California Gold Rush Essay

The California Gold Rush in the mid-nineteenth century forever changed the state as immigrants from all over the world flooded in, driven by the prospect of finding gold and starting a new, prosperous life. However, for newcomers and those already in California, their golden dream was quickly shattered by the actions of those looking to capitalize on and monopolize this major California transformation. The gold rush rapidly grew California’s population creating internal shifts of migration, the destruction of the environment in tandem with the stealing of native land, the discrimination and killing of non-white immigrants, a violent genocide of native Californians, the strengthening of Californios, and economic domination by anglo capitalists

The San Francisco Chronicle wrote that wealth generated from gold and the reinvestments into San Francisco “levels the forests and builds up the prosperity of the new Pacific Empire”. Loggers decimated the Sierra forests around Lake Tahoe to provide the Comstock mines with 600 million feet of lumber and two million cords of firewood used by the mines and mills. Other support industries, such as California’s quicksilver mines and refineries, emitted so much smoke that trees and cattle exposed to the fumes died en masse. Throughout their operations, mining companies dumped approximately 800,000 cubic yards of roasted cinnabar into creeks in Santa Clara Valley. At the same time, the soil and lakes in the Pacific Basin became a dumping site for Mercury. The widespread destruction of the environment resulting from the gold rush, the neglect of the miners, and the decisions of investors to decimate the land for profit is thus

White miners promoted the narrative that competing non-white miners, specifically South American, Chinese, and Hispanic miners, should be prohibited from mining. As the gold deposits grew leaner, Anglo landowners employed Chinese and Mexican miners but kept most of the profit for themselves. Further, white men considered non-white men as part of a criminal class, justifying the formation of vigilante groups where the lynching of poor Mexicans and Indians became a sport. In 1855, an average of one homicide per day occurred in Los Angeles despite the population only being about 4,000 people. Thus, during California’s gold rush, racial discrimination manifested through verbal and physical violence while characterizing non-whites as a criminal class exploited for the gain of anglo landowners. The lynching of non-whites shows the exclusion and elimination of competition and the prevailing hate rhetoric that quickly turned violent. This reality of hard labor, discrimination, and even murder shattered the dreams of many non-white