Flocks of miners arrived, and more companies with greater resources formed. With the scarcity of easy gold, quartz mining (digging underground in search of ore) developed this system, too, required more capital and organization. The possession of capital became a necessity because new mining techniques demanded larger operations.

Nevertheless, mining gold in northern California became increasingly expensive. When the placer gold gave out around 1851, conditions became even more difficult, but people kept coming. Yet however much gold came out of California ’s hills, life was never easy for the Forty-Niners. Few actually struck it big in the gold fields, but 18 were years of success for a significant number of miners. Forty-Niners believed that if they worked hard, they could get rich. A shovel, pan, and maybe a pick were the common tools of the early miner. In fact, gold dust soon emerged as the currency of California. The early days of the Gold Rush provided the greatest opportunity for the miners. Other Americans crossed the Great Plains, Rocky Mountains, Great Basin Desert, and Sierra Nevada Mountains to reach the land of gold.Įarly Success.

Easterners came by ship around South America or by way of Panama. Different visions of what could be accomplished in California appeared among the various groups, but many Americans felt that the gold strike represented an equality of opportunity, an optimistic idea that had long been the hallmark of their culture. Newspapers throughout the United States -in big cities and small towns -proclaimed the newfound riches. Forty-Niners (as these miners were called) came from the American East, Chile, China, France, Mexico, and elsewhere. The amount declined thereafter, but miners still mined $45 million of gold from California in 1857.įorty-Niners. Historians have estimated that miners extracted $10 million of gold in 1849, $41 million more of gold the following year, and another $81 million of gold in 1852. Vast amounts of gold came out of California. In 1849 alone, about eighty thousand people came to California by 1854 three hundred thousand had arrived. Word of the placer (or surface) gold spread throughout the world.

When word got out concerning the gold ’s location, people soon began scurrying into the hills seeking even more of the precious yellow metal -and many found it, at least at first. This strike set off one of the most dramatic economic events of the nineteenth century. On 24 January 1848 the American James Marshall discovered gold at John Sutter ’s mill in northern California.

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