- About
- Self-Directed IRA
- Sponsors Hub
- Assets
- Information Center
- Client Resources & Forms
- Contact Us
close
- About
- Self-Directed IRA
- Sponsors Hub
- Assets
- Information Center
- Client Resources & Forms
- Contact Us
close
Written By: Daniel Gleich
When gold was discovered in the Sacramento Valley in 1848, the discoverers could not have fathomed the impact it would have. Their discovery led to one of the most formative events in American history: the California Gold Rush. News of the find spread fast around the world, inspiring thousands of aspiring gold miners to travel by land and sea to the West Coast in search of newfound fortune. The discovery attracted so many people that the population of the California territory grew from less than 1,000 to more than 100,000 by the end of 1849. By the time the Gold Rush ended, miners had extracted $2 billion worth of precious metals.
The origins of the Gold Rush trace back to Jan. 24, 1848, when carpenter James Wilson Marshall from New Jersey noticed some gold flakes in the American River near the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Marshall had been building a water-powered sawmill for John Sutter, a German-born Swiss citizen and founder of the Nueva Helvetia settlement, when he came across the gold by happenstance. Later, Marshall said that "it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold."
Only a few days after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, California officially became owned by the United States with the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. The treaty put an end to the Mexican-American War and set the stage for both the Gold Rush and America's westward expansion.
Marshall and Sutter tried to keep their discovery a secret, but it was only a matter of weeks before word got out. By March, newspaper stories detailed the large amounts of gold discovered at the mill. Though many San Franciscans didn't believe the claim at first, that all changed when local storekeeper Samuel Brannan traveled through town showing off a vial of gold he had collected from Sutter's Creek.
Brannan's proof of the claim spurred the area into a frenzy. By mid-June, approximately three-quarters of the men in San Francisco had packed up and headed for the mines. The area was home to 4,000 miners by August.
News reports continued to come out about the gold in California, causing the word to spread around the globe. Prospective miners from as near as Oregon and as far away as Chile, China, and Peru rushed to the area to stake their claim.
The excitement was further fueled when, in December 1848, President James K. Polk verified the stories in a message to Congress. Polk explained that the rumors of vast quantities of gold were true and had been observed by California military governor Col. Richard Mason.
With the claims substantiated and the Gold Rush under way, people all around the United States started doing whatever it took to make their way west. Prospective miners mortgaged their homes, emptied their life savings, and borrowed whatever money they could to journey to California. Many men even left their families behind to pursue fortune, with their wives taking on additional responsibilities like running businesses and farms while raising their children alone.
The thousands of gold miners who flocked to the region were known as '49ers, named for the year in which they arrived. They came any way they could, by sailing the sea or traveling over the mountains.
In March of 1848, the non-native population of California was about 800. But by the end of 1849, that number had risen to 100,000. As a result, gold mining towns were erected throughout the region. They had saloons, shops, brothels, and plenty of other businesses hoping to capitalize on the Gold Rush to make their fortune. San Francisco became the hub of this new frontier, and its economy thrived.
However, lawlessness was prevalent throughout these newly founded gold mining towns, with gambling, robberies, violence, and prostitution becoming commonplace.
Miners continued to arrive after 1850, but the gold available on the surface was dwindling. Though the dangerous job of mining continued, the daily take for one miner had significantly dropped from what it was in 1848.
With gold becoming harder to find, industrialization grew. Many miners shifted from independent work to wage-based labor. Hydraulic mining efficiently extracted gold deep beneath the surface, but the process decimated large portions of the landscape.
Gold mining peaked in 1852, when $81 million worth of precious metals were extracted, but mining operations continued throughout the 1850s. In 1857, miners only extracted $45 million worth of gold, and the amount decreased from there. California's population dropped to 380,000 by the end of the decade.
The toll that mining and population growth took on the environment during the Gold Rush was significant, especially once hydraulic mining was introduced, ravaging the landscape. It wasn't until 1884 that hydraulic mining was outlawed, and agriculture then took over as the primary industry in California, which remains true to this day.
Multiple dams built throughout the area during the Gold Rush to supply water to the mines also impacted the environment. These dams redirected waterways away from farms that desperately needed them, and some waterways became blocked by excess sediment from the mines. Large portions of forests were destroyed as well due to the logging industry that developed alongside the mining operations.
Some mines and towns from the Gold Rush still exist, often preserved as state parks. For instance, Bodie State Historic Park is home to a ghost town that was once a mining town, and Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park marks the place where Sutter's Mill once was.