gold rush in California describes period of seven years (1848 - 1855), which started in January 1848, and which attracted 300.000 adventurers, American and foreigners, who flowed in California following the gold discovery in Sutter' S Mill, in the east of Sacramento.

These pioneers, whom one called the “Forty-Niners”, arrived to California by boat or terrestrial way on board carriages, of all the continent, at the price of a very often difficult voyage. Whereas the majority of these new arrivals were American, the Gold rush also attracted tens of thousands from abroad of Latin America, of Europe, Australia and Asia. At the beginning, these gold diggers placed themselves along the rivers and used for their research the artisanal techniques of the Orpaillage, but of more sophisticated methods of gold extraction transfer the day, which were then adopted in the whole world. Million gold dollars was discovered, involving the fortune of some; others turned over on their premises with hardly more than it had not started.

The gold rush transformed California deeply. San Francisco, then small hamlet made up of tents, develops under the pressure of the population growth, and of the roads, churches, schools and buildings are built. A system of law and a government are created, government which will carry out the admission of California as a American State in 1850. Novel modes of transport develop, the Steamer becomes regular means of transport and railroads are built. The Agriculture, future major economic side of California, started to develop through all the State. However, the gold rush did not have only positive aspects: Many a North-Amerindians was attacked and driven out their grounds, and the extraction of gold involved environmental problems.

Highlights

The gold rush occurs with Sutter' S Mill (a sawmill belonging to some John Sutter) in the surroundings of coloma on January 24th, 1848. James W. Marshall, a workman working for Sutter, finds pieces of a metal shining in the level of the sawmill which it had built for Sutter on the edge of the American River. The results of test practiced by the two men show that the particles discovered by Marshall are being of gold.

Sutter is, then, disconcerted by this discovery and wanted to hold it secret because it feared what could arrive for its projects of agricultural empire in the event of intensive search for gold. However the news was not long in being spread and was confirmed in March 1848 by the leader-writer Samuel Brannan.

August 19th, 1948, the New York Herald (a newspaper of New York published of 1835 to 1924) was the first large newspaper of the east coast to mention the gold rush in California. December 5th, the president James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in a message with the American congress. At once, of the waves of immigrants of the whole world broke on California. These immigrants will be called, later, the “forty-niners” (“quarante-neufards” because of this year of 1949). As Sutter feared it, it was ruined: all its workmen leaving to research gold, its occupied grounds and its stolen harvests and its cattle.

San Francisco was a tiny establishment of pioneers before the beginning of the gold rush. When the inhabitants with the current of were discovered gold, it became a phantom Ville of abandoned ships and companies whose owners had joined the rush. But the city exploded with the arrival of new adventurers and tradesmen. The population of San Francisco passed from approximately 1000 inhabitants in 1848 to: 25000 permanent residents in 1850. As with much with mushroom towns, the sudden flow of population saturated the infrastructures with San Francisco and other cities around the gold-fields. The Men lived in tents, huts out of wooden or cabins taken on abandoned ships.

There was no obvious way to go to California. The “forty-niners” faced many difficulties and much could find death on the ways of the conquest of gold. At the origin, the argonautes (as they then were called), travelled by the sea. At the beginning of the east coast, a voyage by the Cape Horn, took between five and eight month and covered a distance from: 18000 nautical miles is 33.000 km. An alternative was to join the east coast of the isthmus of Panama then, using mules and of canoes, to cross, over one week, the jungle to the peaceful coast and to await there a ship travelling towards San Francisco. There was also a road crossing Mexico at the beginning of Vera Cruz. In addition, much of gold diggers borrowed a terrestrial road through the United States of America, in particular while following California Trail of Missouri to California. Each one of these roads avaeint their own mortals risks: shipwrecks, typhoid fever or cholera.

To answer at the request of the new immigrants, of the ships important of the goods of the whole world, like the porcelain and the silk of China or ale of Scotland, flowed to San Francisco. Arrived there, the captains of the boats found their ship deserted by the crew going itself from there to prospect. The quays and the docks of San Francisco became a forest of masts when hundreds of ships were abandoned. Determined, the inhabitants used these ships as warehouses, stores, taverns, hotels and prisons. Many these ships, later, were destroyed and used like fill in order to develop the constructible grounds.

During several years, there another, though less known, breaking in the north of California where are, today, the Comté of Siskiyou, the Comté of Shasta and the Comté of Trinity. The discovery, in 1851, of gold nuggets at the place where the town of Yreka is today drained thousands of prospectors towards the counties of the north of California. Certain sites of the time of the gold rush such as Portuguese Flat spouted out of nowhere and disappeared. The town of Weaverville on the trinity to rivet still accommodates the oldest temple Taoiste in activity of all California, a heritage of the Chinese minors come to prospect. Whereas it does not remain much any more of phantom cities of this time, the remainders, preserved still well, of the town of Shasta form Shasta State Historic Park in the north of California.

Gold was also found in the south of California but in quantity much smaller. One finds gold for the first time, in the mountain in the north of Los Angeles today, in 1842 (six years before Marshall with Sutter' S Mill) whereas California is still Mexican. However, these first layers and the discovery of others later (in the southern mountains of California) made less noise and had limited economic consequences.

During the year 1850, the majority of the most accessible resources had been exploited and one turned, then, to the extraction of more difficult layers of access. Indicator that gold was increasingly difficult to find, American started to drive out the foreigners in order to have access, as much as possible, with the gold which it remained. The new legislature of the state of California required foreign minors whom they discharge a tax of twenty dollars per month. The American prospectors started to attack the foreigners and, particularly, the Latin-American ones and the Chinese. In addition, the amazing number of new arrivals drove out many Amerindians of their usual zones of hunting and fishing. In order to protect their dwellings and their means from subsistence, they answered by attacking the minors what caused violent reprisals of the minors on their villages. The Indians, less better armed, were often killed. Those which managed to escape the massacres, were often unable to survive not having access to their natural resources and died famished. The novelist and poet Joaquin Miller tell one year of his life among the mining cities and the Amerindian campings in his book Life amongst the Modocs .

Forty-niners

The first people to flow towards the gold bearing layers, in spring 1848, were the inhabitants of California themselves, the Americans and Europeans living in the north of California in cohabitaion with améridiens and some Californios (of Californian speaking Spanish, of time when California was Mexican).

The rumor of a gold rush did not spread immediately. The first gold diggers arriving to California during year 1848 were either of the inhabitants close to California, or of people who learned the news by the boats from the fastest sea routes coming from California. The first wave of American immigrants consisted of several thousands of American of the Oregon who went down by Siskiyou Trail. Then came from people coming from Hawaii, by boat, and several thousands of Latin-American of the Mexico, the Peru and as far as the Chile, per boat and the ground. At the end of the year 1848, some 6000 Argonautes had arrived to California. Only a small number of between-them (probably less than 500) had crossed the the United States this year there. Some of these " forty-eighters" (" quarante-huitards"), as were called sometimes these very first gold diggers, had opportunity of collecting large amounts of an accessible gold: the equivalent of several thousands of dollards, each day, in certain cases.

But even the average prospector released per day the equivalent, out of gold, from 10 to 50 daily wages of a worker of the east coast. A person could work six months in the fields orifères and bring back, at his place, the six years equivalent of wages.

At the beginning of 1849, the rumor of the gold rush had made the round the world tour and a crushing number of tradesman and gold diggers started to arrive from practically all the continents. The majority of these forty-niners were American and came per tens of thousands through the country or by various sea routes. Australian and Néo-zélandais collected information of the newspapers disseminated by the boats hawaïen and of the thousands of between-them, gained by the fever of gold, embarked on ships on the way towards California. Forty-niners came from Latin America, in particular of the Mexican mine fields of Sonora. Gold diggers and walking Asian, mainly Chinese, started to arrive in 1849, initially of small number, to California which they named the " mountain dorée". The first immigrants of Europe, shaken by the effects of the Revolution of 1848 and with a longer way to be traversed, arrived only at the end of 1849, generally of France but also of Germany, Italy and Great Britain.

One estimated at almost 90.000 the number of immigrants in California in 1849 (approximately 50% by the sea and 50% by the ground). 50.000 to 60.000 of between-them were American, the others came from various horizons. In 1855, one estimated at least 300.000 the number of gold diggers, walking and other immigrants of the whole world arrived to California. The majority were always American but there were also tens of thousands of Mexicans, Chinese, and Latin-American as well as small groups of minors like Filipino or Basques. Only one small number of minors of African origin (probably less than 4000) came from the states of the south of the United States, the the Caribbean and the Brésil.

Legislation

With the whole beginning of the gold rush, California was an area where there did not exist any legislation. The day when gold was discovered in Sutter' S Mill, California was still a Mexican province under American military occupation, result of the américano-Mexican Guerre. Following the Treated of Guadeloupe Hidalgo of the February 2nd 1848 fine putting at the war, California is lost by Mexico with the profit them the United States without to formally become a " territoire" , i.e. an area under administration of the government of the United States but belonging to no states (Territories off the United States). In addition, it became a state with whole share only the September 9th 1850. California knew the unusual conditions of an area under military control. Thus, there was, at this time there, no legislative body, executive nor legal in all the area. The population lived with a confused mixture of Mexican rules, American principles and personal convictions.

The advantage, for the forty-niners was that gold was free access. In the gold-fields, there was neither private property neither licenses nor taxes. The forty-niners laid down their own rules and their application. The minors adopted, mainly, the Mexican rules on the prospection which ran to California. The rule provided that a " claim" could be delimited by a prospector but this claim was valid only as long as it was exploited. The minors exploited this claim to have an idea of its resources just sufficiently a long time. If a claim were considered to be too poor, as it was often the case, the minors gave up the site in order to find another the more profitable. If a claim were abandoned (or not exploited), the other minors could restore it for their account. That consisted in working on a site already asserted previously. This practice was known under the name of " claim-jumping " The conflicts, sometimes, were regulated personally and violently and, other times, called upon groups of prospectors acting like mediators.

The rules adopted by the forty-niners to manage the prospections were spread through the west of the United States with each new gold rush.

Development of the techniques of extraction of gold

Because gravel benches (or " placers " : place where a river produces a deposit of alluvia locally presenting high natural heavy mineral concentrations) of California had a strong gold content, the first forty-niners could simply use the technique of the Batée (or " panning ", a form of Gold washing) in the rivers and rivers. However, the panning could not be done with large scales and certain minors developed techniques more " industrielles" like the " or spray bars; longtom " and, thus, to treat larger volumes of gravels.

In more complex exploitations of the placers, groups of prospectors diverted the course of a whole river thanks to a channel along this one. They exploited, thus, the bed of the drained river. Recent estimates, made by the U.S. Geological Survey (a scientific agency of the government of the United States), indicate that a few 12 million ounces of gold (that is to say 370 tons) one extracted in the first five years from the gold rush. This corresponding, roughly, to 7,2 billion dollars in November 2006.

In 1853, the first hydraulic technique of Extraction is used on the crumblings of eroded cliffs.

Profits

Effects of the fever of gold

Immediate effects

Effects with lonf terms

Geology

See too

• technical of gold washing

• the Chinese of California

• History of California

• Gold (Romance) of Blaise Cendrars.

Simple: California Gold Rush