Gold Rush Impact On American Culture

From the time America was founded to how it has evolved today has a lot to do with the American Spirit. The American spirit is diversity, which means the inclusion of different types of people with the same aspirations, and optimism to succeed. Immigrants from all over the world are the root cause of what created an American. Because the American dreamed to prosper it granted them to strive for more and triumph which molded them into unique people creating the epic American Culture. Also, one of the most memorable times in our history was the Gold Rush which contributed diversity as a signature of the United States. Equally important the Gold Rush is consciousness today because it demonstrated awareness of many immigrants with different backgrounds

That was the starting point for many people, both Americans and immigrants to strive for their definition of happiness and riches. As stated by Laurence Shames in “The More Factor”, “This has been the American trinity form the very start. The frontier was the backdrop and also the raw material for the streak of economic booms. The booms became the goad and also the justification for the myriad gambles and for American’ famous optimism. The optimisms’, in turn, shaped the schemes and visions that were sometimes noble, sometimes appalling, always bold (27).Not only did the Gold Rush open the doors to diversity; it was also adopted as the country’s identity. Naturally America is now known as the great melting pot as a metaphor that translates that people from all back grounds traveled to the West for the hopes of becoming rich. Laurence Shames quote has many similarities to the Gold Rush period because they both describe of the hopes of starting all over and having opportunities to get wealthy. As long as all immigrants worked hard together panning out gold with optimism of getting rich and putting their differences aside it embedded more on reflection of the American

One of the many important recalls is that the United States was constructed on the pride of diversity, which emerged into pursuing the strong personal beliefs, values and vision for the future. Like during the Gold Rush and now there was many conflicts regarding the different backgrounds. Once the conflicts rose during the late 1860s due to crowding of many people traveling in a fast pace to California. According to Thomas J. Osborne in “ Pacific El Dorado” states “ with tens of thousands of miners of diverse ethnic and nations origins, laboring often in close proximity to one another, problems of law and order were bound to arise given the absence of lawmen and courts”(98). Even if there was no law enforcement during the period of the Gold Rush, American eventually learned to live among each other and especially learn. The positive aspect of working around different diversities created the knowledge to understand that there’s many ways of living, building, and thinking. Meanwhile even though it seems like we are replaying our past history it will never happen again because as history repeats itself over and over again it helps people realize that we need each other in order to prosper. Without the immigrants the United States would not be what it is today, without the immigrants there wouldn’t be an American dream, and without the immigrants there would never be the