California Gold Rush

The California Gold Rush is arguably one of the most important events in United States history. The gold rush caused what is considered to be the largest mass migration in United States history, bringing in 300,000 people by 1855, 25% of whom were immigrants from other countries. Not only was California rich in people, it was rich in gold. Approximately 750,000 pounds, two billion dollars’ worth, of gold was extracted from the earth from the time gold was first found in 1848 to the time the rush…

discovered gold in Coloma, California in January 1848 he and the land owner tried desperately to keep it a secret. However, a newspaper called The Californian printed a note about the discovery that March. (Westward Expansion) The word spread so quickly that in 1949 around 90,000 people seeking gold flooded the area, these people were coined the “forty-niners.” Over the next few years it was estimated that 300,000 people had come to California to find gold and collect their portion. (California…

American Continent. Expansion was inevitable for multiple reasons. During this time there was a growing population. Not only was there a growing population, but America was prosperous. As Manifest Destiny was occurring, in the west there was the California Gold Rush. Americans were becoming more prosperous as they expanded west. There were new opportunities out West, so families decided to migrate westward. Manifest Destiny is the 19th century expansion in the United States, it stretched from…

Bret Harte was a nineteenth century American author and poet. He is best remembered for his short fiction stories featuring gamblers, minors, and other figures of the California Gold Rush. Harte’s short story “The Luck of Roaring Camp,” manages to be tragic without tipping into melodrama, and rustic without tripping over its local color. It is also a balancing act between the potentially new plot of a newborn baby boys effect within an all-male wild mining community, and Harte’s method of…

What did national parties often do to maintain national unity in regards to the slavery issue? Generally-speaking, the national parties essentially turned a blind eye towards the slavery issue, in order to bar further tensions from erupting. Portrayed in yet another manner, such parties, whether it be the Whigs or Democrats alike, failed to explicitly embrace the issue by adopting a particular standpoint. Evidence from the text that further bolsters this claim is shown when the authors state,…

In California from 1849 when the gold rush began, to 1852 there was an influx of 25,000 Chinese migrants and also many Japanese migrants to california to seek gold. The gold was the main pull factor for migrants at this time because they believed that they were going to become very wealthy but they overestimated how much gold they were going to find. China had lost the First Great Opium war to Great Britain and this devastated the economy for China. The gold rush in the eyes of the…

On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall discovered gold at a mill where a group of men erecting for John A. Sutter south of the American river. Even though Sutter tried to keep it se-cret until he could secure and protect his vast estates from Mexican land grants, California’s newspaper already revealed his findings only two months later in March. First news reached the east coast in August by the New York Herald, next month the word from the United States Counsel in Monterrey, Thomas O. Larkin,…

small bits of gold eventually led one of the biggest economic influx in America. After Marshall and Sutter confirmed that the flakes were really gold. At first, they tried to keep the discovery under wraps, both because they didn’t want the word of gold on his property to get around and he didn’t technically own the land on which the gold was found. Inevitable the word of the gold did get around. A lot of people thought it was a joke or a rumor, but one of Sutter’s worker took a vial of gold to…

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…

My first heart break was a result of writing my first narrative essay. I was in 5th grade and we were learning about the Gold Rush of 1849. We were told to write a story, in first person, about what the long journey may have been like for a child traveling with their family to California in hopes of “striking it rich.” The title of my essay was “Kitty’s Dream” but it turned out to be more of a nightmare for me. I was excited to do this homework. I had a whole week to finish this assignment…