The Mines | Early California History: An Overview | Articles and Essays | California as I Saw It: First-Person Narratives of California's Early Years, 1849-1900 | Digital Collections | Library of Congress (2024)
The gold mines that were the focus of these forty-eighters and forty-niners fell into three major regions. The first discoveries were along the American River and other tributaries to the Sacramento River. Not long thereafter, gold was found in the tributaries to the San Joaquin, which flowed north to join the Sacramento in the great delta east of San Francisco Bay. The Mokelumne River formed the boundary between the two areas, with the upper fields known as the Northern Mines, and those below the Mokelumne known as the Southern Mines. Other strikes occurred to the northwest around the Trinity, Klamath, and Salmon Rivers.
As mining spread, mining techniques changed. At first, miners relied on "panning" gold--swirling water from a stream in a shallow pan until the heavier, gold-bearing materials fell to the bottom while the water and lighter sand fell out over the rim. This was soon displaced by simple mining machines like the wooden "rocker" into which pails of water could be emptied and processed at one time. Even this minor technological advance meant that there was now an investment in equipment and methods that worked best with a team of men, not a single miner. Thus miners began to join together in formal and informal companies. Gold in and around stream beds was soon exhausted, and hard-rock miners took over, using their pickaxes to dig shafts up to forty feet deep with horizontal tunnels radiating from these shafts in search of subterranean veins of gold-bearing quartz.
And there were hillsides with gold-bearing gravel left from now-vanished stream beds. Here men devised hydraulic mining: streams and rivers were diverted from their original courses to provide water for primitive high-pressure hoses that washed down the gravel from a hillside. Indeed, the hoses washed down so much silt that the bed of the Sacramento River was raised several feet by the tons of debris that came down from the hills, drinking water was polluted, and the danger of flooding rose sharply. In 1884, the courts banned hydraulic mining, but by then the hunt for gold had become a business, with substantial investments in equipment, and the individual miner gave way to joint-stock companies.
Forty-niners came from Latin America, particularly from the Mexican mining districts near Sonora and Chile. Gold-seekers and merchants from Asia, primarily from China, began arriving in 1849, at first in modest numbers to Gum San ("Gold Mountain"), the name given to California in Chinese.
Mining began in California in the 1800s when the U.S. government encouraged westward expansion to survey the land for valuable resources. Ranchers, cowboys and pioneers settling into southern California discovered gold in the hills east of Los Angeles.
Spanish California Europeans' contact with California began in the mid 1530s when Cortez's men ventured to Baja California. Not until 1542 did Spaniards sail north to Alta California, and Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo's expedition that year made landings as far north as modern Santa Barbara.
Sutter tested the flakes and confirmed Marshall's suspicion: gold had been found in California. Within months, Marshall's discovery was made public, bringing a flood of fortune seekers to the region. The California Gold Rush would transform California and fuel the westward push of the United States.
The films and stars of Hollywood helped make the state the "center" of worldwide attention. California became an American cultural phenomenon; the idea of the "California Dream" as a portion of the larger American Dream of finding a better life drew 35 million new residents from the start to the end of the 20th century ...
The California gold rush of the 1800s continues today with small miners mining for gold and silver in more than 5,000 mining claims and where rockhounders search for rocks, minerals, and gemstones on public lands.
By August 1848, 4,000 gold miners were in the area, and within a year about 80,000 “forty-niners” (as the fortune seekers of 1849 were called) had arrived at the California goldfields. By 1853 their numbers had grown to 250,000.
Tribes included the Karok, Maidu, Cahuilleno, Mojave, Yokuts, Pomo, Paiute, and Modoc. On the other hand, the mountains that divided the groups made extensive warfare impractical, and the California tribes and clans enjoyed a comparatively peaceful life. Illustration IV: Mount Shasta with Indians and TeePees.
Most scholars agree that Montalvo's Las Sergas de Esplandián is the direct progenitor of the word California. However, no one knows absolutely how Montalvo derived the word—whether he invented it himself, formed it from the Arabic word khalifa, or was inspired by other works.
Samuel S.Brannan (March 2, 1819 – May 5, 1889) was an American settler, businessman, journalist, and prominent Mormon who founded the California Star, the first newspaper in San Francisco, California. He is also considered the first to publicize the California Gold Rush and was California's first millionaire.
When James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter's Mill in Coloma in 1848, it would change the world forever and that golden legacy still lives on in California to this day. The Golden State still hosts more than 5,000 active placer mining claims and hosts the first and second-most active mining counties in the nation.
On January 24, 1848, James W.Marshall discovered gold on the property of Johann A. Sutter near Coloma, California. A builder, Marshall was overseeing construction of a sawmill on the American River.
Thou shalt not steal a pick, or a shovel, or a pan from thy fellow-miner; nor take away his tools without his leave; nor borrow those he cannot spare; nor return them broken, nor trouble him to fetch them back again, nor talk with him while his water rent is running on, nor remove his stake to enlarge thy claim, nor ...
Thousands of people from the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), Oregon, Mexico, Chile, Peru and China headed for California in the summer and fall of 1848, before Americans on the East Coast had a clue of what was to come. Europeans would soon follow.
Most were Americans, though a number of settlers also came from China, Europe, and South America. The massive influx gave rise to numerous cities and towns, with San Francisco gaining particular prominence. The Gold Rush was credited with hastening statehood for California in 1850.
In the next year, close to 100,000 people went to California from the United States, Europe, and every other corner of the globe. Gold-seekers from Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and China continued to sail across the Pacific along well-established trade routes.
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