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Historical Background

The California Gold Rush

A chance discovery by an employee of John A. Sutter, feudal baron of the Sacramento Valley, set off the rush to California. In January 1848 James W. Marshall was supervising the construction of a sawmill in Coloma Valley, about 40 miles up the south fork of the American River from Sutter's Fort. On the morning of the 24th, while inspecting progress on the excavation of the tailrace, he noticed the glint of metal on the bottom of the stream. Placing the flakes in the dented crown of his slouch hat, he excitedly rushed to the mill and shouted, "Boys, I believe I've found a gold mine."

After making tests at the mill for a few days and being unable to determine whether or not the flakes were actually gold, Marshall carried a sample to his employer at the fort. The two men tried every test that they could think of or that the American Encyclopedia suggested. Finally they proved that the sample was gold. In the course of time it became apparent that Marshall had in effect discovered a mammoth lode of gold-bearing quartz more than 150 miles in length that lay along the western foothills of the Sierra Nevada—the fabulous Mother Lode of California. Weathering and erosion had broken off particles of the lode, carried them down mountain streams, and deposited them in sandbars or rock crevices.

Sutter correctly foresaw that news of the gold discovery would spell disaster to his other enterprises—but such news could not be kept secret. In May an energetic San Francisco businessman and Mormon elder named Sam Brannan returned to the city from the diggings. His appearance on the streets holding aloft a quinine bottle full of glistening gold dust and bellowing, "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River," started the stampede. Shopkeepers hung signs on their doors, "Gone to the Diggings." Schools closed as teachers and pupils alike abandoned their academic endeavors. San Francisco became a ghost town; everyone headed toward the strike.

At Monterey, Santa Barbara, San Diego, and other California settlements, soldiers deserted their posts, sailors abandoned ships, lawyers left clients, and editors suspended publication of newspapers. And before the end of the year gold seekers had already arrived from Hawaii, Mexico, British Columbia, and South America.

Abandoned ships in San Francisco Harbor in the 1850's. Their crews had joined the rush to the goldfields. (Courtesy, Smithsonian Institution.)

WESTWARD HO

Stories of the discovery gradually drifted to the Eastern United States, but most people dismissed them as rumor. Then in December 1848 they were indubitably confirmed. President Polk incorporated official dispatches from California in his message to Congress and stated. "The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service." Two days later a Government courier arrived in Washington with a tea caddy full of gold. Sanity vanished. The tea caddy did for the Nation what Sam Brannan's quinine bottle had done for San Francisco.

Within a month, eager gold seekers chartered more than 60 ships, some of dubious vintage and condition, and weighed anchor for California. The New York Herald, in a special California edition, stated: "In every Atlantic seaport, vessels are being fitted up, societies are being formed, husbands are preparing to leave their wives, sons are parting with their mothers, and bachelors are abandoning their comforts; all are rushing head over heels toward the El Dorado on the Pacific." Whenever and wherever men congregated that winter the talk was of California and the riches to be found there.

ROUTES TO THE GOLDFIELDS

Sam Brannan, Mormon elder, brought news of James Marshall's gold strike to San Francisco. Two years earlier he had led a large group of Mormon settlers to the city. (Courtesy, California Historical Society.)

The gold seekers used four principal routes to California, two each by sea and land. Easterners mainly utilized the sea routes, and residents of the Mississippi Valley and southerners the land routes. For half a century "Boston" ships had been rounding Cape Horn to trade with California, and by 1849 some of the hazards of the journey had been eliminated. But the 18,000-mile voyage required 6 to 8 months—a long and tedious trip for excited forty-niners. Nevertheless in 1849 about 15,000 of them, embarking from Northeast ports, used this route.

The second water route involved a divided voyage by way of the Isthmus of Panama. In 1848 two steamship lines had begun service at each side of the isthmus. The crossing, by way of the Chagres River and an overland trek across the treacherous jungle, was a hazardous undertaking. Native guides, who supplied canoes and pack animals, were thieving, their prices exorbitant, their tempers and actions unpredictable. Cholera, dysentery, and yellow fever took a heavy toll of lives. At Panama City on the Pacific coast, the forty-niners milled about waiting for the occasional ship that managed to unload its passengers at San Francisco and return without the crew deserting to the mines. Advertised as a 6-week trip, the Panama route usually took considerably longer. Because of the hazards, however, only half as many emigrants traveled over this route in 1849 as over the Cape Horn route.

The most popular way to California was overland, either by the central or southern trails. [The overland emigrant routes, including those to the goldfields, are discussed and mapped in detail in Volume X of this series.] In 1849 some 45,000 forty-niners used the central trails and 10,000 the southern trails. The central trails followed the Platte River to South Pass, moved by various routes across the Great Basin, then labored through passes in the Sierra to the Pacific slope. This route was more convenient for Mississippi Valley residents than the ocean route—and it was much cheaper. A wagon and oxen, sufficient food and a few tools, most of which the average farmer already had, and he was ready to begin the extensive preparations for the trek.

Tens of thousands of forty-niners flocked to the embarkation towns—Independence, St. Joseph, Westport, and Kanesville—and waited until the grass along the trail was high enough to sustain the stock. Then the great wagon trains rolled out on the prairie, climbed steadily until they negotiated South Pass, then dropped down to the Great Basin desert. Those who thought that nothing was so deadly as plodding through the choking dust of the desert forgot that annoyance when they encountered the hardships of passing wagons and oxen over the Sierra and then lowering them by rope down precipitous canyons.

Other gold seekers, especially southerners, moved west by way of the southern trails. Drawing traffic from the Santa Fe Trail and the west Texas trails, the chief route followed the wagon road blazed by Lt. Col. Philip St. George Cooke from the Rio Grande by way of the Gila to the Pacific during the Mexican War. It offered the advantages of few mountain ranges and a milder climate.

Whatever their route, those who finally arrived at the diggings after the 2,000-mile overland trip, which usually required 5 or 6 months, had faced a severe test. Only the hardiest survived trail life. Asiatic cholera alone in 1849 marked the central trails with 5,000 graves before the wagons reached the Rocky Mountains. But the dangers and privations—on land or at sea—were all forgotten upon arrival at the goldfields. There the newcomers found those who had arrived earlier working every large stream along the Mother Lode, from the Feather to the Tuolumne Rivers. Tent camps sprang up everywhere as the forty-niners, washing pan in hand, set out to seek the riches so lavishly reported. A few lucky souls did find wealth, but the majority were quickly disillusioned.

WASHING PAN AND SLUICE

The free dust and nuggets of the placer deposits—surface gold, usually located in the beds of streams—could be extracted by the inexperienced with a washing pan. The miners threw a few shovels of raw earth into the pan and twirled it until water washed the earth away and left the heavier grains of gold at the bottom. Where the paydirt was especially rich, the forty-niners quickly refined their methods. The cradle was a crude box that the operator rocked with one hand while dipping earth and water in with the other; the rocking motion washed the debris out, and the gold particles settled in the cleats. The "Long Tom" was similar to the cradle, but of greater length; it was, in essence, a long box through which a stream of water was directed and into which miners shoveled raw earth.

Miners used cradles, or rockers, for especially rich paydirt. (Courtesy, National Archives.)

A RUGGED LIFE

All these methods could be utilized by individuals or by small groups, for neither experience nor capital was required. But the toil was monotonous and backbreaking. Often the miners stood for hours waist deep in icy water. Laboring day by day for the yellow grains of "dust," they returned at night to primitive shacks and uninviting meals of coffee, beans, and greasy pork. In such conditions, even in good weather, they suffered from many diseases—diarrhea, dysentery, chills, fevers, and malaria. Men who led such lives often sought solace in the saloons or the embraces of the "soiled doves."

The "cities" that sprang into being almost overnight boasted populations of many thousands. Only relatively more comfortable than the shack, lean-to, or cave of the miner, the buildings were usually constructed of juniper posts, willow branches, blankets, and rawhide. Shacks irregularly dotted the streets, which dodged at acute angles or struggled up the side of a mountain. The "restaurant" might be roofless, the walls made of flour sacks, the tables of rough planks, and the floor of mud. Newly arrived "gentlemen of fortune" slept on the floors of stores and saloons, or on the open ground. The saloons, often the most pretentious structures in town, were filled with ragged, unshaven miners, dapper gamblers and swindlers, bursts of profanity and gunfire, and the stale fumes of tobacco and alcohol.

The newspaper, always among the earliest to arrive, usually announced, "If we strike it rich, what a town you will see here." Long before the residents legitimatized a place with a name, they had platted a townsite and promoters were selling lots for $2,000. And what names these settlements had—Whiskey Bar, Skunk Gulch, Hell's Delight. The clatter of carpenters' hammers notified one and all that cultural institutions were on the way—saloons, hotels, and stores—just as soon as more green lumber and hurdy gurdy girls could be freighted in.

Life was unsettled, animated by a nervous, crude energy. In the crowded streets men argued over ore samples, prospectors compared location notices and assay certificates, and bummers claiming to be pioneers of '49 cadged drinks from strangers in return for tales of the diggings. Men from the ends of the earth mingled and swapped rumors of the latest discoveries.

Entertainment of the nonviolent type was scarce. One miner dolefully declared, "There's nothing to do but hang around the saloons, get drunk and fight, and lie out in the snow and die." To men so lacking in ordinary diversions, the theater became a necessity. Although it could not match the action of the gaming table, the excitement of cockfights and bullbaitings, or the gaiety of the saloon, it did mark a welcome change from the monotony of camp life.

The outstanding exception to the rule of crude goldfield towns was San Francisco. Perhaps it was different because it did not owe its existence to the precious yellow metal. Founded in 1835 by the Mexicans as the village of Yerba Buena, and the site of a Spanish presidio and mission as early as 1776, it had its saloon and waterfront districts, but it also had fine residential areas, established mercantile firms, and an air of permanence. Yet it was never the same after the gold rush.

Crime and violence were common in mining camps, but nowhere more common than in San Francisco. Australian criminals, called "Sydney Ducks," fugitives from Eastern justice, and ordinary thugs mingled with gamblers and petty thieves. Life was not safe even on the main thoroughfares. Finally, in 1851, the respectable citizens, seeing laws broken with impunity, formed a vigilance association and began dispensing impromptu justice. The process had to be repeated again in 4 years, after which the city again became comparatively safe.

Far from being confined to the cities, criminal activity thrived in the goldfields. Because great sums of bullion were shipped over deserted trails, stage robberies were frequent. Claim jumping, hold ups, and murders were common hazards. By nature many of the men who came to the goldfields were drifters, and the law had been left far behind. Without domestic influences and often depressed by poor living conditions, disappointment, and bad liquor, men met insult or injustice, fancied or real, with a knife blade or pistol.

Vigilante parade in 1856. Maintenance of law and order in San Francisco during gold-rush days required extra-legal measures. (Courtesy, New-York Historical Society.)

MINING JUSTICE

Because crime and violence were so widespread and the land from which the miners extracted gold was public domain, they had to pass their own laws. Not until after the Civil War did the U.S. Government attempt to govern the staking of claims or appoint officers to enforce simple justice. Under these circumstances the forty-niners took the law into their own hands. Meeting in open session at each mining camp or district, they passed miners' codes. As worked out in California, these codes were based in part on Mexican and Spanish mining laws, in part on American frontier customs. Each mining community had its miners' association, which met when the need arose. The association established rules regarding the size and registration of claims, elected community officials, and settled property disputes.

The size of a claim varied according to the district code, but ordinarily it was 50 by 100 feet. Sometimes it was as small as 10 feet square. The discoverer was entitled to a double claim; all others to one each. All claims had to be worked to be held. The water essential to placer mining belonged to the man who used it first, even though he might divert it through a sluice and leave others farther downstream waterless. When claim jumpers became too bold or criminals resorted to violence, the miners tried them in open court. With no jails—and little patience—they meted out prompt and simple justice to those they declared guilty. The types of sentences were few: Hanging, flogging, or expulsion.

END OF THE BOOM

In 1849 the mines of California yielded $10 million. But before long the forty-niners depleted the rich placer, or surface, deposits and so thoroughly prospected every inch of ground that the chance of finding new deposits was remote. For most of the mining camps the end was oblivion—some sooner, some later. Miners, seeking new El Dorados, moved out on foot with only their picks and bed rolls or loaded their possessions onto ore wagons; the editors took their handpresses; and the merchants their stock of goods and iron cashboxes. In his last issue a California newspaper editor wrote the epitaph of a thousand Western mining camps: "The discovery of the rich mines on the other side of the mountains has carried off a large proportion of our most enterprising businessmen ... and we have determined to pull up stakes and follow them."

In 1852 the gold yield in California reached a peak of more than $81 million. After that time, when costly underground mining and surface processing of the gold-bearing quartz became a necessity, mining became an industry that required a large capital investment and attracted speculators and Eastern investors. Nevertheless in 1853 and 1854 production dropped to about $68 million per year and during the period 1865-85 ranged from $15 to $20 million per year.

EFFECT ON CALIFORNIA AGRICULTURE

When the miner, the saloonkeeper, the gambler, and the dancehall girl had departed, California was far from depopulated. It was left in the hands of more permanent residents. The prospector, and those who lived directly off his labor, were transients, but the farmers and ranchers who fed them had established deep roots. Finding the soil good, the rainfall plentiful, and the climate mild, newcomers shared with older residents in inheriting the country they had come to feed—and they stayed to help build a stable State.

Ranching and farming in California predated the gold rush. The early history of the cattle industry in California was similar to that of Texas, likewise a one-time Spanish province. The first Spanish colonists, who arrived at San Diego in 1769, had brought cattle with them, and before the end of the century nearly a million head of Longhorns roamed the hills of southern California. At first they were the exclusive property of the missions, but after the Mexican Government secularized the missions in 1833 ranching became the major economic activity. Between then and 1856, during California's "golden age" of the cattle industry, the great ranchos prospered. The cattleman was an all-powerful political figure, a quasi-feudal ruler whose life of ease resembled that of the ante bellum planter of the South. The rancheros solved the problem of marketing their vast herds through the hide and tallow trade. By the time of the gold rush, they had exported 5 million hides on "Boston" ships.

California vaquero at work in 1841 near San Jose Mission. Californians had been ranching for more than half a century before the United States acquired the region. (Courtesy, Bancroft Library, University of California.)

When the gold rush began in 1848, the ranchers of California found a ready market for their meat, not just the hides and tallow. The tremendous demand for food, springing from the explosive increase in population, greatly enhanced the prosperity of the rancheros. Drovers moved thousands of cattle the 500 miles from the vicinity of Los Angeles to San Francisco and the diggings in the Sierra Nevada foothills. By 1856, however, the large imports of cattle and sheep, mainly from Texas and New Mexico, coupled with the increase in local cattle ranches for fattening and breeding, broke the market in California and brought an end to the "golden age" of the cattle industry.

Agriculture had not been practiced on a wide scale in California before the gold rush. Despite the successful agricultural programs of the missions, most Mexican rancheros neglected the cultivation of crops, as did also most of the Americans who arrived in California before the Mexican War. The exceptions were almost always highly successful. Mariano Vallejo, who in 1835 founded Sonoma, grew grain, fruits, and vegetables north of San Francisco Bay. By 1840 he had about 500 acres under cultivation. Some vineyards were also located at Los Angeles and small orchards in the Santa Clara Valley and elsewhere.

The first American farmer of note in California was James Marsh. In 1838 he purchased Los Medanos (or Meganos) Ranch from Jose Noriega. Lying between Mount Diablo and present Brentwood, the ranch was the first in the San Joaquin Valley to achieve success. Marsh's chief occupation was cattle ranching, but he engaged in some farming.

The real founder of American agriculture in California was John A. Sutter, a Swiss immigrant who in 1840 obtained from Governor Alvarado a land grant on the east side of the Sacramento River. Sutter constructed a fort and founded the colony of New Helvetia, the forerunner of Sacramento. Though engaging in many activities—trading, trapping, distilling, tanning, milling, and ranching—he was primarily a farmer. He constructed a small irrigation system to water his crops and employed Indians, Hawaiian Islanders, and newly arrived Americans to work his farm. The parties of American immigrants arriving in California prior to the Mexican War made Sutter's Fort their main objective. Sutter either employed them or aided them in establishing their own farms in the Sacramento Valley. By 1846 the valley was becoming a "little America," where Spanish was not spoken and Mexican officials seldom appeared.

Modern farm in the San Joaquin Valley, California. Irrigation has always been a mainstay of Western agriculture.

These Americans who settled in California during the Mexican period became acquainted with irrigated farming. Their lands were rich, but had little water. Great labor was involved in building dams and digging ditches. After the land was cleared, it had to be leveled for proper drainage. The Eastern type of plowing was not satisfactory, and eventually a new plow, the two-way sulky plow, was devised to allow a farmer to plow across a field and then back again along the same furrow.

Thus by the time of the gold rush a solid agricultural base had been established in California. The miners poured in and kept coming. By the end of 1849 the population was 100,000; 3 years later it was 250,000. Prices for food spiraled ever upward. Soon grain growing came to be more profitable than gold mining. Some of the wiser forty-niners bought ranches with gold they had extracted and began plowing and planting.

Notable among these miners-turned-farmer was John Bidwell, who after panning gold on the Middle Fork of the Feather River purchased Rancho Chico. He developed this ranch into one of the most successful agricultural establishments in the State. The estate eventually included 20 subranches, each devoted to a particular product, ranging from wheat to fruit and from sheep to turkeys. Before Bidwell's death, the fruit and nut trees numbered 65,276, and the annual production of wheat sometimes ran as high as 5-1/2 million pounds.

During the 1850's grain growing spread southward into the San Joaquin Valley, and the era of the bonanza wheat ranches began. The valley was one of the greatest centers of irrigated agriculture in the world during the 1850's. The first to undertake extensive irrigation there was Edward Fitzgerald Beale, at El Tejon Ranch, who irrigated about 1,900 acres of wheat.

Wheat production in California was insufficient to meet the demands of a rapidly growing population until about 1854, and by 1860 wheat had become an important export. The expanding wheat acreage created a market for improved agricultural machines, such as the Stockton gang plow and the California combined harvester-thresher. Stockton became a manufacturing center for farm equipment and machinery.

During the gold-rush years cattle, sheep, wheat, and barley provided the greatest agricultural earnings. Yet farmers began experimenting with a wide variety of crops and proving that little-known ones could also be grown. For example, Benjamin D. Wilson, who owned a farm near Los Angeles, planted many varieties of fruit and grain, and in 1854 reported that all produced abundantly. He listed among his successes grapes, oranges, pears, apricots, peaches, apples, almonds, English walnuts, cherries, figs, quinces, and plums. The gold rush intensified the need for fresh vegetables and fruit to supply the thousands who were pouring in. A 150-acre garden plot near San Jose netted its owner $175,000 in profits the first year supplying vegetables to the inhabitants of San Francisco and Sacramento.

William Wolfskill, a former trapper, planted the first privately owned orange grove in California. In 1841 he transplanted trees from the abandoned gardens of San Gabriel Mission to a plot where the Los Angeles Union Railroad Station now stands. Eventually he expanded this grove to about 2,500 trees. A neighbor, Matthew Keller, imported orange trees from Hawaii and planted them. But the citrus industry grew slowly in California because of the limited market. Oranges were a novelty to most of the miners, who could not be induced to include them regularly in their diet.

Some of the forty-niners were foreigners who brought with them both knowledge and samples of crops that previously had not been widely produced in the United States. Most of the Spanish missions had vineyards and produced wine, but this fact meant little to the early American farmers in California. However, Swiss, Italian, and Hungarian miners quickly recognized the potential. Agoston Haraszthy, a Hungarian, came to California in 1851 to mine, but became more interested in the soil and climate than in the goldfields. Importing several types of European grapevines, he found that they produced fruit of excellent quality. At first he experimented with raisin grapes, but his most popular importation was the Zinfandel red-wine grape, which grew well in Napa and Sonoma Counties. By 1859 the number of grapevines in California totaled 125,000, and the foundation had been laid for a future industry. The pioneer of commercial nut raising was also a foreigner, a Frenchman named Felix Gillet, who experimented successfully with English walnuts, filberts, and almonds on a small farm near Nevada City.

EFFECT ON WESTERN AGRICULTURE

The agricultural effect of the gold rush went far beyond California. The arrival of more and more gold seekers swiftly exhausted the capacity of California's ranchers to supply enough meat, and the price of beef rose higher and higher. To meet the demand, first cattle, then sheep were driven in from Texas and even from the Middle West. One enterprising Texan who early realized that the gold rush would create a good market for beef was well rewarded for his perceptiveness. In 1848 T. J. Trimmer drove 500 head of rangy Longhorns from Washington County, Tex., to California by way of El Paso and Cooke's wagon road; the gaunt steers sold for $100 each. News of the high profits caused many Texans to disregard the hazards of the trail. Almost overnight Houston and San Antonio became jumping-off points for the California drives. By 1853 cowboys had driven an estimated 62,000 cattle from Texas to the goldfields. Sheep raisers in New Mexico also hurried to share in the golden wealth of California.

The tremendous demand for food by the miners quickly exceeded the capacity of pioneer California farmers as well as that of the ranchers. Farm commodities had to be imported from Oregon, Hawaii, and even British Columbia, whose agricultural economies were enhanced.

Indirectly the gold rush also stimulated irrigated agriculture in Utah. The Mormon sect, fleeing persecution in the Middle West, arrived in 1847 at the Great Salt Lake and immediately set to work constructing dams and irrigation ditches. By the end of the year more than 4,000 of them had settled near the southern end of Great Salt Lake, and Brigham Young spent the winter urging others to come. He told them to bring all kinds of "choice seeds, grains, vegetables, fruits, shrubbery, trees, and vines."

The Mormons established a new kind of farm frontier. Most of their early settlements were in communal groups, and their work was cooperative. The church allotted lands, and water was used on a cooperative basis. For these reasons the Mormons were more successful than many others who moved into the dry lands of the West; and the thousands who traveled to California by way of the central trails, which passed directly through the Mormon country, created a ready market for farm produce.