Gold Rush Facts:

1. Gold was discovered on January 24, 1848 by James Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma. Gold initially was valued from $12.00 to $35.00 an ounce. (In 2012, an ounce is worth approximately $1,500)
   • At one point, eggs (if any) were $3.00 each; whiskey was $16.00 a bottle, pills were $10.00 each without advice, $100 with advice.
   • The world's second largest gold nugget, and California's largest, was found at Carson Hill in Calaveras County in 1854. It weighed in at 160 pounds.
2. The lure of sudden wealth brought about rapid, uncontrolled population growth of California.
   • In early 1848, California's non-Indian population was less than 20,000.
   • In 1850, the federal census accounted for 93,000 - but that does not include the census returns from San Francisco, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara counties because they were lost.
   • In 1852, the state took its own census and counted 223,856.
   • In 1860, the federal census accounted for 380,000.
   • In 1870, the federal census accounted for more than 560,000 Californians.
3. All the gold produced in the century between 1840-1940 was worth less than the value of 1 year's agricultural output of the state in the 1960s.
   • In 1848, about 6000 miners obtained $10 million worth of gold.
   • In 1849, about 40,000 miners obtained between $20 and $30 million worth of gold.
   • In 1852 - the peak year of gold mining - about 100,000 miners obtained close to $80 million worth of gold.
   • The state's gold production increased year by year until 1865 when it was less than $18 million.

Major Consequences of the Gold Rush

1. Many of the men already in California - sailors, soldiers, landless tenants - abandoned their jobs/trades to get rich quick.
2. Americans as well as people from around the world came to California to get rich quick and then return home to live on their wealth.
3. Some east coast businessmen who were already wealthy gained further wealth, especially by transporting people to California by sea.
4. Chinese workers immigrated to the gold fields and attempted to assimilate into the economic life of California.
5. Very few individuals really prospered from placer mining. Most of the large profits fell into the hands of corporations who could afford hydraulic and quartz mining.
6. Mexicans were dispossessed of their land and their political power - not just by racial policies and procedures directed against them, but also at the hands of Mexican rancheros who assumed that siding with the white settlers would guarantee them positions of power and prestige in the new state of California.
7. Small-time politicians from the east coast and the south who were seeking greater political power came to California looking for new political opportunities. Many Southerners who feared the federal government planned to legally bring an end to slavery, saw bringing California into the union as a slave state as the key to their economic survival.
8. California might have been better off if gold had never been discovered; given its other natural advantages, it might have become just a populous and prosperous - but such prosperity would have been more gradual, orderly, and civilized. This is a recent, revisionist interpretation of the consequences of the Gold Rush.
   • Throughout most of the 20th Century, historians described the California gold rush as the most significant and progressive factor in California's history.
   • However, some historians have more recently argued that California might have been better off if gold had never been discovered and that given its other natural advantages, it would have become just a populous and prosperous - but such prosperity would have been more gradual, orderly, and civilized.
   • These very same historians argue that the gold rush left California environmentally ravished - habitats were destroyed; entire species depleted; hillsides, streams, rivers, and watersheds destroyed. Was this progress asks many historians?