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100-823: The Native Sons of the Golden West was founded 11 July 1875 by General A. M. Winn , a Virginian, as a lasting monument to the men and women of the Gold Rush era. General Winn had lived in California during the Gold Rush and was impressed with the spirit and perseverance of the Forty-Niners . Speaking of his object in organizing the Order General Winn said, "For twenty years my mind had been running on some lasting style of monument to mark and perpetuate

200-412: 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

300-471: 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

400-483: 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

500-574: 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

600-456: A gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, and the ore needs only to be crushed and washed (free milling ore). The first miners may at first build a simple arrastra to crush their ore; later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore at greater speed. As the miners venture downwards, they may find that the deeper part of vein contains gold locked in sulfide or telluride minerals , which will require smelting . If

700-476: 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

800-488: 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

900-454: 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

1000-410: 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

1100-415: 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

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1200-413: 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,

1300-624: 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

1400-510: 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

1500-413: 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

1600-407: A transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge. A rush typically begins with the discovery of placer gold made by an individual. At first the gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a gold pan or similar simple instrument. Once it is clear that the volume of gold-bearing sediment

1700-470: Is a charitable and fraternal organization. Organized locally into "Parlors," the group is perhaps best known for the large number of commemorative markers it has placed throughout the state. The society has a sister organization, the Native Daughters of the Golden West . The Native Sons began as an organization "embracing only the sons of those sturdy pioneers who arrived on this coast prior to

1800-414: Is larger than a few cubic metres, the placer miners will build rockers or sluice boxes, with which a small group can wash gold from the sediment many times faster than using gold pans. Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only a simple pan or equipment that may be built on the spot, and only simple organisation. The low investment, the high value per unit weight of gold, and

1900-416: 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

2000-733: 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

2100-582: The California Dream . Gold rushes helped spur waves of immigration that often led to the permanent settlement of new regions. Activities propelled by gold rushes define significant aspects of the culture of the Australian and North American frontiers . At a time when the world's money supply was based on gold , the newly-mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the goldfields, feeding into local and wider economic booms . The Gold Rush

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2200-527: 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

2300-690: The Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, in Nevada , in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado , Idaho , Montana , eastern Oregon , and western New Mexico Territory and along the lower Colorado River . There was a gold rush in Nova Scotia (1861–1876) which produced nearly 210,000 ounces of gold. Resurrection Creek , near Hope, Alaska was the site of Alaska's first gold rush in

2400-614: 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

2500-702: 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 "),

2600-655: 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

2700-543: 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

2800-488: 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

2900-403: 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

3000-634: The 19th century in Australia , Greece , New Zealand , Brazil , Chile , South Africa , the United States , and Canada while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere. In the 19th century, the wealth that resulted was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself proved unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large fortunes, and merchants and transportation facilities made large profits. The resulting increase in

3100-421: 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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3200-670: The Indian land claims was valid and to conduct the proceedings, calling neighbors, city trustees, and member of the Native Sons and Daughters to testify..." From the organization's founding until 2024, birth within California was one of the eligibility requirements for membership in the Native Sons. In summer 2024, as membership numbers became unsustainable, delegates at the annual meeting voted to accept as members "every United States citizen 18 and older who lives in California, regardless of place of birth". Throughout its history, members of

3300-546: 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

3400-638: 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

3500-413: The Native Sons actively fought for California Native American rights. "The Commonwealth Club of San Francisco was looking into the matter of Indian rights under the 18 treaties as early as 1909. This resulted in a special section on Indian Affairs for the purpose of making a complete study of the rights, wrongs, and present condition of California Indians in 1924. The Native Sons was one of the groups that

3600-460: The Native Sons have safeguarded many of the landmarks of California's pioneer days, purchasing and rehabilitating them and then donating them to the State or local governments. Chapters of the organization (called "Parlors") place historical markers on buildings and on sites of historical interest. The organization maintains a list of the over 1,200 markers in place. One of these plaques is featured in

3700-513: The UAE with the exports affirmed by the African states. According to Africa's industrial mining firms, they have not exported any amount of gold to the UAE – confirming that the imports come from other, illegal sources. As per customs data, the UAE imported gold worth $ 15.1 billion from Africa in 2016, with a total weight of 446 tons, in variable degrees of purity. Much of the exports were not recorded in

3800-765: The United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799 at today's Reed's Gold Mine . Thirty years later, in 1829, the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern Appalachians occurred. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848–55 in the Sierra Nevada , which captured the popular imagination. The California Gold Rush led to an influx of gold miners and newfound gold wealth, which led to California's rapid industrialization, as businesses sprung up to serve

3900-658: The ability of gold dust and gold nuggets to serve as a medium of exchange, allow placer gold rushes to occur even in remote locations. After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organisations and higher capital expenditures. Small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels. Water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques of ground sluicing , hydraulic mining and dredging may be used. Typically

4000-568: The admission of California as a state." In the 1920s, the Native Sons took two very different stances; one on immigration and one on rights for Native Americans . In April 1920, then-Grand President William P. Caubu of the Native Sons wrote that “California was given by God to a white people, and with God’s strength we want to keep it as He gave it to us." The Native Sons openly opposed Chinese, Mexican, and Japanese immigration and waged an unsuccessful legal battle for Japanese-Americans to be disenfranchised during World War II . However, by contrast,

4100-547: 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,

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4200-587: 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

4300-515: 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

4400-479: The discovery of gold. I could not think of anything that would not perish in course of time. At last it came to my mind that an Order composed of native sons would effect the object and be sustained by pride of parentage and place of nativity while it would be an imperishable memento — an institution that would last through all time." The chief objects of the Order as set forth in its constitution were, "To perpetuate in

4500-634: 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

4600-572: 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,

4700-402: 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

4800-419: 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,

4900-404: 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

5000-431: 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

5100-437: 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

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5200-565: 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

5300-479: The focus may change progressively from gold to silver to base metals. In this way, Leadville, Colorado started as a placer gold discovery, achieved fame as a silver-mining district, then relied on lead and zinc in its later days. Butte, Montana began mining placer gold, then became a silver-mining district, then became for a time the world's largest copper producer. Various gold rushes occurred in Australia over

5400-400: 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

5500-454: 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",

5600-531: 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

5700-559: 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

5800-440: 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

5900-438: 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

6000-423: 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

6100-437: The heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins of lode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Hard rock mining, like placer mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital and technology. The surface outcrop of

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6200-659: 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

6300-638: 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

6400-540: The increased population and financial and political institutions to handle the increased wealth. One of these political institutions was statehood; the need for new laws in a sparsely-governed land led to the state's rapid entry into the Union in 1850. The gold rush in 1849 also stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, leading to further rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland. Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America: Fraser Canyon ,

6500-402: 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

6600-511: 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

6700-496: 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. Gold rush A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of gold —sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare-earth minerals —that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in

6800-637: The mid–1890s. Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes were Nome , Fairbanks , and the Fortymile River . One of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon Territory (1896–99). This gold rush is featured in the novels of Jack London , and Charlie Chaplin 's film The Gold Rush . Robert William Service depicted in his poetries the Gold Rush, especially in the book The Trail of '98 . The main goldfield

6900-406: The minds of all native Californians the memories of the days of '49 to encourage a lively interest in all matters and measures relating to the promotion of the national interests and to the upbuilding [sic] of the State of California." Today, the Native Sons of the Golden West is open to membership from any native-born, current or former resident of California origin. The Native Sons of the Golden West

7000-529: The movie ' The Karate Kid on the side of Daniel LaRusso's new school in California. From 1905 through 1954 the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West published The Grizzly Bear . 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

7100-553: 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

7200-683: The new arrivals who came looking for gold. While some found their fortune, those who did not often remained in the colonies and took advantage of extremely liberal land laws to take up farming. Gold rushes happened at or around: In New Zealand the Otago gold rush from 1861 attracted prospectors from the California gold rush and the Victorian gold rush and many moved on to the West Coast gold rush from 1864. The first significant gold rush in

7300-504: 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

7400-465: The ore is still sufficiently rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter (direct shipping ore). Lower-grade ore may require on-site treatment to either recover the gold or to produce a concentrate sufficiently rich for transport to the smelter. As the district turns to lower-grade ore, the mining may change from underground mining to large open-pit mining . Many silver rushes followed upon gold rushes. As transportation and infrastructure improve,

7500-582: 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

7600-467: 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

7700-560: 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

7800-466: 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

7900-613: The region. The gold deposits in this area are identified as one of the largest in the world. In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was important to that country's history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and tensions between the Boers and British settlers as well as the Chinese miners. South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total world output in 1896. At

8000-600: 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

8100-475: 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

8200-517: 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

8300-552: The second half of the 19th century. The most significant of these, although not the only ones, were the New South Wales gold rush and Victorian gold rush in 1851, and the Western Australian gold rushes of the 1890s. They were highly significant to their respective colonies' political and economic development as they brought many immigrants, and promoted massive government spending on infrastructure to support

8400-521: 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

8500-535: The smuggling of billions of dollars' worth of gold out of Africa through the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East , which further acts as a gateway to the markets in the United States , Europe and more. The news agency evaluated the worth and magnitude of illegal gold trade occurring in African nations like Ghana , Tanzania , and Zambia , by comparing the total gold imports recorded into

8600-621: 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

8700-544: 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

8800-561: The time of the South African rush, gold production benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the MacArthur-Forrest process , of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore. The gold mine at El Callao (Venezuela), started in 1871, was for a time one of the richest in the world, and the goldfields as a whole saw over a million ounces exported between 1860 and 1883. The gold mining

8900-406: The world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. Historians have written extensively about the mass migration, trade, colonization, and environmental history associated with gold rushes. Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free-for-all" in income mobility , in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly, as expressed in

9000-594: The world, according to Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM). Approximately 100 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on small-scale mining. For example, there are 800,000 to 1.5 million artisanal miners in Democratic Republic of Congo , 350,000 to 650,000 in Sierra Leone , and 150,000 to 250,000 in Ghana , with millions more across Africa. In an exclusive report, Reuters accounted

9100-514: Was a topic that inspired many TV shows and books considering it was a very important topic at the time. During the time, many books were published including The Call of the Wild , which had much success during the period. Gold rushes occurred as early as the times of ancient Greece , whose gold mining was described by Diodarus Sicules and Pliny the Elder . Within each mining rush there is typically

9200-693: Was active in this area. Study committees were formed and publicity as to the needs of the California Indians appeared in its magazine, the California Grizzly Bear. In 1922 and again in 1925, there were articles of real importance in arousing public opinion. In Nevada City, Native Sons Hydraulic Parlor No. 58 "aided the American Indians and succeeded in having the land set aside for native inhabitants. In April 1913, Indian agent C. H. Ashbury came from Reno to determine if

9300-805: Was along the south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon River near what was to become Dawson City in Yukon Territory, but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement, and promoted the discovery of other gold finds. The most successful of the North American gold rushes was the Porcupine Gold Rush in Timmins, Ontario area. This gold rush

9400-457: 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

9500-681: Was dominated by immigrants from the British Isles and the British West Indies, giving an appearance of almost creating an English colony on Venezuelan territory. Between 1883 and 1906 Tierra del Fuego experienced a gold rush attracting many Chileans, Argentines and Europeans to the archipelago. The gold rush began in 1884 following discovery of gold during the rescue of the French steamship Arctique near Cape Virgenes . There are about 10 to 30 million small-scale miners around

9600-476: 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

9700-410: 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

9800-605: 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

9900-555: 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

10000-500: Was unique compared to others by the method of extraction of the gold. Placer mining techniques were not able to be used to access the gold in the area due to it being embedded into the Canadian Shield , so larger mining operations involving significantly more expensive equipment was required. While this gold rush peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, it is still active today with over 200 million ounces of gold having been produced from

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