1. Growth of the West
14.4

2. California Gold Rush
Gold is discovered near Sutter’s Mill in Northern California
100,000 flock out to CA to strike it rich!
Forty-Niners: those who caught “gold-fever”

3. Sutter’s Mill

4. San Francisco became the fastest growing city in America
By 1850, California could petition for state-hood

5. Prospecting for Gold Few had experience Few actually got rich
Mining towns quickly turned to ghost towns

6. Placer Mining

7. Gold Attracted Immigrants
Over 10,000 entered CA in 1849 alone
Most were Irish, German, Swiss
24,000 Chinese Immigrants in CA by 1853.

11. Chinese Immigrants faced a lot of Discrimination

15. Levi Strauss
A Jewish-German Immigrant who founded the 1st company that made blue-jeans for miners in San Fransisco

16. The Church of Latter-Day Saints
Founded by Joseph Smith in New York in 1830
Believed he had found a 5th Gospel to the Bible called the Book of Mormon

17. Mormons Some practiced Polygamy: being married to more than one woman.
Their beliefs were seen as strange to most Americans
They faced peresecution
Mormons were pushed from place to place.

19. War & Assassination force them West
1844: Smith was murdered by an angry mob in Illinois
Brigham Young led the Mormon Church to their “promised land” in Utah
They settled near Great Salt Lake