California Gold Rush
It lasted just a decade, but the California gold rush was a gigantic adventure for a generation of fragile young men, most of them citizens of a fragile young nation. They took their name ~ the forty-niners ~ from the year that the gold rush began. In 1849 the East was dazzled by the news that across the continent, on land that was just given to the U.S. by Mexico, golden nuggets were lying around loose on the ground. Abandoning farms and apprenticeships, deserting their families, the forty-niners swarmed West by the thousands. In California, they heard that a man could make a fortune by simply digging in hills with just a little more equipment than a shovel, a tin pan and a wooden, box like thing called a cradle. "If the man did not get rich from digging, who cared? For most of the forty-niners the adventure alone was enough treasure to last a lifetime.1" The gold rush all started in 1848 when James W. Marshall found gold nuggets at Sutter's Mill. He rushed down to the nearest town and yelled that he had found gold. People from the near shanty towns rushed to El Derado to claim their fortune from Sutter's Mill. By 1949, President Polk releasedthis information to the rest of the country. People from all over the conti
Thieves often whipped or sent home, and murderers were hung or lynched on the spot. That is what made it such a great historical event. After that, they wanted to head back east, because life was dangerous and violent there. There was a lot of work and people would fight a lot for other people's tools. A lot of people would get killed that had gold with them. In San Francisco, the population grew so quickly that it was hard to keep justice. It was a long hard journey to California. After a while, law agencies were established and the mining camps were shut down. Most of the people that came to California for gold did not get what they were looking for. They were the first serious group of trouble in San Francisco. The citizens of San Francisco grew so fearful that a police group of 230 people was formed and disbanded the Hounds. In 1850, a group of Australian immigrants posed an even greater threat that made the Hounds look tame in comparison. In the next few years people from Europe, Asia, and South America joined the Americans in their search for gold. The Miners set up local unofficial courts or vigilantes. A group of volunteers from the East, fresh from the Mexican war, called themselves the Hounds.
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Acceptance Essays
