The California Gold Rush

Rebecca Rothberg

March 4, 2015

HIST-345, Dr. Reaves

California, The Gold Rush, and Other Historical “Flashes in the Pan”

In the early 1840s, a long, large-scale American migration began to the West. These emigrants would usually end up in Oregon, but some went further on into California. Many of the early American settlers to California had read of the exploits of U.S. government topographer, John C. Fremont, who also explored and then wrote the maps that would later be so necessary to guide the settlers out West. Oftentimes, those who travelled on to California would end up at John Sutter’s Mill, where the Sacramento and American rivers meet. Sutter was a Swiss entrepreneur who cultivated a successful agricultural farm and sold goods

So, too, were the merchants. With some 80,000 people altogether crowded into California in the year 1849, the merchants already posted their inflated their prices and widened their profit margins greatly to make princely sums of money for ordinary items because of the ridiculously high and frequent demand for their goods and supplies. There were massive agricultural profits to be had in the “wild, wild west” that made the West that is today. The culture in California during the time of the Gold Rush did not simply consist of gambling saloons, cowboy bandits, and houses of ill repute. It also enjoyed the freedom from government regulation for a short period of time before California became the 31st state in the Union in 1851. Key beliefs upheld at that time included massive emphasis on individualism, political democracy, and economic mobility. Gambling houses, saloons, and other entertainment venues also saw the profit of the gold miners, who would frequent these places and pay with their day’s findings of gold flakes and end up poor and destitute. Many an ambitious miner fell into the traps of “sin” and lost their drive for the dream of a better life. Similarly, those who provided clothes, food and meat were in high demand. It has been rumored that men in the desert would be forced to pay hundreds of dollars for a drink of water, at the usual cost of their lives. Times for the idealists became brutal. However, the capitalist businessmen and women at this time were simultaneously making serious amounts of wealth as they amassed the forty-niner’s gold and created nice lives for