The Gold Rush, A Venture to California 's Wealth
Almost seventy years after the United States gained independence and the country’s territory extended nearly across the North American continent. Americans were moving all over the country to settle in new places. However, travelling west to settle wasn’t a popular choice with everyone since the southwest belonged to Mexico at the time. That changed on January 24, 1848, when a New Jersey carpenter, James W. Marshall, happened to see something glimmering beneath the water of a river. It was gold. The timing of Marshall’s discovery would prove to be a key element in the events to come. He found the gold just nine days before California would become a part of U.S. territory. The Mexican War had just ended and the U.S. gained the entire southwest, from New Mexico to the Pacific Ocean. But with California now in U.S. territory, and the new founded promise of gold, the lure of settlement there was greater than ever.
Black Elk, a Sioux holy man, described gold as “the yellow metal that makes Wasichus [white men] crazy.” He was right. After the first reports of gold, people flocked to the west, mad with the idea of becoming wealthy. At first only a few people came to the west. But more soon followed when the early prospectors found thousands of dollars of golf. When California belonged to Mexico in 1848 there were 14,000 non-native people living there, most of them being Hispanic. By 1870 the population of California was 380,000, most of those being gold seeking Americans. These new pioneers were referred to as “forty-niners.” A lot of these settlers lived in mining camps. The camps established rules from the very beginning. Each prospector was to get a turn to dig, and wasn’t to be pushed aside. No settler could hold more than a single plot. However, jails did not exist in these camps. People found guilty of crimes were banished, had their ears cut off, or were hanged. These camps existed until the Gold Rush ended, when it was realized that all the gold had been harvested from the earth. A tragic day for all the Americans who had travelled thousands of miles to get there, without finding a single nugget of gold. Sources: http://exhibits.library.villanova.edu/files/93851238514588laneGold01.jpg http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c6/Panning_on_the_Mokelumne.jpg http://www.goldrushglimpses.com/images/goldrush-miners.jpg http://www.csmonitor.com/var/archive/storage/images/media/images/2011/0718-weekly/0718-ctimeline-timeline-gold-rush-california/10441160-1-eng-US/0718-ctimeline-timeline-GOLD-RUSH-california_full_600.jpg |
Fun Fact: The Gold Rush was one of the largest mass migration in U.S. history
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