California Gold Rush California

Gold Rush California of 1848-1853

Jacob Voss

One day in January of 1848 James W. Marshall found gold while he was building a sawmill along the American River near present day Sacramento. The discovery was reported in the San Francisco newspaper in March but it didn 't cause much commotion due to not many people believing it. What really started it was when one day in May 1848 Sam Brannan, a store owner in stutters creek, filled a bottle with gold dust and basically went around San Francisco yelling “Gold, Gold! Gold from American river” Presumably saying it like this due to an accent. This time everyone believed it since there was proof so everyone dropped everything to head to gold fields, people would quit jobs and some newspapers were forced

At the time gold panning was a simple way to obtain gold fast with little work, but most of the time ineffective. Cradles and Rockers started from the beginning of the gold rush, it required two people but produced more than panning, first dirt, water, and rock were placed on wood that looked similar to a cradle, which would then be rocked and sifted then a grate stopped the larger rocks from going through, then the finer bits of sand and gold would be caught by ridges and canvas. Then there was Flumes and Sluicing, water was essential during the gold rush, as it was for this technique, it was used to separate dirt from gravel sometimes the places they chose to mine weren 't the most ideal for mining since sometimes water wasn 't near so they built long wood chutes to carry water over while the sluice box was particularly helpful since it could filter out dirt and gravel as i previously mentioned. Finally there was Horse-Drawn Assastre which was somewhat useful since there was a chance that gold could be encased in rocks and a few miners from Mexico created this tool/technique, the horses and or mules would be hooked to spokes with rocks connected on the inside as they turned the axis’s on the spokes they would crush the rocks

Cited Sources

http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/californiagoldrush.htm http://www.legendsofamerica.com/ca-goldrush.html https://www.coloma.com/california-gold-discovery/history/california-gold-rush/ http://www.nationalgeographic.org/news/after-gold-rush/ http://www.history.com/topics/gold-rush-of-1849

http://sciencing.com/tools-gold-rush-during-1849-8571747.html