preview

California Gold Rush Report

Decent Essays

“Gold! Gold! Gold! California Gold Region Seems Inexhaustible!” - was the headline of many newspapers during the California Gold Rush. The California Gold Rush began on January 24, 1848 when James Marshall discovered gold while building a water powered mill for John Sutter at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. Marshall spotted the piece of gold coming down the mill’s trail race and went to tell John Sutter about it. Sutter stated in an entry entitled “The Discovery of Gold in California”, “In a private room he showed me the first specimens of gold, that is he was not certain if it was gold or not, but he thought it might be; immediately I made the proof and found that it was gold.” Marshall and Sutter attempted to keep the discovery of gold …show more content…

The news of the discovery of gold spread quickly to every corner of the world, and people gradually started to come to California from groups of dozens to ten thousands. J.S. Holiday in his book Rush for Riches described the migration of the people as, “For years thereafter, gold seekers by the hard to count thousands pushed ashore at California’s suddenly famous city” (83). Because population of California had grown excessively, California began to develop. New towns, roads, churches, and schools sprung up. William Weber Johnson wrote in his informative book The Forty-Niners“A potential town was born when a prospector squatting at a wilderness stream washed out a pan full of gold bearing dirt…A full community of gold-hungry campers soon appeared” (114). In some towns, the word city was added to because of its number of inhabitants, and even the capital was moved from Monterey to San Francisco. In addition, Liza Ketchum said in her book The Gold Rush, “California’s growing population pressured Congress for a transcontinental railroad” (103). The transcontinental railroad connected California to all the other states reaching to the East Coast. Moreover, the population had enlarged to a great extent that it only took a year for California to be admitted as the 31st state. California applied to enter the Union in 1849 and became a state in 1850.The gold rush caused a major boom in the population. William Weber Johnson summarized the increase in population in his book, “During those half dozen years the momentum of the gold rush had drawn more than a quarter of a million people... in contrast with the mere 14,000 that had settled before the discovery of gold”

Get Access