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Mexican Gold Rush History

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The Gold Rush (1848-1855)
The Bay of San Francisco became the objective of ships bounds for the Pacific Coast, and in the 1840s a center of periodic trade. Upon the time of the Gold Rush, San Francisco was a regional rather than an urban designation- the settlement was still called Yerba Buena (Vance, 1964, p. 6). In 1848, James Marshall and John Sutter discovered gold near the American River located near Sacramento, California. Both Marshall and Sutter tried to keep the discovery of a gold a secret. However, the secret could not be contained (“California Gold Rush”). When the news of gold being discovered at Sutter’s Mill broke out, many San Franciscans did not believe it was true. Many San Franciscans remained skeptical when an issue for March 15, 1848, the Californian newspaper first announced the discovery of gold. It was not until a visitor from the diggings appeared in a San Francisco store and made purchases with ounces of gold. The merchant who received the gold put the shiny particles on display at his store, and the townspeople’s doubts began to disappear (Lewis, 1980, p. 49-50). “Gold Fever” swept across San Francisco. Figure 2 shows the major important gold mines discovered in California during the Gold Rush.
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People from Mexico, Chile, China, and many other areas came to find gold. The population increase included many workers from China, who came to work in gold mines and later would help link the west coast and east coast with the building of the Transcontinental Railroad (“California Gold Rush”). California's overall population growth was so huge that the California became incorporated into the Union as the 31st state in 1850. This was two years after the United States has acquired California from Mexico under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, which ended the Mexican-American War (“San Francisco Gold Rush,”
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