Gold rush history12/27/2023 ![]() The law didn’t help: Chinese migrants were barred from testifying in court after the murder conviction of a white man. They often encountered racism, were given low pay and dangerous jobs while warding off violent attacks in the camps. In 1852, 20,000 Chinese immigrants arrived in California-a third of the state’s population increase that year. The rush didn’t just bring migrants from the American east, but also from abroad. Other merchants included Leland Stanford, who founded Stanford University Domingo Ghirardelli, who would become famous for his chocolate and coffee business and Levi Strauss, the blue jeans maker. They were, as one popular phrase had it, “ mining the miners.” California’s first millionaire was not a miner but a merchant and newspaper publisher, Samuel Brannan, who spent the Gold Rush selling equipment and provisions to newcomers. “We soon found that, although, in imagination, it might be agreeable work, yet in reality, it was the most laborious and in the majority of cases the most unsatisfactory that men could be engaged in,” Augustin Hibbard wrote to his brother a few months later.Ī few men did become very wealthy during this time-not often from gold, but from selling goods to those who had come west looking for gold. The work of panning and digging for gold was hard and dirty, but wasn’t often productive. In Sacramento, the cholera epidemic killed 1,000 people in three weeks in 1850. Life could be hard: Miners often ate bad food and lived in crowded, shabby quarters where disease spread easily. The Indigenous population, estimated at 310,000 in 1769, fell to just 30,000 by 1860.įor many newly minted prospectors, though, hopes of striking it rich faded quickly. ![]() Peter Burnett said in his 1851 State of the State address. That war “will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected,” Gov. They didn’t find unclaimed land, though: California had long been home to a number of Native tribes-and the state’s new leaders declared war on them. Borthwick had been living in New York in 1851 when he “was seized with the California fever” and joined the crowds headed west. ![]() “All sorts and conditions of men, old, young, and middle-aged… were relinquishing their existing pursuits and associations to commence a totally new existence in the land of gold,” the Edinburgh-born artist J.D. In 1850, just over a year after Polk made his announcement, the Census Bureau made its first-ever count: It found 92,597 residents.Ī decade later, that number had nearly quadrupled. One way to measure the impact of the Gold Rush is by population. How California was transformed by the Gold Rush It turns out, neither did the so-called “ 49ers” who came to California at the Gold Rush’s height-1849. Those prospectors probably won’t get rich from their finds. ![]() It’s clear the lure of a quick payday is still strong today. Just last month, in fact, heavy winter storms in California brought on “mini gold rushes” of enthusiasts who scoured streams and rivers for tiny nuggets of shiny yellow metal washed down from the mountains. His announcement helped spark a mad dash for riches that would transform the distant American territory into the “Golden State” and leave an imprint on the national consciousness that lingers today. There were already at least 4,000 gold prospectors in California, he reported. “The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief,” Polk told Congress. A sawmill worker named James Marshall had spotted flecks of metal in a stream bed, and word was starting to get out. After discussing the recently concluded Mexican-American War, the president got to the point: There was gold in those California hills. Polk’s deed came during his final State of the Union in December 1848. Polk’s last major acts as president was also one of his most consequential: He helped set off the California Gold Rush.
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