Essay about California Golden Rush
The gold rush began to Sutter Mill, sawmill of the Swiss Sutter, which became afterward, the father of this expansion and economic miracle that knew California.
This one wanted at first kept this discovery for him by fear but the new was fast known of all. At the end of 1848, the president James Knox Polk confirmed the golden presence in this region. It is from there that waves of thousand immigrants began to arrive in California, it is the beginning of the arrival of forty-niners.
In spite of the difficulty of the road, dozens thousand persons set off to come to California to make fortune. This phenomenon was so important that these immigrants were later called forty-niners, because of the importance of immigrants' stream which arrived in one year.
Although Sutter is the father of this discovery, he was ruined by this gold rush, indeed, his workers left, his rights of property were disputed, its ravaged harvests, his stolen cattle and its lands were squatted by the newcomers.
CHANGE OF THE CITY
The gold rush provoked a real demographic explosion, it transformed San-Francisco completely, indeed, in some years, SF passed of status of fishermen's town in one of the biggest and the most influential cities of the USA. The population of the city was multiplied by about 25 in 2 years, infrastructures had been developed.
We can say that the power of current California comes from this economic and demographic explosion of 1849-1850.
The landscape also changed, indeed, when ships transporting goods and sailors arrived in California, they were then left by the sailors who want to tempt their luck in mines. The SF’s harbor became then a real cemetery with boats. Hundreds of checkmates were visible with the abandoned boats, which became afterward docks, shops, inns and hotels… (The principle of recycling was discovered!).
CHANGE OF THE CUSTOMS, A REAL MELTING POT
The gold rush also