California Gold Rush

The nineteenth century was the great era of North American gold rushes Beginning in North Carolina in 1799 , gold rushes were initially a southern phenomenon , centered along the eastern piedmont of the Appalachians . A rush in the Cherokee Nation contributed to the forced removal of Cherokees in the 1830s

The western rushes began in 1848 with a gold discovery in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada , just as the United States acquired California from Mexico , and they shared characteristics with those in the South . The story begins with James Marshall 's accidental

discovery of gold on the north fork of the American River in early 1848 . By June 1848 , the local rush to the gold fields was in full course , and President Polk 's message to Congress made on December 5 that year , incorporating news of the possibilities of great wealth , inaugurated the international excitement .As news spread , adventurers from all over the world made for California Hard-drinkers and gamblers , the `forty-niners , the generation of the emigrants to California , created an archetypal saloon society , where more fortunes were made from speculation in land and goods than from gold . Ships were diverted from their usual routes to carry gold seekers from European countries , China , Australia , and the South Seas . Many Mexicans came by overland routes , and it is believed that a nearly 100 ,000 persons had entered the territory by the end of 1849 Gold was a strong incentive for the Chinese to come to California , but there was a stronger enemy that pushed them out of their ancestral homeland in search of a better life . For many centuries Chinese in the southeastern part of China had fought hunger and starvation . The reality of present misery , coupled with the prospect of future wealth , was strong enough to send many adventure-seeking Chinese on their journey to the Mountain of Gold ' as California was then called by the Chinese California also set a pattern for future rushes whereby Anglo Americans sometimes aided by the state , fought to control the placers

The thousands of emigrants from the eastern U .S . used three principal routes : by ship around Cape Horn a combination of sea and land travel crossing Central America by the Panama or Nicaragua route and in wagon trains across the Plains

The common goal was the Mother Lode region . They dispossessed native peoples , focused on placers , as they called surface gold deposits , and attracted disproportionately male and stunningly diverse populations California 's was the most male of the rushes , though native women were present in the diggings , and Miwok women , for example , took up mining in to supplement older subsistence strategies . The rush drew gold seekers from around the world , especially from Mexico , Chile , the United States , China , and several European nations

In Dis , Crime , and Punishment in the California Gold Rush Martin Ridge writes on the efforts of socially acculturated men who sought wealth ' to create an efficient and prosperous community in a place where there was little effective government and...