Photo by Susan Wilkinson
Experience the California Gold Rush in Gerald Brence’s book, Ox in the Culvert, set in a time where both the good and the bad made their marks and where opportunity beckoned only to the bold.
Though it features prominently, the California Gold Rush in Gerald Brence’s book, Ox in the Culvert, was more than just a setting; the events that started the gold fever and ended utterly changed the world.
When gold was uncovered at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California, by James W. Marshall, he would have never imagined the domino of events that would occur, but occur—it did.
Just days after Marshall found gold, the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was signed by the United States of America and the Mexican Republic. The treaty officially ended the Mexican-American War and gave the United States sovereignty over a large swathe of ungoverned territory, which included the state that was to be known as California.
Though there were attempts to keep the discovery of gold a secret, they never worked. The California Gold Rush began in earnest after the news of gold brought around 300,000 people to California from all corners of the globe, looking to strike a fortune and live the rest of their lives in leisure and comfort. The sudden increase in gold greatly affected the American economy, which had lagged due to having just finished a war. The unexpected flood of people allowed California to acquire statehood swiftly.
An Explosion in Population
Before the Mexicans ceded the territory to the Americans, there were only about 7000 people. When newspapers spread the fortune of Sutter’s Mill all over the globe, the floodgates opened. The first people looking to try their luck came from Oregon, Hawaii, and Latin America. At the Gold Rush’s peak, there were approximately 300,000 people who had come looking for gold, who either arrived on land from the California Trail or the sea through the Gila River after a perilous voyage full of hardship and trouble. From its beginning until its end, the Gold Rush attracted thousands of people outside the Americas, with Europeans and Australians journeying to the territory en masse. There were even miners from China!
Owing to this diverse rush of people, California has been a firm multiethnic, multiracial melting pot in the United States.
The Fast Track to Statehood
Alongside the Gold Rush, another boom was also happening in California: the Agricultural Rush. Farms and ranches snowballed to meet the needs of and accommodate tens of thousands of new settlers. San Francisco, which had just been a tiny hamlet of 200 people, exploded into a city of 36,000. Infrastructure developed rapidly throughout California, with roads, churches, and schools getting built where there was a glut of people. Other towns also sprang up in the wake of the Gold Rush, prompting more roads, churches, and schools.
These all culminated in writing a state constitution in 1849, with California becoming an American state the following year.
The Decimation of Native Americans
Although the Gold Rush enriched many people, it also resulted in the genocide of several indigenous cultures. They were attacked and driven off their ancestral lands by venturers looking for gold wherever they could and Federal agents who wanted to exert more authority over the newly acquired territory. The methods and operations used to dig up gold and transfer it also led to the poisoning of bodies of water, the destruction of ecosystems, and the extermination of local wildlife. Native Americans who depended on nature for food and shelter were forced to starvation and disease. The expansion of farmland was another contributing factor to the demise of California’s Native Americans.
The death toll on the Native American population was so significant that their numbers have never recovered.
Impact Outside California
After the Gold Rush had dried up, California became associated with opportunity and fortune, attracting even more settlers and immigrants despite the gold fever dying. Such was the immense wealth acquired in the state that it was not only the United States that the Gold Rush stimulated but other countries also. Farmers in Latin America and Oceania opened up to a hungry overseas market while the British saw increased demand for manufactured goods. From across the Pacific, Chinese clothes and prefabricated houses arrived.
The Damsel’s Files 