California Gold Rush - Simple English Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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During the California Gold Rush, around 300,000^[1] people traveled to California after gold was found at Sutter's Sawmill. The Gold Rush lasted from 1848-1855, peaking in 1952.^[1]

While around $2 billion in gold was found during the Gold Rush, very few gold miners got rich.^[1]

The Gold Rush had major effects on California's history, economy, and population. It may have helped the California Republic become a state in 1850.^[1] People came from all over the world to look for gold. California's population boomed, and San Francisco became one of America's major cities.

Before gold was discovered in 1848, the California Republic's population was around 160,000; most of these people were Native Americans.^[1] The Republic became a state in 1850, and by about 1855, more than 300,000 people had arrived in California.^[1] (However, the Gold Rush happened at the same time as a genocide of indigenous people in California, and the Native American population declined drastically.^[2][3])

In early 1848, a carpenter named James Wilson Marshall found small flakes of gold in a river while building a water-powered sawmill for John Sutter.^[4] He immediately went to tell Sutter, and they tried to keep the gold a secret.^[5] But word soon got out, and thousands of people started rushing west to look for gold. People who arrived in 1849 were nicknamed "forty-niners."

Over the next few years, hundreds of thousands of people traveled to California to seek their fortunes:^[1]

• By August 1848, just a few months after gold was found at Sutter's Sawmill, there were 4,000 gold miners in California.
• By August 1849, there were around 80,000.
• By 1853, there were around 250,000.

Some of the gold miners (also called "prospectors") found large amounts of gold and became wealthy, but most did not.

Not everyone who went to California during the Gold Rush looked for gold. Some opened businesses to provide services to gold miners (like clothing stores, barber shops, bakeries, and launderers).^[6] A few got rich and powerful this way, like Levi Strauss, who invented jeans made of strong denim.^[7]

Usually merchants, farmers, and other people who sold supplies earned more than gold miners. Sometimes a woman could earn more than her gold-mining husband.

The Gold Rush had a major impact on California's history, economy, and population. California was not a state when the Gold Rush began, and the Gold Rush may have helped it become a state in 1850.^[1]

Before gold was discovered in 1848, the California territory's population was around 160,000; most of these people were Native Americans. By about 1855, more than 300,000 people had arrived. However, from 1851-1853, around one in every five people who arrived in California died within the next six months.^[8]

California's population grew very rapidly. Between 1847 and 1860, California's population tripled.^[9] Meanwhile, San Francisco became a major American city^[8]. When the Gold Rush started, around 1,000 people lived there. Within two years, its population increased by 2,400%, and it had 25,000 full-time residents.^[10]

This was also a time when many people immigrated to the United States. For example, of 67,000 people who came to California in 1852, 4 in every 10 (20,000 people) came from China.^[9] They mined, built railroads, and worked on farms.^[9]

The Gold Rush happened during the California genocide of indigenous people and made it worse.^[2]

The genocide happened during the 19th century. During this time, government agents and private militias killed thousands of indigenous people in California (between 9,492 and 16,094 people, according to historians).^[2] White settlers also kidnapped between 10,000^[11] and 27,000^[12] natives for forced labor. Hundreds to thousands of natives starved or were worked to death.^[2]

The indigenous population also decreased dramatically because of disease, low birth rates, and starvation. Indigenous Californians were often raped and/or separated from their children. The state of California used its institutions (like its state legislature and court systems) to take away native people's land by favoring white settlers' rights over theirs.^[2]

State authorities and private militias encouraged, tolerated, and committed these acts.^[10][2][3]

Since the 2000s, most American academics and many activist organizations have used the word "genocide" to refer to this period of time.^[2][13] In 2019, California's governor Gavin Newsom stated:

"It's called genocide. That's what it was, a genocide. No other way to describe it. And that's the way it needs to be described in the history books. And so I'm here to say the following: I'm sorry on behalf of the state of California [for the] violence, discrimination and exploitation [approved] by [the] state government throughout its history".^[3]

In a 2019 Executive Order, Newsom formed the Truth and Healing Council to better understand the topic and inform future generations.^[14]

As the Gold Rush went on, gold became harder and harder to find. Many of the forty-niners returned to their home countries, or gave up mining gold and found other work in California.

The California Gold Rush ended in 1855.

• Gold
• History of California
• Mining

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