• The spark that ignited the gold rush occurred in May 1848 when Sam Brannan, a storekeeper in Sutter's Creek, found a flake of gold.• Ms. Wimmer used a lye soap solution overnight

to verify that the 1/3 ounce nugget Marshall had found was true gold.• The New York Herald printed news of the

discovery in August 1848 and the rush for gold began. • 30,000 people assembled at launch points

along the plains in the spring of 1849

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• Many agricultural workers left in search of gold. • Squatters invaded land, shot ranchers’ cattle and stole

crops. • There was nearly mass hysteria as thousands of

immigrants from around the world invaded the “Gold Country of California”.

There were two main routes:1. A six-month sea voyage from New York around the tip of South America to San Diego or San Francisco. Rampant seasickness, bug-infested food, boredom, and high expense made this route unattractive for many would-be prospectors. 2. The second route brought travelers over the Oregon-California Trail in covered wagons—over rugged terrain and hostile territory.

Because of the discovery of gold, many Americans from the eastern states left to make fortunes in California.

• Digging for gold from early dawn until dusk was backbreaking work. • Gold diggers were called Forty-Niners.• Some people died on the journey there and some

turned around.

From a journal about the passage to California

• On May 11, 1849 Shufelt sailed out of New York harbor headed for the Isthmus of Panama (at the time a part of Columbia). Although he experienced a few days of sea sickness, he describes the voyage as enjoyable. We pick up his story as he makes his way across the isthmus to the Pacific Ocean hoping to find passage on a ship bound for San Francisco.

• "We took passage on a small schooner, crossed the bay with a gentle breeze & soon were winding our way up the crooked river.”

• James Wilson Marshall saw something golden shining in the tailrace at Sutter's Mill. • This touched off the greatest writing and artistic frenzy

in our nation's history. • The very first issue of the Panama Star, an American

newspaper printed in Panama, records the importance of that narrow piece of land linking the United States and its new mineral-rich territory.

• Even with the crudest of mining tools, the earliest miners did well. • All one had to do was to dig down into a placer, and

wash the pay dirt. • The California Gold Rush is generally considered to

have ended in 1858, when the New Mexican Gold Rush began.

• The large number of "'49ers” caused California's population to increase dramatically. In San Francisco, for example, the population grew from 1,000 in 1848 to over 20,000 by 1850.

Many employers hired more Chinese workers when laborers

left for California

• The Foreign Miners Tax was part of a campaign by native-born white Americans to restrict the entry of Chinese laborers. • In 1882, the Chinese Exclusion Act, halted Chinese

immigration for ten years and prohibited Chinese people from becoming US citizens.

Many of the prospectors were fortune-seekers from China, Germany, Chile, Mexico, Ireland, Turkey, and France who travelled to California for the Gold Rush.

Despite the ethnic tensions it engendered, the Gold rush forever changed the demographic face of California by making it one of the most ethnically diverse states in the Union by the middle of the 19th century. And this is California today.