This bit of information about the California Gold Rush is for all the students studying this historical event and email me to find out about its significance. From all parts of the United States, from Latin America, and from China, they all flocked to California. Those who made the 18,000-mile sea voyage around South America were called Argonauts. The steamer Californian brought the first 265 into San Francisco Bay on January 28, 1849. Others took a ship to Panama, braved their way across isthmus jungles packed with snakes and mosquitoes, and boarded another boat for San Francisco. Whoever made it to California had “seen the elephant.” Everybody who was hunting for gold, and that was most able-bodied men and a few women, were called 49ers. Instant riches lying everywhere was the definitive image of the gold rush. A “new Eldorado” was waiting a continent away. Just walking by a stream, a person could net $24 worth of gold in a few minutes. The average miner might sock away $1,000 a day. One man found $9,000 in gold after lunch one afternoon. A rainy season greeted the 30,000 gold seekers who came overland in the spring in 1849. An outbreak of cholera claimed 5,000 of the prospectors who worked the fields that year. The town of Marysville recorded 17 murders in one week. One out of every five who came to hunt for gold was dead within six months of his or her arrival. Still, they came in droves. Five hundred shiploads arrived in 1849, filled with dreamers chasing visions of golden nuggets.
A building in Coloma, California, the site where gold was discovered.
