California gold rush started7/27/2023 By 1852, population reached about 250,000 – more than one percent of the nation’s population had moved to California in just four years. ![]() After the arduous trip miners faced shockingly high prices for food, supplies, rent and other goods and services and endured mining camps that lacked basic sanitation.ĭespite these costs, the population of California (excluding non-Christianized Indians) soared from about eight thousand on the eve of the rush to 93,000 – 77 percent of whom were males aged fifteen to forty – in 1850. Sailing around Cape Horn could take from three to eight months depending on winds. The trip via Central America took six to eight weeks, but was very dangerous due to disease, an issue that abated when Cornelius Vanderbilt forged a path through Nicaragua in 1851 and William Henry Aspinwall completed a railroad across the Panamian isthmus in 1855. Others came by ship – either sailing around South America or sailing to Panama, crossing the isthmus, and then boarding another ship to San Francisco. Many easterners went overland in wagon trains through undeveloped territory – a trip that took from April or May until September and cost around $200 at a time when laborers earned somewhat less than one dollar per day in the East. ![]() The rush occurred because the gold mining industry was very labor intensive and was easy to enter due to modest capital requirements and laws which made acquiring a claim stake fairly simple. As accounts of the discovery spread, residents of the thinly-populated West Coast poured into the gold fields and migrants swarmed in from the Far East, Mexico, South America, and the East Coast – which provided about 80 percent of the newcomers. The California Gold Rush began with the discovery of significant gold deposits near Sacramento in 1848. The gold rush beginning in 1849 brought a flood of workers to California and played an important role in integrating California’s economy into that of the eastern United States.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |