The California Gold Rush
E. Yun
1-5-2007
Introduction
On January 24, 1848 (the same year Mexico ceded California to the US) James Marshall, a
sawmill foreman employed by Sutter’s Mill & Ranch discovered gold lodes at a watermill in the
American River in Coloma (near Sacramento.) The news spread like wide fire across the
Continental Divide to the Eastern part of the Nation as well as the far ends of the world, touching
off the California gold rush!
The Gold Rush transformed California drastically due to a huge influx of prospectors and many of
them stayed after the gold ran out. They settled down, ran business and farmed the fertile valley.
Population boom and business prosperity quickly brought the newly acquired territory into
statehood in 1850. The Gold Rush also made a lot of people rich, most directly from the gold
pans; some from related business and a few from sitting on the land they had bought. Ironically
the one who initially discovered gold as well as the owner of the property where it was discovered
walked out of it with empty hands!
James Marshall & John Sutter
News of the finding of gold in the American River brought a huge influx of prospectors to the high
Sierra. Marshall’s sawmill was abandoned when all the workers left for the gold fields. He was
fired by his employer John Sutter and left Coloma in 1849. He returned to Coloma in 1857 and
ran a vineyard business and eventually failed. In 1860 he became a partner in a mining company
and bankrupted because at the time it had been more than a decade after the beginning of the
Gold Rush and most the mines were already exhausted. James Marshall never profited from his
historic discovery and died penniless in 1885!
John Sutter, Marshall’s boss was a Swiss immigrant who had received 48,827 acres of land
granted by the Mexican government in 1840, eight years before California was ceded to the US.
He raised livestock, fruits, and vegetables as well as establishing a saw mill in hope of building an
agricultural and business empire in the Sacramento valley.
As the Gold Rush stampede began, his employees left for the gold fields and prospectors
invaded his property and occupied his land. He received no protection from the authorities
because his title to the land granted by the Mexican was not recognized by the US government.
John Sutter left California in 1851 and heavily in debt.
Samuel Brannan
Founder of the newspaper California Star and a merchant in San Francisco, Brannan was the
one who spread the news of the finding of gold in Coloma. He became suspicious when
employees of John Sutter paid for merchandise in his store with gold lodes; Brannan went to the
mill in Coloma and found a gold lode himself. After returning to San Francisco he hurriedly set up
a store to sell supplies for gold prospectors, Brannan ran to the streets, with a vial of gold in his
hand and yelled like hell “Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!” The next morning, that
news appeared on his California Star.
Brannan became the first millionaire as a result of the Gold Rush but eventually he lost all his
wealth due to a bitter divorce and failed land prospecting in Mexico. He died broke in San Diego
in 1889 at the age of 70.
Levi Strauss and Blue Jean
The Gold Rush led to spawn related business; the greatest success story is that of Levi Strauss,
a German immigrant who became rich not by striking the "Mother Lode" but by making and
selling sturdy clothing to miners. Miners had been frustrated with their fragile clothing; lodes
falling out of the holes of pockets and they had long desired to have something more durable to
wear.
Strauss had tent canvas made into workpants and later used a cotton cloth from France called
“serge de Nimes” which became known as denim (丁尼布). Straus improved the durability of the
workpants by putting metal rivets at the ends of pockets; the denim pants became popular with
miners as well as ranchers and farmers. The work pants became the now popular Levi blue
jeans which have evolved into a world-class haute couture (high-end fashion) today!
The Chinese Coolies
When news of the California Gold Rush reached Canton in 1849, China was plagued by civil war
(the Taiping Rebellion,) locust, droughts and floods among other disasters, thousands of “coolies”
boarded boats to venture a two-month journey across the Pacific to pursue their dreams of
striking it rich in “Gum Shan” as California was known. The Chinese miner population increased
steadily from 54 in 1849 to 25,000 in 1863.
Since Chinese were not allowed by law to file mining claims, they could only work for mining
companies or take over abandoned mines. The Chinese character traits of passion for work,
patience, frugality, efficiency, dexterity, and outright perseverance made the coolies prosper from
these supposedly “exhausted” placers (gold or mineral deposits.)
The success of the Chinese invoked resentment, envy, hostility, and violence against them by the
white miners. By 1852, white miners had driven hundreds of Chinese from diggings such as
Yuba City and Horseshoe Bar and in 1861 a mob of white miners looted, beat and kicked the
Chinese out of the Coloma Chinatown.
By 1868, nearly all the placers in the mountains of the Sierra were petered out with gold lodes,
some of the Chinese miners returned to their homeland rich, some broke, and the rest were hired
by Union Pacific to join ranks with the thousands of newly arrived coolies to build the western
section the transcontinental railroad! Charles Crocker, presidents of UP had confidence that the
Chinese could lay tracks in the high Sierra because their ancestors could build the Great Wall
over mountains and tundra!
Up in the high Sierra, there is a beautiful river “Tuolumne” which flows through a small
abandoned mining town Chinese Camp. Legend has it that the name was coined by a group of
white miners who had trouble finding a proper name for the river; they heard the most commonly
used phrase “Tu-La-Ma” from a gang of boisterous Chinese miners gambling by the riverbank, so
the white men gladly accepted that for the name of the river for its perceived romantic notion!
“Tu-La-Ma” was later corrupted into “Tuolumne!”
Gold Rush slide show:
http://www.jlhs.nhusd.k12.ca.us/Classes/Social_Science/Gold_Rush/California.Gold.Rush.
html