I. The California Gold Rush is claimed to be the most known gold rush in the U.S. if not the world. The phenomenon was started by one man and his name is James Marshall, although John Shutter owned the land he found it on. The fist gold that marshal found was in the American River and he said “my heart thumped for I knew it was gold”. Because of his find the California Gold Rush was born, 1848, then died seven years later in 1855. In this time California accumulated over 300,000 people that left their homes to mine for gold. If the gold rush never happened California would most likely belong to Mexico and the U.S. would only have 49 states. The California Gold Rush, a phenomenon that drew thousands of people trying to strike it rich with gold, …show more content…
By December 1848 there was over 100 thousand people living in California.
1.California went from less than 1000 people to over 300,000 in less than a year.
A. People came form the U.S., South America, Europe, and China.
B. San Francisco’s newspaper was closed due to all the Employees quitting to gold mining.
2. Before the gold rush San Francisco only has 800 people living there.
A. Most of the people living in California were native people from Mexico.
3. California was not a part of the U.S. when the gold rush hit them.
III. The journey to California was long and treacherous for most of the people that went to California.
A. The land rout took three to seven months and went through the Rockies but was more difficult than the ocean rout.
B. The ocean rout took four to nine months and did not take as much effort as the land rout but was a breeding ground for diseases.
1. There were two routs that were taken, the land rout and the ocean rout.
A. People came from South America, Mexico, Hawaii, China and North America.
2. Gold fever drew hundreds of thousands of people to California just hoping to strike it rich with gold.
3. Around 300,000 people traveled to California hoping to strike it rich but only around 1000 people became rich with
…show more content…
49ers were people that traveled to California and left every thing behind.
B. 49ers traveled great distances to California for gold mining
1. In 1840 very few Americans lived in California and the only ones were trappers, missionaries, and native Indians.
A. Since most of the people were 49ers, they did not have any source of food that are grown there so food was tripled in price.
2. Because California was so new to the U.S., there was no government for any thing even murder also that meant that robberies were common and there was not much the people could do about it.
V. Working conditions for the miners was not grate and took a lot of time and effort.
A. Miners has their muscles strained a lot because of how hard and physical the work was.
B. There were said to be encounters with beds of poison oak in California
1. Miners would choose to put their bodies on the line for gold for years with little rest with not much reward.
A. The average amount for one buckets of dirt was about ten cents and to make a living they would have to run about 160 buckets of dirt.
B. To proses one bucket of dirt was described as “pain staking”
2. Most miners had to give their bodies and lives to gold mining and also left every thing