From Sea to Shining Sea Part 5 The California Gold Rush

Gold in California! While the Mormons were going to Utah, immigrants were on the trail to Oregon, and settlers continued going into New Mexico, people were also were heading to California in huge numbers. Some exciting news from the Sacramento Valley had come out. Gold had been discovered!!!

When Mexico had owned California, one of the few foreigners they had let in was John Sutter from Switzerland. He was granted 50,000 acres in the Sacramento Valley. He wanted to build an agricultural empire. In 1848, Sutter sent a carpenter named James Marshall to build a sawmill on the American River.

The American River

One day, Mr. Marshall inspected the canal that brought water to Sutter’s Mill. He later said: “My eye was caught by a glimpse of something shining….I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump for I felt certain it was gold.”

Site of the 1848 California Gold Strike.

The news was impossible to keep secret. People excitedly abandoned their regular jobs in nearby San Francisco, and flocked to the gold fields in the Sacramento Valley in hopes of getting rich. Soon gold was also found in the rivers and streams flowing out of the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

San Francisco prior to the Gold Rush

San Francisco in 1851

In 1849, 80,000 people from around the world came to the region. They became known as “forty-niners”.

A 49er who wished to reach California from the East had a choice of 3 routes, all of them which were very dangerous. Almost as dangerous as the throwing combo of Joe Montana to Jerry Rice!!! ☺

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Option #1 Sail 18,000 miles around South America and up the Pacific coast. Dangers faced, included rough storms, seasickness, and spoiled or rotten food.

Option #2 Sail to the narrow Isthmus of Panama, cross overland where you had the chance of catching a deadly tropical disease, and then hoping for a boat to sail on to California.

Option #3 Travel the trails across North America. On the way, you had to brave flooded rivers, prairies, mountains, and the other hardships of the trail.

At first, gold was found near the surface, and you could dig for it with knives. Later, people “panned for gold”.

Surface Mining

Thousands came to get rich, and often “Boom Towns” sprang up quickly. If towns were abandoned, they became known as “Ghost Towns”. The vast majority of people never “struck it rich”, but many miners stayed and California grew rapidly. Often, people made more money selling supplies to the miners, than people ever made mining for gold.

If gold or other important minerals were found, a town might suddenly start growing, whereas a few weeks prior, no one had lived there.

The denim jeans created by German immigrant Levi Strauss were wildly popular. He is a great example of someone who made money off of the Gold Rush.

California’s Unique Culture ► Native Americans faced a lot of problems. Many were driven from their homes, and sometimes died of starvation or they were murdered. ► By the 1870’s, only 17,000 remained. ► Many Mexican- Americans lost lands that had been in their families for years. They struggled to keep their customs alive. ► They did get the state constitution written in both English and Spanish.

► Thousands of Chinese were attracted by stories of “mountains of gold”. ► At first they were welcomed as workers, but then were driven off as they tried to mine for gold. ► Free blacks did try to search for gold. In the 1850’s, California had the richest black population in the U.S. ► As with other minorities, they were denied certain rights.

San Francisco turned into a major, bustling city, that for decades was the most important city on the West Coast. Its population went from 500 people in 1847 to 150,000 in Today, it is still a major center of banking, trade, and tourism. Its population today is around 800,000 people, with the surrounding metropolitan area numbering in the millions.

Throughout much of California, there was a lot of violence and crime without much law enforcement in the years following the Gold Rush. VIGILANTE JUSTICE (taking the law into your own hands) was common. California grew so quickly, that it soon had enough people to apply for statehood. As we soon will see, that caused problems back in the United States.