The California Gold Rush - Case Study Example

The California Gold Rush As with all major breakthroughs in history and in science, the discovery of gold in California was an accident. The California gold rush started with a Swiss immigrant who did not sought gold but wanted to start an agricultural venture instead. John Sutter came from Europe and hired laborers to cultivate his large tract of lands with visions of ambitious empire. It was one of these hired hands, one James Marshall – a carpenter - who would discover gold. Marshall was building a sawmill at the south fork of the American River when this happened. Jean Blashfield (2001) wrote: On January 24, 1848, Marshall was testing the mill wheel. As usual, the water running over it carried some sand and light gravel. But this time Marshall saw something sparkling in the sand. He picked out some small, odd-shaped beads of yellow metal. (p. 6) As the beads were tested and turned out to be gold, Sutter and Marshall tried to keep the discovery quiet for fear that the plan of an agricultural empire would be ruined when people start pouring to mine. Word gradually spread about the discovery until a San Francisco newspaper run a series of stories declaring the discovery of gold – at first as news fillers and later as headlines which naturally fuelled the furor. Sam Brannan owned this newspaper called the California Star. According to Judy Monroe (2002) at first, he did not believe the news about gold either but soon he became convinced and that on April 1, 1848, he ran six pages of articles about how easy it was to find and collect California gold. (p. 16) The news then spread like wildfire and thousands flocked to California from the West in that same year alone. Polk and the Gold Mountain While people came to California in droves, their bulk came only from the neighboring states such as Tennessee. It was after the farewell speech of the then President James Polk that finally launched the California Gold Rush. In a calm explanation of the situation in California, Polk validated the future of those who already came and those multitudes who will go to find the riches in California. His exact words were: The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service who have visited the mineral district and derived facts which they detail from personal observation… The explorations already made warrant the belief that the supply is very large and that gold is found at various places in an extensive district of country. (cited in Durham 1997, p. 3) The provocative speech was partly in line with the government’s position that it had a role to play in the discovery drama. Polk’s words made front-page headlines in newspapers across the nation and other countries. Gold fever reached most of the four corners of the world and California was officially up for grabs and its gold, if not for the asking, certainly for the taking. Foreign miners from as far as Latin America, Europe and Asia came with their ships that the port of San Francisco became a sea of abandoned masts as crews rushed to mining fields upon their arrival. The Chinese who came had a name for California – the Gold Mountain. The title aptly captured the drama, the excitement and the opportunities of the Gold Rush. The Forty-Niners Before gold was discovered, there were very few people who have settled in the newly acquired state. But by 1849, 90,000 newcomers arrived even though the trip was difficult to make because California was then an unchartered territory without any maps to guide miners to their quest. (Uschan 2003, p. 18) These newcomers became known as forty-niners, after the year of their arrival. This term would also become applicable to those who joined later on. The forty-niners couldn’t just start mining gold wherever they chose. First, they had to stake a claim on a piece of land and register their claim with whatever authority was in charge of the district. Of course, finding land worth claiming became increasingly difficult after the first months of the Gold Rush because the most obvious and most valuable sites had already been claimed. The forty-niners lived in poor conditions sleeping in shacks or tents near mining camps which became little towns in their own right. In 1849, about ten thousand people died of illnesses caused by bad housing and food and lack of medicine. (Uschan p. 31) Nonetheless, people kept on because of the promise of better life. History tells us that these mining camps had a form of self-government to decide about the size of claims and the procedure for registering them. In the year of 1848, miners were able to pan gold worth about $10 million which is equivalent to $250 million today and that by 1849, this figure will quadruple. (Uschan, p. 34) The gold mining area as shown in fig. 1 continued to increase and rightly so, created its own version of the American Dream. Fig. 1 Unarguably, not all west-bound men came just for the lust for riches. There are writers, for instance, who romantically ascribed purposes those people who, whether consciously or subconsciously, wanted to be “agents of social comfort, moral progress, expanding civilization and diffused thought, and (noblest of achievements) run high up into the heavens of strange lands, the cross-crowned spire, symbol of a true faith and prophecy of a sure eternity.” (Durham, p. 6) Mining Techniques In the earlier days of the Gold Rush when gold still abound in the river beds, miners resort to panning gold. But this was very tedious. Here, the miners must squat or kneel alongside the river all day under the heat of the sun holding a pan in both hands while swirling the sand and the water around and around so as to fish out the gold flakes or if a panner is lucky, a gold nugget. More efficient mining techniques were introduced afterwards. For instance, there were the crudely built mining devices called cradles or rockers that washed the gold-bearing gravels through a slanted wooden tray, with slats across the bottom to collect the heaviest sand and gold flakes. (Owen & Engstrand 2004, p. 76) More systematic mining techniques will be employed, henceforth, due to the advent of large scale mining. One of such was the California stamp mills, which used heavy iron feet, mechanically lifted and dropped, to grind mined ore. (Rawl, Orzi & Smith-Baranzini 1999, p. 202) Rawls, Orzi and Smith Baranzini claimed that more progress in the mining technology was made in the first twelve years of the California Gold Rush than had occurred over the past several centuries. (p. 202) The mining equipments developed during the period such concentrators, improved grinding process, mechanical stirring devices as well as the utilization of steam heat are still in use up to this day. Trade and the Boomtowns The sudden economic activity brought about by the influx of such number of people also invited charlatans to become involved in the Gold Rush. For example, there were these advertisements proclaiming the virtues of Signor Jo. E. De Alvear’s Goldometer and Gold Seeker’s Guide. Customer ordered these instruments through mail from an address in New York City by sending $3, but of course the offers were nothing but frauds. (Durham, p. 6) Then there were also the “California Gold Grease,” which invited gold-hunters to grease himself for luck and better gold haul. Indeed, as mining became serious business, mining camps became communities and then boomtowns where businessmen and women made stores, saloons, laundries, restaurants, and hotels. In the first ten years of the Gold Rush, more than five hundred mining camps were established. Some of these boomtowns and those other who indirectly benefited from it still exist up to this day. Unfortunately, most of these will also become ghost towns. When gold in the mines is exhausted, settlers and miners left and seek their fortunes elsewhere. Legacies California was part of the Mexican Spanish territory, which was eventually ceded to the United States. The new state was still thinly populated back in 1948 but the Gold Rush changed everything and paved the way for its bright future. Rich and poor gold hunters, Americans and immigrants alike, most of them decided to stay in California and they helped build the new state. After the Gold Rush, the population of California swelled and it would be a cornerstone of the state’s bid for identity, progress and place in the Union. Their money – from gold and those from others – financed infrastructure, cultivated civic-mindedness and established better communications and political connections to the rest of the United States. The mining developments stimulated California industry. Its effect, particularly on the metal working industries, was immediately evident in the contemporary census data. Rawls, Orzi and Smith-Baranzini chronicled this as they explored the development of mining technology n the US: In terms of value of output, California blacksmithing ranked third in the nation, behind only New York and Pennsylvania. This is remarkable for a state that was less than two years old. By 1880, the output-value of California foundry and machine shops, now separately enumerated, ranked eleventh among the states, but seventh on a per-capita basis. (p. 202) Also, the Gold Rush, in effect, stimulated the economies of the countries as the boom trend created a wealthy market for their produce. The California Gold Rush is tarnished by the injustice it gave the Native American Indians. The minefields were the place of their game, their food and livelihood. As miners encroach and claim their lands they asserted their stake, unfortunately in vain. When they are not killed and overpowered by the superiorly equipped miners, they died in great number because of hunger. All in all, the energy of the Gold Rush, the thirst excitement, and the habit of speculation remained part of the Californian temperament. Kevin Starr (1973) vividly described this legacy as follows: Americans seemed caught in a frenzy of schemes. Money-making became a fixed mania, justifying at times even Thoreau’s bitter condemnation… For all its lovely landscape, there was a harshness to life in California, an ethos of survival of the fittest which began in the Gold Rush and continued throughout the century. Exploitation characterized urban and rural life alike. It called itself progress. (p. 68) The Gold Rush was linked imaginatively with the most compelling of the American myths, which is the pursuit of happiness. California, with the Gold Rush in its history, would never lose this symbolic connection with an intensified pursuit of happiness and that, which is characterized by the human hope. There are writers who romantically likened the California Gold Rush as an epic experience that could rival both the Iliad and the Odyssey. Indeed, it was an Odyssey as it tell us a story of leaving home – a saga of resourcefulness, hardship and triumph. It was an Iliad in that it was a cruel battle whose epic proportion spanned communal ambition, collective misbehavior with a dash of expatriation and hostile gods and their tales of betrayal. References Bashfield, Jean. 2001. The California Gold Rush. Compass Point Books. Durham, Walter. 1997. Volunteer Forty-Niners. Vanderbilt University Press. Monroe, Judy. 2002. The California Gold Rush. Capstone Press. Owens, Kenneth and Engstrand, Iris Wilson. 2004. John Sutter: Sutter’s Fort and the California Gold Rush. The Rosen Publishing Group. Rawls, James, Orsi, Richard, and Smith-Baranzini, Marlene. 1999. A Golden State: Mining and Economic Development in Gold Rush California. University of California Press. Starr, Kevin. 1973. Americans and the California Dream, 1850-1915. Oxford University Press. Uschan, Michael. 2003. The California Gold Rush. Gareth Stevens. Read More