They could mine a lot more gravel and dirt this way than with just a pan. Sometimes groups of miners used "rockers" or "cradles" to mine.California was admitted as the 31st state of the United States in 1850 during the gold rush.A few years later it had over 30,000 residents. San Francisco was a small town of around 1,000 people when gold was discovered.Today it is a popular tourist attraction. One example of a gold rush ghost town is Bodie, California. The businesses would leave too and soon the town would be empty and abandoned. When the gold ran out in an area, the miners would leave to find the next gold strike. The cities of San Francisco and Columbia are two examples of boomtowns during the gold rush.Ī lot of boomtowns eventually turned into abandoned ghost towns. Sometimes these camps would rapidly grow into towns called boomtowns. Whenever gold was discovered in a new place, miners would move in and make a mining camp. They were able to sell items at very high prices and the miners were willing to pay. The store and business owners who sold supplies to the miners often became wealthier than the miners. They also needed food and living supplies such as coffee, bacon, sugar, beans, flour, bedding, a tent, lamp, and a kettle. Typical supplies for a miner included a mining pan, a shovel, and a pick for mining. Then the miner can extract the gold and set it aside.Īll these thousands of miners needed supplies. After shaking the pan for a while, the gold will be on the bottom of the pan and the worthless material will be at the top. Because gold is heavy it will eventually work its way to the bottom of the pan. When panning for gold, miners put gravel and water into a pan and then shook the pan back and forth. One method miners used to separate gold from dirt and gravel was called panning. Later, more complex methods were used to allow multiple miners to work together and search larger amounts of gravel for gold. They often made ten times in a day what they could working a normal job. Many of the first prospectors did make a lot of money. Some were Americans, but many came from places like China, Mexico, Europe, and Australia. These people were called the Forty-niners. Around 6,000 people arrived in 1848 and in 1849 around 90,000 people arrived to hunt for gold. All the preparations in terms of constitution and legislature were made in 1849 and California became a state in 1850.Before the gold rush, there were only around 14,000 non-Native Americans living in California. The gold also helped to speed up the admission of California into the US as a State. In the beginning, property rights in the goldfields were not covered by law and this was solved by the system of staking claims. The gold rush resulted in the hasty development of California: many roads, churches, schools and towns were built to accommodate the gold-diggers. The best results were achieved with hydraulic mining although it was environmentally damaging. The gold rush peaked in 1852 and after that the gold reserves were getting thinner and harder to reach so that more sophisticated methods of mining had to be employed. Prospectors InvolvedĪt first, the gold could be picked up from the ground but later on it was recovered from the streams and rivers with the use of pans. The California Gold Rush began in 1848 and lasted until 1857. California Gold Rush: The Largest Mass Migration in U.S.
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