gold rush
Imagine yourself building a sawmill and all of a sudden you see something shiny in the ground. You pick up the shiny pieces and determine that you just found gold. You go tell your foreman what just occurred. Soon, the news spreads that gold was found. Millions from all around pour into a place they had never seen before. These young white men were in a pursuit for happiness not realizing the hardships they would encounter on the way to California. In January of 1848, James Marshall had a work crew camped on the American River at coloma. The crew was building a saw mill for John Sutter. On the morning of January 24, James Marshall found a few tiny nuggets of yellow metal. Thus began one of the largest human migrations in history as a half-million people from around the world descended to California in search of instant wealth(gold rush p1). Gold fever-an obessive, insane desire to find and squirrel away the precious yellow metal-soon swept California. The fever spread to the eastern United States, and then to Europe and Asia. Gold fever triggered the great California Gold Rush, the largest and wildest mass movements of people the world had ever seen(Stein p.42). Although Marshall's discovery occurred in 1848, the news did
John Studebaked, a carpenter, hammered together wheelbarrows and sold them to miners. A boy named Davenport who said he was twelve years old, but looked even younger, found $2,700 worth of gold in only tow days(Steinp. Levi Strauss stepped from a ship in San Francisco woth dreams of making a pair of pants tough enough to withstand the rigors of a gold miner's working routine. They could travel by sea, travel overland, or travel by a combined land-sea route, which meant crossing the Isthmus of Panama. Early in the Gold Rush days, panning was the common method for extracting gold. Stephens, a forty niner from Marietta, Ohio, survived the rugged hike west. Many turned to drinking, reckless gambling, and fighting with other miners(Stein p. The practice of chargimg sky-high prices for goods was called "mining the miners"(Stein p. Storekeepers earned far more than did the gold miners. Believing beef to be more important than gold, he set up a butcher shop that grew into one og the nation's largest food supply enterprises. But as the months went by, they hungered for their sweethearts and home. By ship, horse, wagon, and on foot, ninety thousand gold seekers spilles into California during 1849.
Common topics in this essay:
Marietta Ohio,
Gold Rush,
William Downie,
San Francisco,
James Marshall,
John Sullivan,
,
Isthmus Panama,
California Believing,
John Studebaked,
gold rush,
people world,
yellow metal,
james marshall,
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gold fever,
san francisco,
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