"Gold Rush Info" by Alex Harris, updated 5/3/98

Related historical timeline created with Timeliner (Nobles grad, Tom Snyder)

For fifty years Americans migrated west in search of riches. In the mid 1800's news of miners discovering gold attracted thousands of people to the west coast. In 1848, the whole mass migration started when workmen building a mine discovered flakes of Gold. John A. Sutter discovered this in the Sierra Nevada foothills. Sutter tried to keep his great discovery a secret but by May, Americans were flooding the foothills. In September the news had reached the Northeast. By May of 1849 80,000 migrants moved to the west coast in search of gold. As the word of gold got out it flashed around the world sparking the transformation of the west coast. These people were called "forty-niners". They came overland in covered wagons or sailed to Panama and took the train up to California. The rush attracted not only Americans, but also many Europeans and Asians migrated to California.The population in California rose to become 380,000 people. The west was a booming place and it was growing quickly. San Francisco became a major city and mining camps jumped up all around it. The discovery of gold attracted speculators and the people kept coming to loom for their fortunes. Gold was a symbolic reward for coming to the new continent and people kept searching for gold hoping for their fortune.
--Alex Harris '00, student at Noble and Greenough School
--history teacher: Don Allard
--sources: American History Book, Volume 1to 1877. Worth Publishers,New York,1993.
--The Americans A new History of the People of the United States, By Oscar Handlin, pg. 206

related web sites for The Gold Rush