How Did Immigration Impact The California Gold Rush

Improved Essays
The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848. James Marshall, former carpenter, was working on a sawmill with John Sutter when he discovered a gold nugget in the water flow through the mill’s tailrace. Even though Sutter made all his employees swear to not tell anyone, soon multiple people knew. As the news spread about the gold thousands of immigrants started to head to California. This included many people from the US and some even from other countries. This caused the population in San Francisco to skyrocket from 1,000 people in 1848 to over 20,000 by 1850. As immigrants started making their way towards California, they could only take one of two routes. One was a six-month sea route all the way from New York to San Diego or San …show more content…
It had multiple long and short term effects. The Gold Rush caused a huge job shortage because so many people left work to go look for gold. Although this opened up a lot of opportunities for people that needed the work. Most of them were actually immigrants that had traveled to find gold but found that it was harder than expected and had to find jobs in the cities. Also the Gold Rush caused many cities to expand which then caused the new immigrants to push the native indians out of their land. The Gold Rush also helped with the economy. Manufacturing, trade, merchant businesses, agriculture, entertainment market, and new banks grew and thrived. The Gold Rush also affected the issue of slavery. When people headed to California, people of all different races and cultures went looking for gold which caused some conflicts of gold and jobs to collide with race and ethnicity conflicts. This also caused conflicts with the Native Americans to begin. The Gold Rush also really put pressure on the government to define territories and what they were going to do with California as a slavery state. This in the end pushed The US into a civil war. These were mostly the short term effects that were caused because of the Gold Rush. There were also long term effects of the Gold Rush. One of these were that because of the diversity in ethnicity and race that came to california for gold California is now one of the most ethnically diverse states in the US. Also because of the Gold Rush California was able to become a state because of all the people that migrated there during the rush. Because of all the people moving to California it created railroads that we have everywhere today. The Gold Rush overall had an incredibly big impact then and affected even

Related Documents

  • Great Essays

    Many groups came to California after it became a part of the United States to move West for farming, and to be a part of the Gold Rush in 1849. One of the groups to leave a lasting effect in California, and the whole United States, was the Chinese. The Chinese people made their way to America the same way the Europeans did- by showing up. However, their arrival did not assure them a friendly welcome. In one essay, Sucheng Chan discussed detailed key aspects in understanding the persecution of the Chinese- being the main group among other Asian immigrants- and through what means that oppression occurred.…

    • 1929 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Decent Essays

    At the time California was still a territory but so many people came that they decided it would be a state. So on September 9th,1850 California became the 31st state. In the middle of the Gold Rush California gained around 85,000 people. The people that mined were called Forty Miners. As a result around 50 languages were spoken at that time.…

    • 224 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The California gold rush was an important part of the Antebellum period of American history because it dramatically increased the financial quality of the United states. The gold rush was when a big gold deposit was found in a stream in california that caused people from around the country to come. The gold rush changed our country in a short period of time. When James W Marshall was working for a man named John stutter, he saw what looked like something glowing in the water. He picked it up and brought it to a friend to test if it was gold or if it was fools gold.…

    • 390 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    Massacre At Mystic Analysis

    • 2276 Words
    • 10 Pages

    After that, people made their way to Sutter’s land in California, driven by a lust for gold. Soldiers, farmers, and people from all walks of life came to Sutter’s land on the hope of making easy money. The gold rush began only amongst Californians, but in the summer of 1849, word reached other parts of the country and people from all over came to California for their shot at the big money. These quick “fortunes” made people spend recklessly, a “symptom” of the “gold rush disease” that the men mining for gold suffered from. The gold rush was the greatest mass movement of people in history, coming from not only all over America, but also from Canada, Mexico, and locations on various other…

    • 2276 Words
    • 10 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Chinese Immigration Dbq

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages

    While numerous amount of Europeans arriving on the East Coast, Chinese immigrants arrived on the shores of the West Coast in smaller groups. Between 1851 and 1883, about 300,000 Chinese arrived to seek their fortunes after the discovery of gold in the California gold rush in 1848. Chinese immigrants helped build nation’s railroads, including the first transcontinental line. After the completion of the railroads, they turned to farming, mining, and domestic service. During the 1870s, many Chinese agreed to work for a low wage, but many American workers feared they would lose their job.…

    • 693 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    The gold rush is a significant part of American history because it was the largest mass migration that occurred in America during that time. John Augustus Sutter, lived in Sacramento, California after a long trip from Switzerland. John played a key role in the Gold Rush and lived from 1803 to 1880. He owned a saw mill, called Sutter's Mill, that was located in Coloma, California. Gold was found in his mill and he tried to keep it secret until the word was let out and caused…

    • 343 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In 1896 the Klondike gold rush began. There was George Carmack, Kate Carmack, Skookum Jim and Dawson Charlie. Those are some of the people in the gold rush. But there was 100,000 people that went out to the gold rush. It was very harsh in the gold rush.…

    • 153 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Improved Essays

    When gold was sighted the Klondike Gold Rush Started. It unfolded in the Yukon and Alaska as a brief but amazing adventure, which has harnessed the imagination of people around the world ever since. The Klondike was a big hordes of people coming down to mine for gold. By a guess about 100,000 people wanted to make it to the Klondike hotspots to mine for gold, but only about 30,000 to 40,000 actually made it. Many other lost their lives on the way.…

    • 460 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    He found flakes of gold in the American river at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California. The Gold Rush had impacted California. For example, the gold rush was the largest mass migration in the American history, since it brought almost about 300,000 people to California. The amount of gold that was made during the California Gold Rush had been 750,000 pounds. Many large nuggets of gold were found in California.…

    • 291 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Decent Essays

    In the following years, fortune hunters came to the Gold Rush State from around the world including China, Peru, England, and Australia. During the 1840’s and…

    • 263 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    California has a long history prior to it’s entry into the United States. Indigenous Americans inhabited California for thousands of years before permanent European settlements occurred in the 1600s. California was occupied and claimed by Spain and Mexico throughout the 1600s to the late 1800s, contributing to California’s culture and history, before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo concluded the United State’s war with Mexico and ceded California to the Unites States. In 1849 a constitutional convention was held that consisted of forty-eight delegates who represented various regions of California and who crafted a convention document . The document was was approved by the voters and on September 9, 1850 the U.S. Congress admitted California as the thirty-first state.…

    • 1438 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The miners would become sick to and it would spread everywhere. This research explaining what the miners had to experience and what they had to go through. This talks about what they had to eat and what they had expirienced. So the Gold Rush is really the huge reason why thousands came to California, and pretty much why california became a state with people living here and experiencing the difficulties they had back then.…

    • 554 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The california gold rush began in 1849, but when the people first found the gold in Sacramento Valley it was 1848. Some people think that the American’s found gold the first but Mexican’s were actually the first to discover it. The gold didn’t really have value on its own. Many people, mostly men, died for looking for gold. These men were called gold miners and they’d travel by land or by sea.…

    • 435 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    In Chapter 4 of Mexicanos by Manuel G. Gonzales it talked about the American southwest of 1848-1900 in four different states: California, New Mexico, Arizona, and Texas. In California, after the Mexican American War, the Spanish –speaking society worsen. On January 24, 1848 gold was discovered by James Wilson Marshall and an employed carpenter named John Augustus Sutter in Coloma. In 1848, miners forced their way into the Sierra foothills, after a year the small stream became a huge spreading into territories. Out of the miners, the most successful were the Latin Americans from South America and Northern Mexico.…

    • 503 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The immigrants that entered the United States from the 1870’s through the 1920’s proved that they were different from any immigrants that came before them. This generation of immigrants was the most diverse group of people to enter this country during this period. Not only were they from different ethical backgrounds, they practiced different religions, their rules of life were different from ours, and among many other things. While the immigrants had, a hard time living in the US, they still defeated the odds and achieved economic success in multiple institutions. Unfortunately, because these groups of people changed the dynamics of the United States, Americans took that as a threat to the social, economic, religious, political, and overall…

    • 1059 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays