The Economic Impact Of The California Gold Rush In California

The California Gold Rush was discovered accidently. Most of the world’s gold is deep underground and embedded in hard rock. Unlike anywhere else in the world at that time the gold in California was easy to dig up, free for the taking and required little tools to acquire any gold. All that was requires was a pick or shovel and a pan to shift out the gold from the rock, sand and debris. The Gold Rush affected not only California but the outcome of the nation. It created the expansion of our nation into Western America and California. The rush brought hundreds of thousand Americans and foreigners to the Sierra Nevada’s with the hopes of sticking it rich. This impacted the social life and the economy while effected the rest of the country. The

The city of San Francisco was created by the rush.” “In San Francisco, for example, the population grew from, 1,000 in 1848 to over 20,000 by 1850”. To accommodate the needs of the arrival of so many gold mining towns showed up all over the region. “At the start of 1848 it was a small village of a few hundred people on the edge of San Francisco Bay; by the end of 1849 it had a population of tens of thousands and was the largest city in the western USA”. San Francisco developed in to an active economy becoming the central city of the frontier. In late 1849, California applied to enter the Union with a constitution preventing slavery. According to the Compromised of 1850, “It consisted of laws admitting California as a free state, creating Utah and New Mexico territories with the question of slavery in each to be determined by popular sovereignty, settling a Texas-New Mexico boundary dispute in the former’s favor, ending the slave trade in Washington, D.C., and making it easier for southerners to recover

It was the determination of so many to get to California just to have an opportunity of obtaining a better life. The dream to acquire wealth in a matter of months became a reality for some, and a dream for others. The Gold Rush had a major impact on California economically, demographically, and socially, ultimately affecting the whole world. Thousands of immigrants came to America because of gold, boosting the country’s economy. The Gold Rush did wonders to the US economy, people went out and spent more money once the “struck it rich” making merchants richer who would buy from others to be able to supply the need. Even though only a small amount of people got rich from the gold the wealth spread a crossed the country and helped the US economy be what it is today. It smoothed the way for California to be the most thriving and diverse state in the union. California has the highest population in the United States. San Francisco is what it is today because it was the main port for people coming from other countries. If the Gold Rush never happened this might not be the case. Without the gold rush history as we know it today, would have been