The California Gold Rush
Essay Preview: The California Gold Rush
Report this essay
The California Gold Rush
In American History, there has been a lot of findings on gold. But the most famous one was the California Gold Rush, which also caused one of the major events of the civil war. The California Gold rush made news world-wide because it brought people from all over the world to California in search of gold. This event” embodied the American dream of wealth, determination, and success” and it was also the cause of the west coasts transformation.
The California Gold Rush took place in Coloma, California. In 1847, California was very quiet and there werent as many people living there. But that all changed on January 24, 1848 when gold was discovered at Sutters Mill. The discoverer was James Marshall. James Marshall was a carpenter hired by John Sutter to build, what we know as Sutters Mill. On a normal cold morning day, Marshall was just doing his job. He needed to find a water flow so the mill could run. Marshall found his source, but also found” a shiny object twinkling in the stream” (Kidport) which he picked up and saw a piece of gold. Not knowing if what he found was truly gold, he decided to take it to Elizabeth Wimmer, “who was the only knowledgeable gold person in the construction crew”(findagrave.com) to verify it. Wimmer decided to use an overnight soap solution to see if the object was actually gold. The next morning, it was verified that what Marshall had found was indeed pure gold. “The nugget weighed approximately one-third of an ounce”(findagrave.com) and Wimmer appraised it at $5.12. Marshall decided to let Wimmer keep the gold nugget and then looked for John Sutter to tell him about the finding. Once Marshall found Sutter, he explained to him that what he found was real gold. Sutter was ecstatic but worried about people hearing about the findings, so he told Marshall to keep it a secret. Sutters worst nightmare came true within a couple of months when many men, women, and even children came in search of gold at his mill. They found out about these findings by the San Francisco newspapers. One of those newspapers, which a man named Samuel Brannan owned. Brannan was the owner of “California Star” and made lots of money, but it wasnt off the newspaper. He made most of his money by selling mining supplies. Brannan was a smart business man because he sold what he knew would make money. More and more miners were searching for gold and he knew that they needed equipment so he went to other stores and bought shovels and them sold them at his store. One of Brannans strategies was to go around town “waving the bottle of gold over his head and shouting “Gold, gold, gold in the American River!”(eyewitnesstohistory.com). This smart technique is part of the reason why Samuel Brannan became the first millionaire in California. The president