The California Gold Rush and its Impact In the year of 1848, gold was found by a group of people digging in the northern part of California. This group of laborers was digging a millrace, which is the channel which carries the swift current of water that drives a mill wheel, for a man with the name of John Sutter. Although most people think about the Gold Rush as a time where gold was discovered in California, the Gold Rush made more of an impact to the future of the country than people think. There are many other reasons besides gold that make the Gold Rush an important event in American history. The first of many reasons detailing on why the California Gold Rush was important is the fact that it brought many Americans to migrate west. In the year of 1849, more than 100,000 people that lived in the eastern half of the nation migrated to California in hopes of becoming wealthy off of the gold they hoped to find. These people became known as “forty-niners”. The state of California was not formally a state at the time, it was a territory. The leaders of the territory took advantage of the situation and applied for statehood, since it now met the requirements to become a state. If it weren’t for the Gold Rush, it might have taken longer for …show more content…
In fact, a lot of the people in the Gold Rush didn’t go mine to make money; they opened small businesses and sold supplies to miners instead. Merchants sold things such as mining tools, food, and clothes to miners. In fact, a man by the name of Levi Strauss began to sell jeans and clothing to miners. It started off as a small company, but today Levi’s is one of the nation’s largest jean companies. The Gold Rush was the start of the many different businesses and companies that are located in California. All of these businesses and companies are an important part of California’s economy