Gold Rush

Gold discovered in California at the beginning of 1848 helped change the fate of the union by encouraging an influx of white settlers in the final months of the 1840s and putting pressure on the federal government to admit the former Mexican province as a new state.  The intense sectional debate over slavery made the decision over California statehood an explosive one ultimately leading to the national Compromise of 1850.  James W. Marshall was the man who made the initial gold discovery on January 24, 1848 at John Sutter's Mill in northern California (near present-day Sacaramento).  Marshall was a native of New Jersey and a veteran of the Mexican War who worked for Sutter.  The discover soon became public and the rapid expansion of gold mining eventually drew more than 500,000 prospecters and opportunists to California.  The "gold rush" became a cultural symbol of a new age.  Yet major gold mining in California died out quickly and major gold operations ceased by the end of the Civil War.  James Marshall, the original prospecter, received some fame for his discovery but made little money from his find and died in poverty in 1885. (By Matthew Pinsker)

California Gold Rush (Boyer, 2008)

Textbook
Nine days before the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, however, an American carpenter discovered gold in the foothills of California's Sierra Nevada range. The California gold rush began within a few months. A San Francisco newspaper complained that the "whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from shore to the base of the Sierra Nevada, resounds with the sordid cry to gold, GOLD, GOLD! while the field is left half-planted, the house half-built, and everything neglected by the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes."...Arriving by sea and by land, gold-rushers drove up the population of California from around 15,000 in the summer of 1848 to nearly 250,000 by 1852.
Paul S. Boyer, et al., eds., The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People, 6th ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2008), 393-394.

Official Report of Gold Deposits, 1854 (Hayward)

Gazetteer/Almanac

Official Report of Deposits of Gold from California.
At the various U. S. mints in 1848, $44,177
"        "         "        "          1849, 6,147,509 
"        "         "        "          1850, 36,074,062
"        "         "        "          1851, 55,938,232
Manifested shipments to U. S. ports in December, 1851, which did not reach the mints in 1851, . . . . 2,910,214
Importations into Chili in1851, by official returnsfrom that country, . . $2,372,000
Shipments per steamers in1851, on freight to Europeand various countries,not including Chili,via Panama, so far as destination was declared on manifests, .... $3,600,000
Add estimate of shipments by the same course and to same quarters in 1851, for which the destination beyond Panama was not declared — 50 per cent, of above, ... 1,800,000
Known shipments by sailing vessels in 1851, to various foreign ports, ... 1,000.000
Add for amount not manifested, believed to be as large as....  1,000,000                                                                                                                                                              
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Total estimate of exportation to foreign countries in 1851. .... 9,772,000

The early foreign trade was very large, particularly in 1849, from Pacific ports. Remittances in this early trade were made chiefly in gold dust. The aggregate shipment to foreign countries for 1848, 1849, and 1850, is therefore assumed for the 3 years to be as large as that of 1851, .... 9,772,000

Total estimate of exports to foreign countries to December 31, 1851, which would not reach U. States mint, .... 19,544,000
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120,658,194

Estimated amount taken overland to Mexico, and by passengers to Europe, East Indies, Australia, South America, (exclusive of Chili,) manufactured in California and United States, and otherwise retained by individuals leaving the country, and therefore not represented in the mint deposits, say 5 per cent, on above, .... 6,032,909

In hands of bankers, merchants, and traders in San Francisco, per tabular statement prepared December 31, 1851, .... 5,000,000

Estimated half month's yield at mines not brought forward December, 1851, say, 2,500,000 In hands of bankers and traders in other
parts of California and Oregon, December 31, 1851, .....  2,500,000

In circulation—gold dust and California private coin, estimated at $20 per individual, and population estimated at 212,000, ....... 4,240,000
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Estimated product to December 31, 1851.... 140,931,103 

Estimated product from January 1 to June 30, 1852, .... 33,849,774                                                                              
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Total estimated product to June 30, 1852, .  .   .   .   .  $174,780,877 

John Hayward, Gazetteer of the United States of America... (Philadelphia: James L. Gihon, 1854), 566.
Date Event
Gold discovered in California
First ship in regular service from New York to California via Cape Horn arrives in San Francisco
Prospector makes the richest gold discovery yet in Colorado
California
Date Title
New York Times, "The American Gold Fields," July 2, 1858
Chicago (IL) Press and Tribune, “The Indian War on the Pacific Coast,” July 7, 1858
New York Herald, “From St. Paul to Frazer River,” August 7, 1858
New York Herald, "Newly Discovered Gold Mines," August 12, 1858
Omaha Nebraskan, “The Gold Fever,” September 15, 1858
(St. Louis) Missouri Republican, “Gold Fields,” September 26, 1858
New York Times, “From Kansas and Pikes Peak,” December 15, 1858
New York Herald, “The Gila Gold Mines,” January 16, 1859
Charleston (SC) Mercury, “The Gold Regions of the West,” February 24, 1859
Milwaukee (WI) Sentinel, “Returning Gold Hunters,” May 20, 1859
Fayetteville (NC) Observer, “Gold Hunters,” May 23, 1859
New York Herald, “The Pike’s Peak Delusion,” May 29, 1859
Cleveland (OH) Herald, “The Kansas Gold Mines,” June 11, 1859
New York Times, “Letter from the Kansas Gold Region,” July 8, 1859
New York Herald, “Horace Greeley and His Pike’s Peak Humbuggery,” July 10, 1859
New York Herald, “Conflagration in the Pike’s Peak Goldmines,” July 17, 1859
San Francisco (CA) Evening Bulletin, “Pleasant Reunion of Pioneers,” September 30, 1859
New York Herald, “Emigration to California,” November 13, 1859
New York Herald, “Gold from Pike’s Peak,” February 26, 1860
San Francisco (CA) Evening Bulletin, “Capitalists, and not Laborers Wanted,” April 23, 1860
Chicago Style Entry Link
Helper, Hinton Rowan. The Land of Gold: Reality Versus Fiction. Baltimore, 1855. View Record
Holliday, J. S., and William Swain. The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush Experience. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1981. View Record
Holliday,  J. S. Rush for Riches: Gold Fever and The Making of California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. View Record
Hume, Janice, and Noah Arceneaux. “Glittering Dust, Dormant Treasure: Press, Public Memory and Georgia's 'Forgotten' Gold Rush.” American Journalism 23, no. 4 (2006): 7-33. View Record
Richards, Leonard L. The California Gold Rush and the Coming of the Civil War. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2007. View Record
Stillson, Richard T. Spreading the Word: A History of Information in the California Gold Rush. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006. View Record
How to Cite This Page: "Gold Rush," House Divided: The Civil War Research Engine at Dickinson College, https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/9583.