Going West in the 1840s

III - The California Gold Rush of 1849-55

In 1848, while he was building a sawmill for Sutter’s Fort (a trading post in California established by Swiss immigrant John Sutter), carpenter John Marshall found gold.  In December 1848, President Polk announced it in Congress. 

From 1848-1852 the non-native population of California grew from 14,000 to 250,000.  In 1849 alone, 80,000 would-be prospectors (the ‘forty-niners’) flooded into California.  They were followed by merchants, labourers, businessmen and bankers, bars and prostitutes. 

At first you could find ‘gold dust’ just by sifting through the sand, then by ‘panning’ in the streams, then by erecting a sluice and rocking cradle, and finally by digging gold mines.  Between 1848 and 1855, perhaps 350 tons of gold were extracted. 

In 1855, the gold began to run out and, although some prospectors stayed on in hope, the Gold Rush ended as suddenly as it had started. 

Going Deeper

The following links will help you widen your knowledge:

BBC Bitesize - VERY brief!

American Experience 

The Gold Miner's Experience - Sources

California's Genocide

Impact of the Gold Rush on Natve Americans: Sources - Smithsonian NMAI

  How did the discovery of gold in the West affect the lives of Americans?

YouTube

The Gold Rush and Law & Order - Mr Cloke (excellent)

The California 1849 gold rush – facts and history

Life of a Gold Miner

Most prospectors had spent everything getting to California, and they expected to make a fast buck and get out quickly, so they lived rough.  Mining towns were a single muddy street, and the prospectors often lived in tents of old blankets stretched over wooden frames.  They laboured all day – "work that would have killed a horse" – often for nothing.  Saloons, shopkeepers, suppliers, doctors – all charged a fortune.  A few miners got rich, some wasted a fortune on drink and gambling, but most came and left with nothing, ruined.

Source B

Placerville Gold Mining Town

Impacts of the Gold Rush

1. Economic Impacts [AFTERLIFE]

1. Additional benefits: the boom in gold mining caused ‘spin-off’ booms in: mining machinery & hydraulics; lumber mills; shipyards; leather & clothing; flour mills; and retail.  Farmers produced not just food staples, but fruits and wines.  California quickly became an exporter of flour.

2. Finance & Banking: San Francisco became a financial hub, as banks like Wells Fargo (1852) set up to safeguard and transfer the gold. 

3. Trade: San Francisco’s port became a massive importer of lumber, flour, and salted meat from places like Chile, Peru, and Hawaii; tea, sugar, silk, and porcelain from China; and mining machinery and expertise from Australia.

4. Express mail: In 1848, the US Congress extended the US Mail service to California and commissioned the building of steamships to carry it.  The Pony Express and the California Star Express were set up to provide a rapid overland mail service. 

5. Road & Rail: The Gold Rush accelerated infrastructure projects such as the Stockton-Los Angeles Road (1853), the Sacramento Valley Railroad (1856) and the Port of San Francisco.  The need to connect California to the eastern US would lead to the building of the first transcontinental railroad (to the Oakland Long Wharf on San Francisco Bay) in 1863-69.

BUT:

6. Labour shortages: the mania for gold mining led to a loss of specialist workers in related trades, especially in California, but also in Great Britain, China and Hawaii, as workers downed tools and went off to seek their fortune.

7. Inflation: the gold eventually sold to the US Mint, who converted it into coin, more than doubling the amount of gold in circulation; this flood of new gold raised prices by 44% by 1855 – the highest rate of inflation in peacetime America before 1975.

8. Financial Crisis: as the flow of gold began to dry up, two major San Francisco banks collapsed in 1855; this set off a ripple effect which caused a world-wide banking panic in 1857. 

9. Expansion problems: the rapid growth of San Francisco led to chaos, slums, malnutrition, disease and crime.  Cholera swept through the town in 1850, and a fire destroyed three-quarters of the town in 1851. 

2. Political Impact

1. California Statehood: The population explosion and economic growth of California allowed its admission to the Union as a free state in 1850, disrupting the balance between free and slave states in the US Senate.  This became a major issue in national politics and contributed to the tensions leading up to the Civil War. 

2. State Influence: California's elected representatives and senators quickly became influential in federal politics, and pressed for Western interests, such as railroads and infrastructure funding.

3. Military and Federal Presence: The Gold Rush led the US government to establish military outposts, customs offices, and law courts in the region.

3. Law-and-Order Challenges

1. Crime: gangs and outlaws (such as the Tom Bell Gang and the Mexican-American 'Five Joaquins' Gang) took advantage of the lack of law enforcement.

2. Vigilantes and Lynch Mobs: Miners could 'stake a claim' to an area of land by hammering wooden stakes into the ground, so it was easy to steal a claim by stealing the stake or the land, and disputes often led to violent confrontations; mining towns set up unofficial courts, but mostly justice was dispensed by vigilante groups, usually by a lynching.  The San Francisco Committee of Vigilance was formed in 1851 after the killing of a prominent newspaper editor.

4. Environmental Damage

1. Destruction of Landscape: Miners diverted rivers, dug out entire hillsides, and left vast amounts of spoil.  The sediment from mining operations clogged rivers, causing floods and ruining ecosystems.

2. Deforestation: the prospectors cleared forests for timber, farming, and settlement, significantly altering the natural ecosystems.

3. Pollution: Mining polluted streams with mercury and other chemicals. 

5. Racial and Cultural Impacts

1. There were about 150,000 Indigenous Californians in 1848:

   •  Many were displaced from their lands, killed or forced into labour.  Women were raped and forced into prostitution.  The Indigenous population in California dropped to 30,000 by 1870 due to violence, disease, and starvation. 

   •  Peter Hardeman Burnett, the first Governor of California, predicted that “a war of extermination … until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected.  While we cannot anticipate this result but with painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power or wisdom of man to avert”.

   •  The California genocide: 303 militia groups were formed to exterminate the Indigenous people, paying $5 a head for their scalps, subsidised by the state and federal governments.

   •  In 1850 the Act for the Government and Protection of Indians allowed any person to indenture an Indigenous child, and there were raids on Indigenous villages to kidnap children, after which they were sold for as little $35.

   •  In 1851-52 the federal government signed treaties with the local tribes granting them 12,000 sq. miles of land for reservations, but then never ratified them

   •  The US Army established Fort Humbolt to keep the peace between the settlers and the local Wiyot people, but in 1860 allowed 250 women and children to be massacred by local vigilante businessmen, and then let the Wiyot men who sought safety in the Fort starve to death.

2. Mexican Californians found themselves suddenly under US rule after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848), which ended the Mexican-American War, ceding the region to the US:

   •  Many Mexican landowners lost their property because the US courts failed to recognise Mexican land grants, resulting in ruin for many Mexican Californians.

   •  The California Foreign Miners’ Tax of 1850 forced Mexican miners to pay a fee to work in the mines.

   •  Race-hatred and acts of violence were common. 

   •  Latin American prospectors brought their mining techniques, including the improved ‘batea’ pan.

   •  Spanish-speaking communities grew up in the Central Valley around towns like Sonora.

3. By 1852, around 25,000 Chinese immigrants had arrived in California to join the gold rush, fleeing poverty in China:

   •  They faced severe discrimination.  The Foreign Miners’ Tax targeted them also, and they were frequently subjected to racial violence.  In some cases, entire Chinese communities were driven out of mining towns.

   •  They became a vital part of California’s labour force, not only in mining but particularly in the construction of the transcontinental railroad.

   •  They brought with them their food, religious practices, and cultural customs.  For example, the first Chinese New Year celebration in San Francisco took pace in 1853 and became an annual event.

4. Ethnic Diversity in San Francisco:

   •  The massive influx of immigrants, including Irish, Germans, Italians, Mexicans, immigrants from Chile, Peru and many other places made San Francisco a multicultural city.  This led to the growth of ethnic neighbourhoods, businesses and cultures.