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97-402: California Gold Rush entrepreneur Henry Meiggs owned one of California's first sawmills near Bodega . After that sawmill had converted nearby forests to lumber for the booming city of San Francisco , Meiggs investigated reports of coastal forests to the north and shipped a boiler and steam-powered gang sawmill around Cape Horn to be erected on the navigable Big River estuary. After ordering

194-452: A 2-4-2 tank locomotive in 1884, and became California Western Railroad number 3 in 1895. It had been rebuilt as a 2-4-4 tank locomotive at Fort Bragg , officially retired from California Western service before 1917, and recorded as sold to Mendocino Lumber Company in 1918; but was not delivered until five years later. No documentation has been found indicating this fourth locomotive was named or numbered in service on Big River. This locomotive

291-420: A 2-speed transmission and a drivetrain in the underframe passing just above the axle centers. The patented differential for transferring the power from the drive shaft to the wheels was only used in the first Climax locomotives. In a similar way to that used in an automobile , the force was transferred to the two wheels of an axle separately, with one wheel being firmly connected to the wheelset shaft and

388-412: A boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852. Roads, churches, schools and other towns were built throughout California. In 1849, a state constitution was written . The new constitution was adopted by referendum vote; the future state's interim first governor and legislature were chosen. In September 1850, California became a state . At the beginning of the gold rush, there was no law regarding property rights in

485-464: A 2-speed transmission. Battles's patent describes the core design that became the Class B Climax, and his patent illustrations show the name Climax emblazoned on the locomotive cab. Charles D. Scott, who had previously proposed a less successful geared steam locomotive, filed a lawsuit against Gilbert and Battles and applied for a patent in his own name, which was granted to him on 20 December 1892 after

582-471: A businessman who went on to great success was Levi Strauss , who first began selling denim overalls in San Francisco in 1853. Other businessmen reaped great rewards in retail, shipping, entertainment, lodging, or transportation. Boardinghouses, food preparation, sewing, and laundry were highly profitable businesses often run by women (married, single, or widowed) who realized men would pay well for

679-483: A few years, there was an important but lesser-known surge of prospectors into far Northern California, specifically into present-day Siskiyou , Shasta and Trinity Counties . Discovery of gold nuggets at the site of present-day Yreka in 1851 brought thousands of gold-seekers up the Siskiyou Trail and throughout California's northern counties. Settlements of the gold rush era, such as Portuguese Flat on

776-522: A forest railway near Spartansburg, Pennsylvania between 1875 and 1878. A lumberjack of considerable mechanical ingenuity, Scott sought to bring an improved logging locomotive of his own design to market and brought the drawings to the nearby Climax Manufacturing Company in Corry, Pennsylvania . The first four Climax locomotives were built and delivered in 1888. The design patent was filed in February in

873-467: A geared steam locomotive, in which the frame of the boiler was hinged to the frame of the tender. The running gear underneath the boiler was firmly connected to it and was driven by common lateral cylinders and side rods. Underneath the tender was a truck which was similar to the Climax locomotives driven by a central shaft which took the power from the front axle of the locomotive via a hypoid bevel gear. For

970-577: A gold rush in the region. The Mexican–American War ended on May 30 with the ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo , which formally transferred California to the United States. Having sworn all concerned at the mill to secrecy, in February 1848, Sutter sent Charles Bennett to Monterey to meet with Colonel Mason, the chief U.S. official in California, to secure the mineral rights of

1067-476: A large sea; underwater volcanoes deposited lava and minerals (including gold) onto the sea floor. By tectonic forces these minerals and rocks came to the surface of the Sierra Nevada, and eroded . Water carried the exposed gold downstream and deposited it in quiet gravel beds along the sides of old rivers and streams. The forty-niners first focused their efforts on these deposits of gold. Because

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1164-445: A lengthy legal dispute. But the lawsuit left Scott penniless because he could hardly benefit from the invention. Scott's patent showed the arrangement of the steam engine, boiler and two-speed gearbox in accordance with Gilbert's patent while the drive without differential gearbox was described in accordance to Battles' patent. Scott's patent corresponds to the most common design of Class A Climax locomotives. In 1893, Scott proposed

1261-488: A method that involved digging a shaft 6 to 13 meters (20 to 43 ft) deep into placer deposits along a stream. Tunnels were then dug in all directions to reach the richest veins of pay dirt . In the most complex placer mining, groups of prospectors would divert the water from an entire river into a sluice alongside the river and then dig for gold in the newly exposed river bottom. Modern estimates are that as much as 12 million ounces (370  t ) of gold were removed in

1358-454: A possession of the United States, but it was not a formal " territory " and did not become a state until September 9, 1850. California existed in the unusual condition of a region under military control. There was no civil legislature, executive or judicial body for the entire region. Local residents operated under a confusing and changing mixture of Mexican rules, American principles, and personal dictates. Lax enforcement of federal laws, such as

1455-410: A previously claimed site. Disputes were often handled personally and violently, and were sometimes addressed by groups of prospectors acting as arbitrators . This often led to heightened ethnic tensions. In some areas the influx of many prospectors could lead to a reduction of the existing claim size by simple pressure. Approximately four hundred million years ago, California lay at the bottom of

1552-415: A prospector, but that claim was valid only as long as it was being actively worked. Miners worked at a claim only long enough to determine its potential. If a claim was deemed as low-value—as most were—miners would abandon the site in search of a better one. In the case where a claim was abandoned or not worked upon, other miners would "claim-jump" the land. "Claim-jumping" meant that a miner began work on

1649-413: A service done by a woman. Brothels also brought in large profits, especially when combined with saloons and gaming houses. By 1855, the economic climate had changed dramatically. Gold could be retrieved profitably from the goldfields only by medium to large groups of workers, either in partnerships or as employees. By the mid-1850s, it was the owners of these gold-mining companies who made the money. Also,

1746-624: A small gold nugget in the roots among the bulbs. He looked further and found more gold. Lopez took the gold to authorities who confirmed its worth. Lopez and others began to search for other streambeds with gold deposits in the area. They found several in the northeastern section of the forest, within present-day Ventura County . In November, some of the gold was sent to the U.S. Mint , although otherwise attracted little notice. In 1843, Lopez found gold in San Feliciano Canyon near his first discovery. Mexican miners from Sonora worked

1843-510: A small number (probably fewer than 500) traveled overland from the United States that year. Some of these "forty-eighters", as the earliest gold-seekers were sometimes called, were able to collect large amounts of easily accessible gold—in some cases, thousands of dollars worth each day. Even ordinary prospectors averaged daily gold finds worth 10 to 15 times the daily wage of a laborer on the East Coast. A person could work for six months in

1940-413: A tiny settlement before the rush began. When residents learned about the discovery, it at first became a ghost town of abandoned ships and businesses, but then boomed as merchants and new people arrived. The population of San Francisco increased quickly from about 1,000 in 1848 to 25,000 full-time residents by 1850. Miners lived in tents, wood shanties, or deck cabins removed from abandoned ships. There

2037-416: Is that some US$ 80 million worth of California gold (equivalent to US$ 2.6 billion today) was sent to France by French prospectors and merchants. A majority of the gold went back to New York City brokerage houses. As the gold rush progressed, local banks and gold dealers issued "banknotes" or "drafts"—locally accepted paper currency—in exchange for gold, and private mints created private gold coins . With

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2134-473: The Climax Locomotive Works ), of Corry, Pennsylvania . These had two steam cylinders attached to a transmission located under the center of the boiler, which sent power to driveshafts running to the front and rear trucks . Some 1,000-1,100 were built in three classes (A, B, and C) between 1888 and 1928. The invention of the Climax locomotive is attributed to Charles D. Scott, who ran

2231-733: The Accessory Transit Company . Many gold-seekers took the overland route across the continental United States, particularly along the California Trail . Each of these routes had its own deadly hazards, from shipwreck to typhoid fever and cholera . In the early years of the rush, much of the population growth in the San Francisco area was due to steamship travel from New York City through overland portages in Nicaragua and Panama and then back up by steamship to San Francisco. While traveling, many steamships from

2328-527: The California Trail and the California Road ; forty-niners often faced substantial hardships on the trip. While most of the newly arrived were Americans, the gold rush attracted thousands from Latin America, Europe, Australia, and China. Agriculture and ranching expanded throughout the state to meet the needs of the settlers. San Francisco grew from a small settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to

2425-614: The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 , encouraged the arrival of free blacks and escaped slaves. While the treaty ending the Mexican–American War obliged the United States to honor Mexican land grants, almost all the goldfields were outside those grants. Instead, the goldfields were primarily on " public land ", meaning land formally owned by the United States government. However, there were no legal rules yet in place, and no practical enforcement mechanisms. The benefit to

2522-702: The Isthmus of Panama and the steamships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company . Australians and New Zealanders picked up the news from ships carrying Hawaiian newspapers, and thousands, infected with "gold fever", boarded ships for California. Forty-niners came from Latin America, particularly from the Mexican mining districts near Sonora and Chile. Gold-seekers and merchants from Asia, primarily from China, began arriving in 1849, at first in modest numbers to Gum San (" Gold Mountain "),

2619-655: The Sacramento River , sprang into existence and then faded. The Gold Rush town of Weaverville on the Trinity River today retains the oldest continuously used Taoist temple in California, a legacy of Chinese miners who came. While there are not many Gold Rush era ghost towns still in existence, the remains of the once-bustling town of Shasta have been preserved in a California State Historic Park in Northern California. By 1850, most of

2716-543: The San Francisco Bay in 1849, only 700 were women (including those who were poor, wealthy, entrepreneurs, prostitutes, single, and married). They were of various ethnicities including Anglo-American, African-American, Hispanic , Native , European, Chinese, and Jewish. The reasons they came varied: some came with their husbands, refusing to be left behind to fend for themselves, some came because their husbands sent for them, and others came (singles and widows) for

2813-488: The tailrace of a lumber mill he was building for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter —known as Sutter's Mill , near Coloma on the American River . Marshall brought what he found to Sutter, and the two privately tested the metal. After the tests showed that it was gold, Sutter expressed dismay, wanting to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were

2910-403: The "first world-class gold rush," there was no easy way to get to California; forty-niners faced hardship and often death on the way. At first, most Argonauts , as they were also known, traveled by sea. From the East Coast, a sailing voyage around the tip of South America would take four to five months, and cover approximately 18,000 nautical miles (21,000 mi; 33,000 km). An alternative

3007-421: The California foreign miners tax passed in 1851, targeted mainly Latino miners and kept them from making as much money as whites, who did not have any taxes imposed on them. In California most late arrivals made little or wound up losing money. Similarly, many unlucky merchants set up in settlements that disappeared, or which succumbed to one of the calamitous fires that swept the towns that sprang up. By contrast,

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3104-471: The Climax Class B was looking more like a conventional steam locomotive. It had the cylinders on both side of the boiler, permitting it to be longer and larger than possible with the Class A arrangement. The two cylinders drove a transverse shaft that was geared to the longitudinal driveshaft in the middle; on early Class B Climaxes, the cylinders were horizontal and pointing forwards, while later ones had

3201-546: The Methodist church deemed it necessary to send missionaries there to preach the gospel, as churches in that part of the state were not to be found. The first missionary to arrive was William Taylor who arrived in San Francisco in September 1849. For many months he preached in the streets to hundreds of people without salary, and ultimately after saving often generous donations from successful miners, he built and established

3298-638: The Modocs . The first people to rush to the goldfields, beginning in the spring of 1848, were the residents of California themselves—primarily agriculturally oriented Americans and Europeans living in Northern California , along with Native Californians and some Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians; at the time, commonly referred to in English as simply 'Californians'). These first miners tended to be families in which everyone helped in

3395-547: The adventure and economic opportunities. On the trail many people died from accidents, cholera , fever, and myriad other causes, and many women became widows before even setting eyes on California. While in California, women became widows quite frequently due to mining accidents , disease, or mining disputes of their husbands. Life in the goldfields offered opportunities for women to break from their traditional work. Because of many thousands of people flooding into California at Sacramento and San Francisco and surrounding areas,

3492-402: The basic design of the drivetrain without the differential, using simple hypoid bevel gears to drive the wheelsets with normal fixed wheels. Unlike the later, somewhat similar Heisler design, there were no side rods on the trucks and all gearing was open, exposed to the elements. A further patent from 1891 describes a locomotive with horizontal cylinders connected to the drive shaft through

3589-476: The best local swimmers, were paid $ 50 each to brave the cold, 20-foot (6.1 m)-deep water stringing steel recovery cables under the submerged locomotive. The engineer paid each boy an additional $ 25 to recover his tools which had spilled from the locomotive toolbox. Excelsior was sold to a railfan and left in a shed on the Railroad Gulch branch when the rails were removed. Before the railfan could move

3686-463: The bluff adjacent to the river mouth. An even larger sawmill was built on the flat near the boom after a fire in 1861. Moving logs to the sawmill became more difficult after the closest trees had been cut. Logs were moved to a natural river pool about 5 miles (8.0 km) upstream of the sawmill, but only during winter storms was river flow adequate to move those logs downstream to the mill. Several dozen dams were built on Big River tributaries upstream of

3783-587: The building of the San Francisco Mint in 1854, gold bullion was turned into official United States gold coins for circulation. The gold was also later sent by California banks to U.S. national banks in exchange for national paper currency to be used in the booming California economy . The arrival of hundreds of thousands of new people in California within a few years, compared to a population of some 15,000 Europeans and Californios beforehand, had many dramatic effects. A 2017 study attributes

3880-539: The burning trestle attempting the trip alone. The locomotive remained where it fell when the line beyond the trestle was dismantled for scrap, and is presumed to have been scrapped later with Molly . California Gold Rush The California gold rush (1848–1855) was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California . The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from

3977-604: The camp was moved upstream from the Big River confluence with Laguna Creek to the Little North Fork Big River in 1912. The Laguna Creek branch line trestle across Big River was replaced by a Howe truss bridge in the winter of 1919-1920. The sawmill operated until 1931 when Union Lumber Company's Fort Bragg sawmill was able to meet lumber demands decreased by the Great Depression . The railroad

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4074-515: The clear intent to distinguish their higher class power over those that could not afford those accommodations. Supply ships arrived in San Francisco with goods to supply the needs of the growing population. When hundreds of ships were abandoned after their crews deserted to go into the goldfields, many ships were converted to warehouses, stores, taverns, hotels, and one into a jail. As the city expanded and new places were needed on which to build, many ships were destroyed and used as landfill. Within

4171-468: The crew and fuel from the elements—this could be more or less covering between locomotive to locomotive. The front half of the locomotive, in front of the engine unit, contained the boiler. In smaller examples this may have been a vertical boiler, while in larger ones a tee boiler was employed. Class A Climaxes were small locomotives, generally under 17 tons. Class A Climaxes, unlike Heisler and Shay locomotives , had two-speed gearboxes. Introduced in 1893,

4268-748: The cylinders angled upwards at about 30 degrees from horizontal. Class B Climaxes weighed approximately 17 tons at minimum to a maximum of approximately 60 tons. A class C was a three-truck design, the additional powered truck being beneath a water-carrying tender articulated to the locomotive. This allowed the locomotive to operate for longer periods of time before needing to stop for water. All Class C locomotives had inclined cylinders. Approximately 17 Climax locomotives survive in North America, of which about five are operational. Some Climaxes, especially Class A, were later converted to diesel or gasoline power, and some still exist in this form, using

4365-634: The dominant activity held throughout the steamships was gambling, which was ironic because segregation between wealth gaps was prominent throughout the ships. Everything was segregated between the rich vs. the poor. There were different levels of travel one could pay for to get to California. The cheaper steamships tended to have longer routes. In contrast, the more expensive would get passengers to California quicker. There were clear social and economic distinctions between those who traveled together, being that those who spent more money would receive accommodations that others were not allowed. They would do this with

4462-572: The easily accessible gold had been collected, and attention turned to extracting gold from more difficult locations. Faced with gold increasingly difficult to retrieve, Americans began to drive out foreigners to get at the most accessible gold that remained. The new California State Legislature passed a foreign miners tax of twenty dollars per month ($ 730 per month as of 2024), and American prospectors began organized attacks on foreign miners, particularly Latin Americans and Chinese . In addition,

4559-402: The eastern United States. At its peak, technological advances reached a point where significant financing was required, increasing the proportion of gold companies to individual miners. Gold worth tens of billions of today's US dollars was recovered, which led to great wealth for a few, though many who participated in the California gold rush earned little more than they had started with. Gold

4656-419: The eastern seaboard required the passengers to bring kits, which were typically full of personal belongings such as clothes, guidebooks, tools, etc. In addition to personal belongings, Argonauts were required to bring barrels full of beef, biscuits, butter, pork, rice, and salt. While on the steamships, travelers could talk to each other, smoke, fish, and other activities depending on the ship they traveled. Still,

4753-404: The effort. Women and children of all ethnicities were often found panning next to the men. Some enterprising families set up boarding houses to accommodate the influx of men; in such cases, the women often brought in steady income while their husbands searched for gold. Word of the gold rush spread slowly at first. The earliest gold-seekers were people who lived near California or people who heard

4850-448: The estuary, and ships carried the lumber to San Francisco. Log storage was about 1 kilometre (0.62 miles) upstream of the sawmill to prevent Pacific surf from breaking containment booms and allowing the river to carry the log inventory out to sea. When the original gang sawmill proved too small for the old-growth Sequoia sempervirens logs, a larger sawmill was built near the boom, but lumber drying and storage for shipment continued on

4947-488: The first Methodist church in California, and California's first professional hospital. When the Gold Rush began, the California goldfields were peculiarly lawless places. When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, California was still technically part of Mexico, under American military occupation as the result of the Mexican–American War. With the signing of the treaty ending the war on February 2, 1848, California became

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5044-437: The first five years of the Gold Rush. In the next stage, by 1853, hydraulic mining was used on ancient gold-bearing gravel beds on hillsides and bluffs in the goldfields. In a modern style of hydraulic mining first developed in California, and later used around the world, a high-pressure hose directed a powerful stream or jet of water at gold-bearing gravel beds. The loosened gravel and gold would then pass over sluices, with

5141-565: The first supply stores in Sacramento, Coloma, and other spots in the goldfields. Just as the rush began, he purchased all the prospecting supplies available in San Francisco and resold them at a substantial profit. Some gold-seekers made a significant amount of money. On average, half the gold-seekers made a modest profit, after taking all expenses into account; economic historians have suggested that white miners were more successful than black, Indian, or Chinese miners. However, taxes such as

5238-625: The first time, the design used closed axle drives with housings on one hand protecting the gear unit from and on the other hand also containing the gear lubricant. All Climax locomotives were built by the Climax Manufacturing Company (later renamed to the Climax Locomotive Works ), of Corry, Pennsylvania . In addition, an agency and service facility was established in Seattle , Washington to sell and maintain locomotives for west coast buyers. Production began in 1888 and

5335-400: The forty-niners was that the gold was simply "free for the taking" at first. In the goldfields at the beginning, there was no private property, no licensing fees, and no taxes . The miners informally adapted Mexican mining law that had existed in California. For example, the rules attempted to balance the rights of early arrivers at a site with later arrivers; a " claim " could be "staked" by

5432-454: The gold in the California gravel beds was so richly concentrated, early forty-niners were able to retrieve loose gold flakes and nuggets with their hands, or simply " pan " for gold in rivers and streams. Panning cannot take place on a large scale, and industrious miners and groups of miners graduated to placer mining , using " cradles " and "rockers" or "long-toms" to process larger volumes of gravel. Miners would also engage in "coyoteing",

5529-531: The gold rush were substantial. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, called "forty-niners" (referring to 1849, the peak year for gold rush immigration). Outside of California, the first to arrive were from Oregon , the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Latin America in late 1848. Of the approximately 300,000 people who came to California during the gold rush, about half arrived by sea and half came overland on

5626-559: The gold settling to the bottom where it was collected. By the mid-1880s, it is estimated that 11 million troy ounces (340 t) of gold (worth approximately US$ 15 billion at December 2010 prices) had been recovered by hydraulic mining. A byproduct of these extraction methods was that large amounts of gravel, silt , heavy metals , and other pollutants went into streams and rivers. Court rulings (1882 Gold Run and 1884 "Sawyer Act" ) and 1893 federal legislation limited hydraulic mining in California. As of 1999 many areas still bear

5723-440: The gold-bearing quartz. Once the gold-bearing rocks were brought to the surface, the rocks were crushed and the gold separated, either using separation in water, using its density difference from quartz sand, or by washing the sand over copper plates coated with mercury (with which gold forms an amalgam ). Loss of mercury in the amalgamation process was a source of environmental contamination . Eventually, hard-rock mining became

5820-438: The goldfields and a system of "staking claims" was developed. Prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple techniques, such as panning . Although mining caused environmental harm, more sophisticated methods of gold recovery were developed and later adopted around the world. New methods of transportation developed as steamships came into regular service. By 1869, railroads were built from California to

5917-423: The goldfields and find the equivalent of six years' wages back home. Some hoped to get rich quick and return home, and others wished to start businesses in California. By the beginning of 1849, word of the gold rush had spread around the world, and an overwhelming number of gold-seekers and merchants began to arrive from virtually every continent. The largest group of forty-niners in 1849 were Americans, arriving by

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6014-721: The hills near Genoa , Italy were among the first to settle permanently in the Sierra Nevada foothills ; they brought with them traditional agricultural skills, developed to survive cold winters. A modest number of miners of African ancestry (probably less than 4,000) had come from the Southern States , the Caribbean and Brazil. A number of immigrants were from China. Several hundred Chinese arrived in California in 1849 and 1850, and in 1852 more than 20,000 landed in San Francisco. Their distinctive dress and appearance

6111-638: The huge numbers of newcomers were driving Native Americans out of their traditional hunting, fishing and food-gathering areas. To protect their homes and livelihood, some Native Americans responded by attacking the miners. This provoked counter-attacks on native villages. The Native Americans, out-gunned, were often slaughtered. Those who escaped massacres were many times unable to survive without access to their food-gathering areas, and they starved to death. Novelist and poet Joaquin Miller vividly captured one such attack in his semi-autobiographical work, Life Amongst

6208-402: The land where the mill stood. Bennett was not to tell anyone of the discovery of gold, but when he stopped at Benicia , he heard talk about the discovery of coal near Mount Diablo, and he blurted out the discovery of gold. He continued to San Francisco, where again, he could not keep the secret. At Monterey, Mason declined to make any judgement of title to lands and mineral rights, and Bennett for

6305-504: The last Climax locomotive was produced in 1928. Between 1,000 and 1,100 were built. Many loggers considered the Climax superior to the Shay in hauling capability and stability, particularly in a smaller locomotive. This was due to its fully sprung truck arrangement; the Shay locomotive had no springs on the bogie on the drivetrain side and was therefore not fully able to compensate for twists in

6402-511: The late 1890s, dredging technology (also invented in California) had become economical, and it is estimated that more than 20 million troy ounces (620 t) were recovered by dredging. Both during the gold rush and in the decades that followed, gold-seekers also engaged in "hard-rock" mining, extracting the gold directly from the rock that contained it (typically quartz ), usually by digging and blasting to follow and remove veins of

6499-452: The locomotive, it was illegally scrapped by unemployed workmen trying to keep food on their table. In 1910 Union Lumber Company moved locomotive number 3 with about 70 tons of rail from a dismantled Navarro River logging operation about 10 miles (16 km) south of Big River. Molly was a 2-4-4 saddle-tank locomotive built by Ricks & Firth. The saddle tank was replaced by square tanks on each running board some time after 1915. When

6596-402: The machinery from eastern manufacturers, E.C. Williams took a shortcut across the isthmus of Panama in the spring of 1852 to survey the Big River in advance of machinery delivery aboard the brig Ontario . The sawmill was completed in the spring of 1853, and produced 50,000 board foot of lumber per day. It was comparatively easy to float logs to the sawmill from trees cut along the shoreline of

6693-410: The midst of the gold rush, towns and cities were chartered, a state constitutional convention was convened, a state constitution written, elections held, and representatives sent to Washington, D.C., to negotiate the admission of California as a state. Climax locomotive A Climax locomotive is a type of geared steam locomotive built by the Climax Manufacturing Company (later renamed to

6790-553: The name given to California in Chinese. The first immigrants from Europe, reeling from the effects of the Revolutions of 1848 and with a longer distance to travel, began arriving in late 1849, mostly from France, with some Germans , Italians , and Britons . It is estimated that approximately 90,000 people arrived in California in 1849—about half by land and half by sea. Of these, perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 were Americans, and

6887-504: The news from ships on the fastest sailing routes from California. The first large group of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians who came down the Siskiyou Trail. Next came people from the Sandwich Islands , and several thousand Latin Americans, including people from Mexico, from Peru and from as far away as Chile, both by ship and overland. By the end of 1848, some 6,000 Argonauts had come to California. Only

6984-444: The other wheel being able to rotate loosely on a sleeve around the shaft. The idea of the differential transmissions was to reduce resistance on tight bends by allowing one wheel to turn with fewer revolutions than the one at the other end of the axle. The design did not prove workable, because when driving at the adhesion limit, less tractive effort could be exerted compared to locomotives with rigid wheelsets. Rush S. Battles patented

7081-582: The placer deposits until 1846. Minor finds of gold in California were also made by Mission Indians prior to 1848. The friars instructed them to keep its location secret to avoid a gold rush . In January 1847, nine months into the Mexican–American War , the Treaty of Cahuenga was signed, leading to the resolution of the military conflict in Alta California (Upper California). On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall found shiny metal in

7178-560: The pool to impound water for sudden release to float log downstream during other seasons. By 1873, the name had changed to Mendocino Lumber Company and the mill was the most important in Mendocino County. By 1883 the difficulties of using horses and oxen for moving logs to the river pool encouraged building railroads to reduce the friction of skidding logs. Railway branches were built to reach trees and then dismantled after those logs had been moved to Big River. Total length of track

7275-467: The population and economy of California had become large and diverse enough that money could be made in a wide variety of conventional businesses. Once extracted, the gold itself took many paths. First, much of the gold was used locally to purchase food, supplies and lodging for the miners . It also went towards entertainment, which consisted of anything from a traveling theater to alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes. These transactions often took place using

7372-560: The recently recovered gold, carefully weighed out. These merchants and vendors, in turn, used the gold to purchase supplies from ship captains or packers bringing goods to California. The gold then left California aboard ships or mules to go to the makers of the goods from around the world. A second path was the Argonauts themselves who, having personally acquired a sufficient amount, sent the gold home, or returned home taking with them their hard-earned "diggings". For example, one estimate

7469-466: The record-long economic expansion of the United States in the recession-free period of 1841–1856 primarily to "a boom in transportation-goods investment following the discovery of gold in California." The gold rush propelled California from a sleepy, little-known backwater to a center of the global imagination and the destination of hundreds of thousands of people. The new immigrants often showed remarkable inventiveness and civic mindedness. For example, in

7566-658: The rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy; the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood in the Compromise of 1850 . The gold rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population's decline from disease, starvation, and the California genocide . The effects of

7663-475: The rest were from other countries. By 1855, it is estimated at least 300,000 gold-seekers, merchants, and other immigrants had arrived in California from around the world. The largest group continued to be Americans, but there were tens of thousands each of Mexicans, Chinese, Britons, Australians, French, and Latin Americans, together with many smaller groups of miners, such as African Americans, Filipinos , Basques and Turks . People from small villages in

7760-468: The same year and granted in December. The invention was not patented in the name of Scott, as he had only a limited education, so he left the drawings to his brother-in-law George D. Gilbert, who was a civil engineer by profession and worked for Climax. Gilbert had the invention patented in his name without mentioning Scott. Gilbert's patent specified an upright maritime-type two-cylinder steam engine ,

7857-583: The sawmill ceased operation, Molly was abandoned where the railroad dumped logs into the pool five miles upstream of the sawmill. There she rusted away through World War II until Union Lumber Company bulldozers built a road for the scrapping crew. In 1923 Union Lumber Company transferred a locomotive from the California Western Railroad to replace the aged Dinky . This locomotive had been built by Baldwin Locomotive Works as

7954-399: The sawmill. It was Baldwin Locomotive Works 0-4-2 tank locomotive #5353 built in 1880 to pull unpowered street cars around Golden Gate Park . This steam dummy weighed 20 tons with a full-length cab covering the boiler to resemble the street cars it pulled. After replacing the teams on 18 August 1900, the cab length was gradually reduced repairing damage from various woods mishaps over

8051-517: The scars of hydraulic mining, since the resulting exposed earth and downstream gravel deposits do not support plant life. After the gold rush had concluded, gold recovery operations continued. The final stage to recover loose gold was to prospect for gold that had slowly washed down into the flat river bottoms and sandbars of California's Central Valley and other gold-bearing areas of California (such as Scott Valley in Siskiyou County). By

8148-521: The single largest source of gold produced in the Gold Country . The total production of gold in California from then until now is estimated at 118 million troy ounces (3,700 t). Recent scholarship confirms that merchants made far more money than miners during the gold rush. The wealthiest man in California during the early years of the rush was Samuel Brannan , a tireless self-promoter, shopkeeper and newspaper publisher. Brannan opened

8245-556: The steep branches to the comparatively level main line downstream of Boyle's logging camp, where the Dinky would move them to the log dump five miles upstream of the sawmill. The locomotives were periodically loaded onto a barge at the log dump for transfer downstream to the sawmill for overhaul. On one of these trips Excelsior slipped off the barge into the Big River estuary in March 1921. Grammar school students Alden and Art Rice, considered

8342-621: The tens of thousands overland across the continent and along various sailing routes (the name "forty-niner" was derived from the year 1849). Many from the East Coast negotiated a crossing of the Appalachian Mountains , taking to riverboats in Pennsylvania , poling the keelboats to Missouri River wagon train assembly ports, and then traveling in a wagon train along the California Trail . Many others came by way of

8439-544: The third time revealed the gold discovery. By March 1848, rumors of the discovery were confirmed by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan . Brannan hurriedly set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies, and he walked through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!" On August 19, 1848, the New York Herald

8536-446: The track. The ride on the large class C Climax was characteristically rough for the crew, since the imbalance of the large drivetrain could only be compensated at one speed. Climaxes were built in three distinct classes: These featured a steam engine unit with two vertical cylinders mounted in the center of the locomotive. Class A Climaxes had a frame similar to a flatcar with wooden boxcar -like bodywork built up above it to protect

8633-433: The years until it resembled conventional locomotives. As more capable locomotives arrived to share the load, the first locomotive came to be known as the Dinky . Dinky disappeared when the fourth locomotive arrived about 1923, but its disposal is undocumented. In the spring of 1902 the company received a new Climax locomotive numbered 2 for logging branches with grades as steep as 12 percent. Excelsior brought logs from

8730-457: Was discovered in California as early as March 9, 1842, at Rancho San Francisco , in the mountains north of present-day Los Angeles. Californian native Francisco Lopez was searching for stray horses and stopped on the bank of a small creek (in today's Placerita Canyon ), about 3 miles (4.8 km) east of present-day Newhall , and about 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Los Angeles. While the horses grazed, Lopez dug up some wild onions and found

8827-451: Was dismantled during 1936 and 1937 when Japanese preparations for World War II raised the value of scrap iron. The sawmill was briefly reopened in 1938 to mill Douglas fir logs salvaged when a log raft from Oregon broke up off the coast of Mendocino. Locomotive number 1 arrived in July 1901 to improve overland transport of logs from the remaining forests to the pool five miles upstream of

8924-476: Was highly recognizable in the goldfields. Chinese miners suffered enormously, enduring violent racism from white miners who aimed their frustrations at foreigners. Further animosity toward the Chinese led to legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and Foreign Miners Tax. There were also women in the gold rush . However, their numbers were small. Of the 40,000 people who arrived by ship to

9021-488: Was never more than 25 miles (40 km). Teams of working animals pulled the logs on flatcars until 1901. The railroad was rebuilt after extensive flood damage in 1904. Union Lumber Company purchased the Mendocino Lumber Company sawmill, railroad, and timberlands in 1906; and again rebuilt the railroad after flood damage in 1907. The buildings of Boyle's logging camp were moved on railway cars when

9118-410: Was no churches or religious services in the rapidly growing city, which prompted missionaries like William Taylor to meet the need, where he held services in the street, using a barrel head as his pulpit. Crowds would gather to listen to his sermons, and before long he received enough generous donations from successful gold miners and built San Francisco's first church. In what has been referred to as

9215-509: Was rebuilt after being wrecked in a September 1924 runaway derailment when brakes failed on a downhill grade. This locomotive was bringing a woods crew back to the Boyle logging camp in November 1929 when they discovered a burning trestle. The loggers declined engineer Walter Hanson's offer to take them across the burning trestle in time for supper, and watched as Hanson's locomotive fell through

9312-605: Was the first major newspaper on the East Coast to report the discovery of gold. On December 5, 1848, US President James K. Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress . As a result, individuals seeking to benefit from the gold rush—later called the "forty-niners"—began moving to the Gold Country of California or "Mother Lode" from other countries and from other parts of the United States. As Sutter had feared, his business plans were ruined after his workers left in search of gold, and squatters took over his land and stole his crops and cattle. San Francisco had been

9409-555: Was to sail to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama , take canoes and mules for a week through the jungle, and then on the Pacific side, wait for a ship sailing for San Francisco. There was also a route across Mexico starting at Veracruz . The companies providing such transportation created vast wealth among their owners and included the U.S. Mail Steamship Company , the federally subsidized Pacific Mail Steamship Company , and

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