1849 After Word Of The Gold Discovery example essay topic

California Gold Rush: by Lauren Burt James Wilson Marshall was a skilled carpenter trained by his wheelwright father in New Jersey. Marshall was building a sawmill for California land developer John Sutter in Coloma Valley near Sacramento when he observed something glittering in the new millrace that had been allowed to flow overnight. He described the nugget as 'half the size and shape of a pea. ' 'It made my heart thump,' he later recalled, 'for I was certain it was gold. ' Examining the nugget, he exclaimed to his fellow workmen, 'Boys, by God, I believe I have found a gold mine. ' The impact of Marshall's find that afternoon at Sutter's Mill in the Sierra Nevada foothills was enormous, and became known worldwide.

Although Marshall's discovery occurred in 1848, the electrifying news did not reach the East Coast and other parts of the world until a year later, triggering the Gold Rush of '49, the greatest stampede of gold seekers in history. The only hope was to keep the discovery quiet. Sutter and Marshall swore the mill workers to secrecy, but word got out. When Jacob Wittmer took two wagons up to the mill on February 9, the Wimmer children apparently told him of the gold. When he scoffed at the story, it was confirmed by Mrs. Wimmer and the other adults.

Wittmer brought the news back to the fort, and even used some of the gold to buy a bottle of brandy at the fort store. The store operator sent word to his partner in San Francisco, the enterprising Sam Brannan. Henry Bigger shared the news with three of his fellow Mormons who were working on the new flour mill near Sutter's Fort. They visited Coloma and then on the way back to Sutter's Fort prospected at a spot that shortly became the rich diggings of Mormon Island. On February 10, Sutter himself wrote his impatient creditor, General Mariano Vallejo: 'My sawmill is finished and I have made a discovery of a goldmine... which is extraordinarily rich.

' As the word seeped out, Sutter was soon openly telling visitors to the fort about the discovery. The first printed notice of the discovery was in the March 15 issue of 'The Californian' in San Francisco. Shortly after Marshall's discovery, General John Bidwell discovered gold in the Feather River and Major Pearson B. Reading found gold in the Trinity River. The Gold Rush was soon in full sway.

By ship, horse and wagon, and on foot, hundreds of thousands of men and women with their families poured into California, leading to the territory's early statehood, and extending the United States from coast to coast. Thus began one of the largest human migrations in history as a half-million people from around the world descended upon California in search of instant wealth. They came in droves, pans in hand, hoping to find a gleaming spot of yellow beneath the dirt. A few flakes of gold bought dinner and a place to sleep; a strike could set them up for life. The 49 ers, as they came to be known for the massive migration westward that started in 1849, after word of the gold discovery had filtered back East, may have represented some of the hardiest travelers ever. But they hardly knew it at the time.

From farmers to aristocrats who traveled in style, few understood the nature of the trip they were embarking upon, and many gave up after only a day or two on the trail, earning themselves the humiliating sobriquet of 'backed out Californians' as they backtracked to their homes and farms. For the hardy thousands who persevered and made it, the trip alone was as educational as the arrival in the strange land called California. Many took what they assumed was the easy way, the migration by sea that continued from 1849 for a decade. The trips typically began anywhere along the Atlantic Coast with ships sailing southward around Cape Horn and back up to San Francisco. Others sailed only as far south as Panama, where travelers disembarked, then made a three-day trip by mule and canoe across land to the Pacific side, where they boarded another ship for the trip north to San Francisco.

At first the only people who came to look for gold were men from the coastal towns and ranches, sailors whose ships had brought cargo to San Francisco, or soldiers loosed in the aftermath of the Mexican War. Only the best equipped brought tents. Most settled in brush shelters or just laid out their blankets on the ground. Marshall tried to keep them away from the mill and his own claims, directing them up and down the river and to tributary streams. Gold seemed to be everywhere.

Some $30,000 to $50,000 worth of gold was being gathered every day. In July, shortly after news of the gold discovery reached Hawaii, the shipping crossroads of the Pacific, whole boatloads of gold-seekers began arriving from the Islands. In August, word got to Oregon, and settlers began drifting down to investigate. Soon people began arriving from the ranches and towns of Southern California, then from Sonora and other provinces of northern Mexico, and later in the fall from Chile and Peru. Most overland ers began their journey on the Mormon or Oregon trails. The major t railheads for these routes were in Council Bluffs, Iowa, St. Joseph, Mo., or Independence, Mo.

The overland trip typically took five to six months. Ten to 15 miles of travel in one day would be a good day. Many people came to California in search of gold from Asia too. They traveled by ship. Many ships went as far out as the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii) before finding the wind currents needed to get them to California. There were several problems with traveling by sea with illnesses like yellow fever, malaria, cholera, scurvy, and dysentery.

There was also problems with their food like salt meat went bad, wine turned to vinegar, bottles of fruit juice blew up, candles melted near the equator, rats ate cheese, and weevils got into flour, rice and hard bread. Historians have painted colorful Gold Rush landscapes peopled with scruffy, flinty men and a sprinkling of easy, frowsy women. But something is wrong with that picture. Missing are the wives, daughters, sisters and single women who with courage and a high sense of adventure joined that army of men and carved out gold. A smart woman can do very well in this country... It is the only country I ever was where a woman received anything like a just compensation for work.

' -- A woman pioneer Mary Jane 'Jenny' Megquier, a 40-year-old woman of spunk and endurance, and her husband, Thomas, came to California in 1849 intending to stay two years, make some money and return to Maine, where they had left their three teenagers with relatives. Jenny and Thomas, a physician, envisioned getting rich by opening a pharmacy and medical practice in remote mining towns. When that plan failed, they moved to San Francisco, where Jenny ran a boardinghouse. She gave this account of her day: Upon arising made coffee, biscuit, fried potatoes, broiled three pounds each of steak and liver. Baked six loaves of bread, four pies, cooked all day for dinner, made beds, washed, ironed. Life was exhilarating for women cut loose from the social constraints of the East.

One pioneer lady wrote: "A smart woman can do very well in this country. True, there are not many comforts and one must work all the time and work hard, but there is plenty to do and good pay... ' A financial panic back East had spread to Northern California, plunging the region's fledgling banking system into chaos. A week of bedlam -- one San Francisco banker recalled a lobby full of 'women shrieking and crying, men swearing' - culminated Friday, Feb. 23, 1855. Miners, merchants and others stampeded the banking houses to withdraw their deposits.

Fortunes disappeared; two of the leading San Francisco banks collapsed Unlike the forty-nine rs who rode covered wagons or came by ship or on foot 150 years ago, today's prospectors drive motor homes, wear wet suits and suck up river bottoms with $3,500 gas-fueled dredges. The miners of old are legendary: Fortune seekers who sold family farms in Missouri and Kansas, they expected to find untold fortunes in gold-lined banks of the American and Yuba rivers. Today's gold diggers typically are a more realistic lot. The vast majority are escaping 'real' jobs in the cities for a weekend of panning or are retirees who need a new passion to fill their free time. The admission of California as a free state in 1850, a direct result of the Gold Rush, forever tipped the scales in favor of the Union as the nation slipped toward the Civil War. The Gold Rush spurred long-delayed congressional approval of the proposal for a transcontinental railroad.

For all the state's lasting racial and ethnic prejudices, the diversity caused by the Gold Rush contributed to an infusion of ideas and spirit.