularly along the California Trail.[29] Each of these routes had
its own deadly hazards, from shipwreck to typhoid fever and cholera.[30]

To meet the demands of the arrivals, ships bearing goods from around the world came to
San Francisco as well. Ships' captains found that their crews deserted to go to the goldfields.
The wharves and docks of San Francisco became a forest of masts, as hundreds of ships
were abandoned. Enterprising San Franciscans turned the abandoned ships into
warehouses, stores, taverns, hotels, and one into a jail.[31] Many of these ships were later
destroyed and used for landfill to create more buildable land in the boomtown

Within a few years, there was an important but lesser-known surge of prospectors into far
Northern California, specifically into present-daySiskiyou, Shasta and Trinity
Counties. Discovery of gold nuggets at the site of present-day Yreka in 1851 brought
thousands of gold-seekers up the Siskiyou Trail[33] and throughout California's northern
counties. Settlements of the Gold Rush era, such as Portuguese Flat on the Sacramento
River, sprang into existence and then faded. The Gold Rush town of Weaverville on
the Trinity River today retains the oldest continuously used Taoist temple in California, a
legacy of Chinese miners who came. While there are not many Gold Rush era ghost towns
still in existence, the remains of the once-bustling town of Shasta have been preserved in
a California State Historic Park in Northern California.

Gold was also discovered in Southern California but on a much smaller scale. The first
discovery of gold, at Rancho San Francisco in the mountains north of present-day Los
Angeles, had been in 1842, six years before Marshall's discovery, while California was
still part of Mexico.. However, these first deposits, and later discoveries in Southern California
mountains, attracted little notice and were of limited consequence economically.

By 1850, most of the easily accessible gold had been collected, and attention turned to
extracting gold from more difficult locations. Faced with gold increasingly difficult to retrieve,
Americans began to drive out foreigners to get at the most accessible gold that remained.
The new California State Legislature passed a foreign miners tax of twenty dollars per month
($570 per month as of 2016), and American prospectors began organized attacks on foreign
miners, particularly Latin Americans and Chinese.

In addition, the huge numbers of newcomers were driving Native Americans out of their
traditional hunting, fishing and food-gathering areas. To protect their homes and livelihood,
some Native Americans responded by attacking the miners. This provoked counter-attacks
on native villages. The Native Americans, out-gunned, were often slaughtered. Those who
escaped massacres were many times unable to survive without access to their food-
gathering areas, and they starved to death. Novelist and poetJoaquin Miller vividly captured
one such attack in his semi-autobiographical work, Life Amongst the Modocs