California Gold Rush Of 1848 Affected The Development Of California

On January 24, 1848 the discovery of the century was made in the American River at the base of the Sierra Nevada Mountains near Coloma, California. “James [W.] Marshall, a carpenter originally from New Jersey,” (History.com Staff) discovered gold flakes in the river while he was building a water-powered sawmill for “John Sutter, a German-born Swiss citizen” (History.com Staff). News of the discovery spread like wildfire, and soon after, people all over the nation and world packed up their lives and headed for California in the hopes of striking it rich. Gold fever caused a great uproar in the California territory, and the California Gold Rush of 1848 affected the development of California by causing an increase in its population, establishing

“By 1850, [California]… had become the world’s most racially and diverse city” (Foner 478). Even to this day, California seems to have one of the most diverse populations of the country. Although, all of these different racial groups, all looking and competing for the same thing, tensions were bound to rise. And they did. Although California may have seemed like a land of opportunity for all, discrimination of races that were not white was present in the territory just as much as anywhere else in the nation. “White miners organized extralegal groups that expelled ‘foreign miners’ – Mexicans, Chileans, Chinese, French, and American Indians – from areas with gold” (Foner 478). In 1850, the California state legislature passed the Foreign Miners Tax law, requiring each foreign miner to pay a tax of 20 dollars a

The end of the California gold rush became apparent almost ten years after Sutter’s discovery. Most of the surface gold in California had already been mined for, but miners still continued to arrive in the state. “Though gold mining continued throughout the 1850s… it reached its peak by 1852…” (History.com Staff). According to the staff of History.com, a total of two billion dollars in gold was extracted from the California during the gold rush.

The California Gold Rush of 1848 was “arguably one of the most significant events to shape American history during the first half of the 19th century” (History.com Staff). Although it was very important to the event, the discovery of gold is not the main reason why this event is so historically important. The arrival of immigrants from all over the world, the Compromise of 1850, the building of the first transcontinental railroad. These all occurred because of the California Gold Rush of