Gold rush
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold. Several gold rushes took place throughout the 19th century in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. Gold rushes helped spur permanent non-indigenous settlement of new regions and define a significant part of the culture of the North American and Australian frontiers. As well, at a time when money was based on gold, the newly-mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the gold fields.
The first significant gold rush in the United States was the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern Appalachians, which started in 1829. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848–49 in the Sierra Nevada, which captured the popular imagination. The California gold rush led directly to the settlement of California by Americans and the rather rapid entry of that state in the union in 1850. Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America, gradually moving north: the Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, and the Rocky Mountains. One of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon Territory (1898–99), immortalized in the novels of Jack London, the poetry of Robert W. Service and films such as Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush.
The Victorian gold rush, which occurred in Australia in 1851 soon after the California gold rush, was the most major of several Australian gold rushes. That gold rush was highly significant to Australia’s, and especially Victoria's and Melbourne's, political and economic development. With the Australian gold rushes came the construction of the first railways and telegraph lines, multiculturalism and racism, the Eureka Stockade and the end of penal transportation. In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was equally important to that country’s history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and tensions between the Boers and British settlers.
Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly. The significance of gold rushes in history has given a longer life to the term, and it is now applied generally to capitalism to denote any economic activity in the participants aspire to race each other in common pursuit of a new and apparently highly lucrative market, often precipitated by an advance in technology.
Contents |
[edit] Life cycle of a gold rush
A gold rush typically began with a discovery of "free gold" by a single individual. This free gold was usually placer gold. News of the discovery typically resulted in a large influx of prospectors. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins of lode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Typically the heyday of a gold rush, when the lodes had not yet all been prospected, would last only a few years. In some cases, the depletion of gold was followed by a transition to a silver boom, and then a longer period of mining other lesser value minerals, such as copper, lead, or zinc. For significant gold-producing areas, the initial rush phase would be followed by a transition to modern industrial mining of ore.
What distinguished gold rushes from gold exploitation campaigns of previous eras was the relative democratization in the participation of mining enterprises. The early New World expeditions of the European colonial powers, notably the Spanish Empire, were driven largely by the search for gold. The expeditions of earlier eras were typical state enterprises, however, and were usually accompanied by state military support. Gold rushes, by comparison, reflected a spontaneous grassroots capitalism akin to homesteading, but centered on mining rather than agriculture. In some places, notably California, the gold rush era is celebrated as embodying an archetypal founding of the state itself.
Factors that led thousands at a time to abandon daily Industrial Revolution drudgery and travel to gold fields (diggings) included
- improved transport
- improved communication that supports rumour-distribution chains,
- social discontent, and
- international gold-based monetary system.
Only a few miners made fortunes, several suppliers (such as Levi Strauss and John Mohler Studebaker) and traders made good money, and numerous unfortunates endured hardship and privation in exotic frontiers of civilization for little ultimate reward. Demographically, several gold rushes shook up the patterns of settlement, resulting in the opening up of previously sparsely-settled areas and a Cantonese diaspora around the Pacific Rim.
[edit] Notable gold rushes
[edit] Rushes of the 1820s
- Georgia Gold Rush (1828), Georgia, USA
[edit] Rushes of the 1840s
- California Gold Rush (1848), California, USA
[edit] Rushes of the 1850s
- Queen Charlottes Gold Rush, 1850 British Columbia
- Victorian Gold Rush (1851), Australia
- Fraser Canyon Gold Rush 1858–1861, British Columbia
- Rock Creek Gold Rush 1859–'60s, British Columbia
- Pikes Peak Gold Rush (1859), Colorado
- Northern Nevada from the 1850s
[edit] Rushes of the 1860s
- Idaho (1860), aka the Fort Colville gold rush
- Cariboo Gold Rush in 1862–65, a British Columbia Gold Rush
- Omineca Gold Rush, 1860s, also a British Columbia Gold Rush
- Wild Horse Creek Gold Rush, 1860s, also a British Columbia Gold Rush
- Central Otago Gold Rush, 1861–63, in Otago, New Zealand
- the Black Hills Gold Rush and other areas in Montana after 1863.
- Eastern Oregon in the 1860s and 1870s
- Kildonnan, Sutherland, in the Scottish Highlands, 1869
[edit] Rushes of the 1870s
- Palmer River, Queensland, Australia in 1872
[edit] Rushes of the 1880s
- Witwatersrand Gold Rush, (1886) Transvaal, South Africa; the resulting influx of miners was one of the triggers for the Second Boer War
- Cayoosh Gold Rush in Lillooet, British Columbia
- Tulameen Gold Rush near Princeton, British Columbia
[edit] Rushes of the 1890s
- Tierra del Fuego, southern Chile and Argentina
- Cripple Creek, Colorado
- "Westralia," Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
- Klondike Gold Rush, (1897) Dawson City, Yukon
[edit] Rushes of the 1900s
[edit] The Klondike
One of the best-known gold rushes was the Klondike Gold Rush of 1897–99; the main goldfield was along the south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon near what was to become Dawson City in Canada's Yukon Territory but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement and promoted the discovery of other gold finds there.
The Klondike gold rush sparked the largest mobilization of goldseekers in history. Millions started on the journey although ultimately only a few hundred thousand reached the "Yukon Ports" or other disembarkation points such as Nome, Alaska, Yakutat Bay and Stewart, British Columbia for the long overland journey to the goldfields. Some hopeful disembarkation points such as Edmonton, Alberta turned out to be impractical and less than a handful made it by such routes. Only 35,000 finally reached what was to become Dawson City, at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers, to be faced by famine, fire and some of the world's bitterest and darkest winters.
The Klondike Rush brought prospectors to other locations in the Far North, with several other smaller rushes occurring as spin-offs. Three of the better-known of such rushes were:
- Atlin Gold Rush (1898)
- Nome, Alaska (1898)
- Fairbanks, Alaska (1899)
[edit] South Africa
South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23 % of the total world output in 1896. At the time of the South African rush gold production benefitted from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the MacArthur-Forrest Process, of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore.[1]
[edit] Australia
[edit] Bodie - a gold-mining town
Bodie, California is a ghost town on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada mountain range in Mono County, California, about 75 miles (120 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe, California. James W. Marshall was the first man to find gold in California on January 24, 1848. This discovery started the California Gold Rush that brought thousands of people to California. Most arrived in 1849 and were called 49ers due to their entry year. Ten years later W. S. Bodey found gold in Bodie. Soon this place became a gold-mining town of 8,000 people. In 1882 when gold panned out, Bodie's residents left and it became a ghost town. Bodie remained unforgotten until it became a state park in 1962.
Fires destroyed some parts of the town rendering them invisible. But, there are approximately 170 buildings in this ghost town which stand in good condition.
[edit] Cripple Creek - The World's Greatest Gold Camp
Cripple Creek, Colorado is an historic mining town on the western Slope of Pikes Peak in Teller County. It is approximately an hour’s drive from Colorado Springs and is situated at an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet above sea level.
In 1878, a ranch hand and prospector named Bob Womack found a “float” (light weight rock containing gold that had “floated” down from a deposit) also known as “free gold” on the western slope of Pikes Peak. He spent the next 15 years looking for the source of the float. His search at last paid off on October 20, 1890. Bob Womack staked a claim he called the El Paso Lode at the assay office in Colorado Springs. His ore assayed at $250 a ton. By 1935 half a billion dollars in gold, most figured at the price of $20 an ounce, had been extracted. The gold output increased each year until it peaked in 1900. Today mining in the district still contributes over $2,000,000 a month to the world’s coffers.
The district produced 30 millionaires, including a hard-working Colorado Springs carpenter named W. S. Stratton. Stratton dug for 15 years and finally found gold on the Fourth of July in 1901. He called that claim the Independence Mine, and he eventually sold it for $11 million. The C.O.D. Mine was also profitable, and co-owner Spencer Penrose used his profits to build The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs.
In its heydey, it is estimated that Cripple Creek was home to over 35,000 people; today just over 1,200 people reside there. The entire town nearly burned to the ground in two fires, only a week apart in April of 1896. The fires completely destroyed the Cripple Creek business district. Within a week residents were rebuilding, this time with brick rather than the tinder-dry lumber. Today many of the original brick structures remain such as the old Cripple Creek High School, now the Carr Manor. In addtion to the brick structures, there are many old log homes dotted around the City and hillsides.
[edit] See also
- Charlotte Mint
- Dahlonega Mint
- Gold as an investment
- Gold prospecting
- Gold standard
- Placer mining
- Silver rush
- Lead boom in the Wisconsin-Illinois-Iowa region around Dubuque and Galena.
- Joseph Goldsborough Bruff
[edit] References
- ^ Micheloud, François (2004). The Crime of 1873: Gold Inflation this time. FX Micheloud Monetary History. François Micheloud: www.micheloud.com.
[edit] External links
