2.4: California’s Gold Rush

Gold is present in very small amounts in literally all rocks and even in ocean water; but to be mined economically, it must be concentrated. Even so, the richest gold deposits may contain only a fraction of an ounce per ton.

At various times between 400 and 200 million years ago, titanic crustal forces caused the offshore islands to collide with the American continent, crushing and folding the rocks derived from the sea floor and volcanoes (Keep in mind that this was still a slow process, with movements of only a few inches per year). The rocks, scraped off the sea floor and collected from innumerable volcanic eruptions, became the metamorphic rocks that make up the bedrock of the Mother Lode region.

Beginning about 200 million years ago, massive shifts of the tectonic plates that encircle Earth caused the sea floor crust to be pushed beneath the American continent, where it heated up and melted into huge molten masses of magma. These subduction zones are, in modern times, responsible for the volcanoes and sometimes violent earthquakes of the Cascade and Andes mountain ranges. The molten rock forced its way upward into the crust and slowly cooled to become the granitic rock that makes up most of the Sierra Nevada today.

Figure 2.12: California Goldfields (Red) in the Sierra Nevada & Northern California. [1]

Water, derived from rain and melted snow, percolated into the ground in the Mother Lode region. Following fractures and cracks left by millions of years of geologic mayhem, the water came closer and closer to the hot molten magmas. At these elevated temperatures, water dissolved otherwise stable materials including quartz, gold, silver, copper and zinc.

The History

Gold 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, California, and about 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Los Angeles. While the horses grazed, Lopez dug up some wild onions and found 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 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.

The California Gold Rush (1848-1855)

The California Gold Rush 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 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 and starvation.

Figure 2.13: California Gold Miners, Circa 1850-1852. [2]

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 the California Trail and the Gila River trail; 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 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. California’s statehood was unique for several reasons, first was the fact that it was never a territory, and that it was a free, no slavery, state—due to the money generated by the Gold Rush.

At the beginning of the Gold Rush, there was no law regarding property rights in the goldfields and a system of "staking claims" was developed. Prospectors retrieved the gold from streams and riverbeds using simple placer mining techniques, such as panning. Another form of mining, known as hard-rock mining, which included hydraulic mining, which 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 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.

The Forty-Niners

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 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 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.

Figure 2.14: Advertisement About Sailing to California’s Gold Rush, Circa 1850. [3]

Only 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 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 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 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. 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 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 the hills near Genova, 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.

Several hundred Chinese arrived in Gum San ("Gold Mountain"), the name given to California in Chinese, in 1849 and 1850, and in 1852 more than 20,000 landed in San Francisco. Due to the growing population, Joss Houses, which were small temples to server the religious needs of the Chinese miners and residences. Their distinctive dress and appearance was highly recognizable in the goldfields (figure 2.15). 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 Foreign Miners Tax,1850, which only taxed Chinese, and the Chinese Exclusion Act nearly 30 years later in 1882.

Figure 2.15: An 1852 Photograph Captions,’ The Heathen Chinee Prospecting’, Indicating Prejudice Against the Chinese Gold Miners. [4]

There were also women in the Gold Rush. However, their numbers were small. Of the 40,000 people who arrived by ship to 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 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.

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[1] Map is used under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license.

[2] Photo by George H. Johnson is in the public domain.

[3] Image by G.F. Nesbitt & Co. is in the public domain.

[4] Photo by Eadweard Muybridge is in the public domain.