People began flocking to California when they started hearing stories about the gold rush, dreams of making it rich, gold lying around just waiting for you to grab it. The gold rush began when james w. marshall found some at sutter mill in Coloma californai. He probably shouldn’t have told anybody because after he did about 300,000 people showed up looking for gold, good for making cities out west but bad for james. The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. San Francisco grew from a small settlement of about 200 residents in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852.
Mining was an important factor in the development of the West during the 1800s. When people got wind of a discovery of gold or silver, they would flock to the area with hopes of striking it rich due to the high value of these minerals. These prospectors would use pan and placer mining to sift the minerals out from streams or the shallow surface of the land. After these shallow resources of the minerals were depleted, commercial mining outfits would come in and extract the gold and silver from deep underground. “The thousands of people who flocked to the mining towns in search of quick wealth and who failed to find it often remained as wage laborers in corporate mines after the boom period” (Brinkley, 2007).
The populist movement was a period in history where America was plagued with a lot of corruption and economic issues. The gold standard was causing deflation, the farmers were trying to gain political power, many businesses were being monopolized, and so much more. The gold standard was one of the biggest debate points of the election of 1896. William Jennings Bryan, the Democratic candidate, was a large supporter of free silver. Free silver, if put into the economy, would most likely cause inflation and help the farmers.
How Violent Was the Old West? As the nineteenth century pressed onward the United states was granted a wealth of opportunity on the Western frontier. The mining of gold and silver caused the population in the west to explode in the mid 1800’s. However, with the start of the Civil War, expansion to the west seemed to stall. The focus of the nation shifted from the West to the South.
Horses brought a great advancement as well. The Western hemisphere, before the Spaniards began exploring it, had no other means of transportation other than by foot. Spain of course benefited from the New World with its huge supply of silver, which stimulated economic growth and manufacturing back in Europe, of which, it could be said that this new economy caused other countries, such as France and Great Britain to start their own colonial exploits. As explorers and Great discoverers, these men are lions. They are the Men who explored two
Chapter 16 The Conquest of the Far West Pioneers such as farmers, ranchers, and miners settled west around 1845 and recreated the image of “The Great American Desert” to a legendary “Frontier.” Many Americans were in the west before the Civil War. Despite efforts to drive away established native populations, the Anglo-Americans found themselves among them with their influence in everything they did. Pioneers really relied on federal money and the capitalism of the East. The Far West or “Great West” was more than just one region beyond the Mississippi River; it was filled with many people and different environments. The most widespread Indian group of the West was the Plains Indians.
Many people believed him and gave him a lot of money, but he spent almost all the money for himself. He couldn’t pay back the money to some people. While he was taking money from the people, he collected more then 64 billion dollars from them, and when people tried to see their investments, he used a fake screen computer with ponzie scheme software to present a false investment. This way is similar to Tom’s investment in that, they both were greedy, and acted like friends to people, and made them think that they would become rich. On the other hand, there were many differences between Tom and Bernie.
In the next twenty years gold discoveries attracted fortune-seekers also to other parts of the far West. The first mining settlements were just untidy collections of tents and huts, scattered along rough tracks that were muddy in winter an dusty in summer. But some grew later into permanent communities. The present city of Denver
They needed to build ditches and trenches due to water levels from the hydraulic systems and they needed different tools and techniques for mining. Mining was becoming very expensive for not a lot of profit in the end. By the end of the 1850s many miners wanted to go back home and other went in to obtain occupations to protect themselves against changes in mining. You would think that the miners were homesick, but in reality it was due to “reduced opportunity or simply in order to avoid the hard physical labor of mining in favor of something less arduous” (Rohrbough 188) One instance was that of Joseph Wood, who arrived in the mines August of 1849, his company worked throughout the rain and the harsh conditions of the winter, yet they were unsuccessful. “To sum up the whole matter of our winter’s labor so far, we have made nothing” (Rohrbough 189).
The California Gold rush evoked adventurers in search of instant wealth. It all started at Sutter’s Mill by James Marshall on January 24, 1848. But it is said that it was not the first discovery of gold in California. The first actual documented discovery of gold in California was said to happen 6 years earlier in the hill about thirty miles northwest of Los Angeles. The discovery of gold sparked mass hysteria as thousands of immigrants from around the world over took what would soon be called the Gold Country of California.