One of the most highly-definitive aspects of the Wild-Wild West’s great frontier was the California Gold Rush, a phenomenon unlike any other which went on to influence the earliest notions of the modern American dream. The discovery of gold in the mid 1800’s resulted in thousands of Americans (and even foreigners) from all over the country and all over the globe flocking to the city of Los Angeles to begin mining and panning for gold in hopes of striking it rich and achieving instant monetary success.
The sudden and unprecedented influx of people that flooded into California brought about cultural diversity, shifting perceptions towards immigrants, increasing industrialization, and significant economic progression. It was as if the entire world wanted to cash in on this abundant yet finite natural resource, and this collective mindset towards harnessing natural resources for monetary gain went on to influence our modern obsession with squandering the earth’s natural reserve of minerals and oil to exhaustion. On the plus side, it also stimulated global trade and investment and aided in propelling humanity into the technological golden age as the stimulated economy eventually gave rise to breakthroughs in science, mechanical engineering, and global industrialization.
The quiet farm life and the Mountain Yarns and Prairie Tales of the great outdoors began to gradually coexist with the bustling boom of native and immigrant opportunists seeking to build a better life in the United States, eventually going on to define an entire era of American history. Here are 10 solid facts about the California Gold Rush that you may or may not have already known:
By the year 1850, one-fourth of California’s population consisted of immigrants.
For the first time in California’s history, a consensus revealed that 25% of the state’s inhabitants were born somewhere else. The immigration of foreigners solidified multi-racial settlements all throughout the United States, and there was a significant Chinese presence in America by 1852, wherein at least a quarter of a hundred thousand Chinese immigrants had arrived and settled in the USA.
Racism and immigrant tensions began to rise
A legislature put in place to tax Chinese miners was passed, eventually repealed, and replaced by one that would charge them two dollars a month, which is the modern equivalent of eighty dollars in today’s currency. A surge in violence against immigrant miners was observed, in which a wide range of hate crimes were perpetuated against them.
Native Americans clashed with miners
The influx of immigration and mining in Native American lands brought about foreign diseases, and the encroaching of mining activities on sacred land resulted in an increase in violent altercations between indigenous tribes and local or immigrant miners. Due to this, the Native American population began to suffer and dwindle. Disease and mining accidents took the lives of many, but violence against tribal peoples and clashes between tribes and miners resulted in the deaths of many more.
The pursuit of gold wasn’t cheap
The amount of young men that came to America with nothing but a few worldly possessions and the clothes on their backs was astounding – a large number of people abandoned their homes and families just to come to America, with big dreams and aspirations of fortune. When they got there, they had to build their lives from the ground up, and they quickly realized that it wasn’t anywhere near cheap. In the stimulated economy of San Francisco at the height of the gold rush, merchants charged insanely high prices for the most basic of necessities, which meant that only those who were lucky enough to strike significant gold could actually thrive and flourish there. This meant that everyone tried, but not everyone succeeded.
Merchants made more money than miners by taxing them heavily
Enterprising minds at the time eventually saw more opportunities to profit off of the newly settled prospectors rather than the gold itself. This meant that the businesses and services that catered to gold-rich miners made even more money than the miners themselves by taxing them heavily. The German tailor Levi Strauss came to San Francisco in 1850 to sell tarpaulins and wagon covers for miners. When he found out that durable work pants that withstood the daily grind of hard labor in the mines were highly in-demand, he went on to open a denim store in downtown San Francisco that would eventually grow into the world-famous denim-manufacturing empire known as Levi’s.
Oliver’s Twist 