How Much Money Was Made In The Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush was sparked by the discovery of gold nuggets in the Sacramento Valley in early 1848 and was arguably 1 of the most significant events to shape American history during the start half of the 19th century. As news spread of the discovery, thousands of prospective gold miners traveled by sea or over land to San Francisco and the surrounding area; by the end of 1849, the non-native population of the California territory was some 100,000 (compared with the pre-1848 figure of less than i,000). A total of $2 billion worth of precious metallic was extracted from the expanse during the Gold Blitz, which peaked in 1852.   .

Discovery at Sutter's Mill

On January 24, 1848, James Wilson Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Jersey, institute flakes of golden in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains most Coloma, California. At the time, Marshall was working to build a water-powered sawmill owned by John Sutter, a German-built-in Swiss citizen and founder of a colony of Nueva Helvetia (New Switzerland, which would later become the city of Sacramento. As Marshall later recalled of his celebrated discovery: "It made my heart thump, for I was sure it was gold."

Days later on Marshall's discovery at Sutter's Mill, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed, catastrophe the Mexican-American State of war and leaving California in the hands of the United States. At the fourth dimension, the population of the territory consisted of vi,500 Californios (people of Castilian or Mexican descent); 700 foreigners (primarily Americans); and 150,000 Native Americans (barely half the number that had been at that place when Spanish settlers arrived in 1769). In fact, Sutter had enslaved hundreds of Native Americans and used them as a free source of labor and makeshift militia to defend his territory and expand his empire.

Effects of the California Golden Rush: Gold Fever

Though Marshall and Sutter tried to continue news of the discovery nether wraps, word got out, and by mid-March at least 1 newspaper was reporting that large quantities of gold were existence turned up at Sutter's Mill. Though the initial reaction in San Francisco was atheism, storekeeper Sam Brannan fix off a frenzy when he paraded through town displaying a vial of gold obtained from Sutter's Creek. By mid-June, some three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had left boondocks for the gilded mines, and the number of miners in the area reached 4,000 by August.

As news spread of the fortunes being made in California, some of the first migrants to make it were those from lands accessible past boat, such as Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (at present Hawaii), Mexico, Republic of chile, Peru and fifty-fifty China. When the news reached the Eastward Coast, press reports were initially skeptical. Gilded fever kicked off there in hostage, even so, after December 1848, when President James K. Polk announced the positive results of a report fabricated by Colonel Richard Mason, California'due south military governor, in his inaugural address. As Polk wrote, "The accounts of abundance of aureate are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they non corroborated past the authentic reports of officers in the public service."

The '49ers Come to California

Throughout 1849, people around the The states (by and large men) borrowed money, mortgaged their holding or spent their life savings to brand the arduous journey to California. In pursuit of the kind of wealth they had never dreamed of, they left their families and hometowns; in turn, women left behind took on new responsibilities such as running farms or businesses and caring for their children alone. Thousands of would-exist aureate miners, known as '49ers, traveled overland across the mountains or by sea, sailing to Panama or even effectually Cape Horn, the southernmost point of Southward America.

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Past the end of the year, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000, (as compared with 20,000 at the stop of 1848 and around 800 in March 1848). To accommodate the needs of the '49ers, gold mining towns had sprung upward all over the region, complete with shops, saloons, brothels and other businesses seeking to make their own Gold Rush fortune. The overcrowded anarchy of the mining camps and towns grew ever more lawless, including rampant banditry, gambling, prostitution and violence. San Francisco, for its function, developed a bustling economy and became the central metropolis of the new borderland.

The Gold Rush undoubtedly sped up California'due south access to the Union every bit the 31st land. In late 1849, California applied to enter the Spousal relationship with a constitution that barred the Southern arrangement of racial slavery, provoking a crisis in Congress between proponents of slavery and anti-slavery politicians. Co-ordinate to the Compromise of 1850, proposed by Kentucky'southward Senator Henry Clay, California was allowed to enter as a free state, while the territories of Utah and New Mexico were left open to decide the question for themselves.

California's Mines Subsequently the Gold Rush

Subsequently 1850, the surface gold in California largely disappeared, even as miners continued to arrive. Mining had always been difficult and dangerous labor, and striking it rich required good luck equally much as skill and hard work. Moreover, the average daily take for an independent miner working with his choice and shovel had by and then sharply decreased from what it had been in 1848. As gilded became more and more hard to reach, the growing industrialization of mining drove more and more miners from independence into wage labor. The new technique of hydraulic mining, developed in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region's mural.

Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s, information technology had reached its peak by 1852, when some $81 million was pulled from the ground. After that year, the total take declined gradually, leveling off to effectually $45 meg per year by 1857. Settlement in California continued, however, and by the finish of the decade the state's population was 380,000.

Environmental Affect of the Gold Rush

New mining methods and the population boom in the wake of the California Golden Rush permanently altered the mural of California. The technique of hydraulic mining, adult in 1853, brought enormous profits but destroyed much of the region'southward landscape. Dams designed to supply water to mine sites in summertime altered the course of rivers away from farmland, while sediment from mines clogged others. The logging manufacture was born from the demand to construct extensive canals and feed boilers at mines, farther consuming natural resource.

Sources

Environmental Affect of the Gold Rush. Calisphere.org.

After the Gold Rush. National Geographic.

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Source: https://www.history.com/topics/westward-expansion/gold-rush-of-1849

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