Introduction
The California Gold Rush is one of the most significant events in California history. The Gold Rush brought people from all over the United States and the world in search of gold.It all began with John Sutter, a Swiss emigrant who arrived in California in 1839. He had become a Mexican citizen and received a land grant of 50,000 acres in Sacramento Valley. He had built Sutter's Fort at the site of what is now present day Sacramento. At Sutter's Fort, Sutter developed farming and other businesses. Sutter's Fort had become a rest station for travelers and immigrants to California. Though, in 1847 John Sutter hired James Marshall to build a saw mill at a site named the Coloma. On January 4th, 1848, James Marshall had picked up a piece of metal at the mill that had looked like gold. Marshall took the metal to Sutter. They then tested it and confirmed that it was gold.
Sutter was afraid that the discovery of gold would take his workers away from the fields. Sutter was also concerned that gold would bring prospectors onto his land. So he asked Marshall and the others working at the mill to keep the gold a secret. But, the word had spread everybody knew by late 1848. On December 5th, 1848, President James Polk was speaking to Congress on confirmed accounts of gold. The discovery of gold in California became national news. By 1849 the gold rush was on. People from all over the United States and the World were already rushing to California! People caught "Gold Fever" in the hope of striking it rich. Many gold seekers had arrived expecting to find rivers overflowing with gold yet, most found riverbanks crowded with miners.
Most prospectors were actually previously storekeepers, cooks, carpenters, teachers, farmers or some other trade before heading to California in search of gold. By the year of 1850, the mining country had become quite populated. Many of the immigrants even ended up starting businesses, trading posts, importing goods to sell to miners, farming and ranching. They took great advantage of the skills they had brought with them. In the mid 1850s gold was becoming very difficult to find. More people were making fortunes from selling supplies to miners, rather than the miners themselves.When silver was discovered in Nevada in 1859, the miners headed for Nevada. This event had ended the California Gold Rush.
