![]() Based on Newton Chandler’s letter to his wife, what can you infer about what he may have been feeling upon arriving in San Francisco?.Using the map of California’s gold regions, the print depicting the line of people waiting to depart, and George Keller’s account of how he decided to leave for California, what can you infer about the ways that Gold Rush “fever” spread in other parts of the country?.The sources in this set document the broad “forty-niner” experience. For those who found gold, it often became currency to pay for food, supplies, and other necessities so they could keep looking for more local merchants who catered to the miners are the ones who really hit it rich. Some, particularly early Gold Rushers who arrived in 1848, found impressive fortunes in California gold, but most prospectors failed to strike it rich. As the Gold Rush progressed, miners used more invasive techniques like hydraulic blasting. Early gold mining techniques included various forms of panning-using sieve-like devices such as rockers or sluice boxes to separate gold nuggets from rocks and dirt by pouring water through them. Miners would “stake a claim” to a particular location, securing the rights to any gold that they found there. Gambling, violence, and vigilante groups were common as local government and law enforcement were often nonexistent or ill-equipped to deal with the flood of new arrivals.įor fortune-seekers, gold mining was difficult work and hitting “pay dirt” was no guarantee. The tremendous influx of people, paired with open contempt for Native American claims to their ancestral land, resulted in devastating losses for California’s Native American population. As people flooded into mining camps, “boomtowns,” and the city of San Francisco, the Gold Rush brought together Europeans, South Americans, Chinese immigrants, and Americans from all walks of life. Gold seekers arrived by both sea and overland routes across the West like the California Trail. ![]() In 1848, the US had just taken California from Mexico as a result of the Mexican-American War, and the region’s population consisted primarily of Native Americans and people of Spanish or Mexican descent. The largest wave of migrants-about 90,000 people-arrived in 1849, earning them the nickname “forty-niners.” ![]() Between 18, 300,000 fortune-seekers came to California, transforming its population, landscape, and economy. ![]() This news quickly spread across the country and around the world, igniting the California Gold Rush. On January 24, 1848, carpenter James Marshall discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill, a sawmill on the American River in Coloma, California. ![]()
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