Gold rush
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A California Gold Rush handbill |
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 the
United States,
Australia,
Canada,
New Zealand, and
South Africa. 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 was in the
Appalachians in the United States, 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. The "last great gold rush" 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.
The discovery of gold in a new region typically began with a spontaneous discovery of "free gold" by a single individual. This free gold was usually
placer gold in the beds of streams that descend from a nearby mountain range. Propagation of the news of the discovery typically resulted in a large influx of prospectors to join existing groups and to form new ones. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by a longer period of prospecting in upper canyon walls for
lode 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 period of mining of other lesser value minerals. 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
* relative improvements in
transport networks;
* improvements in the means of communication that supported rumour-distribution chains,
* some social discontent, and
* an 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.
Gold-rush culture, often reflected in popular song, tended to promote self-images of robust masculinity.
Rushes of the 1830s
* the southern
Appalachian Mountains of the
United States, north of
Atlanta and west of
Charlotte; in
Georgia in the late 1830s
Rushes of the 1840s
*
California (1848), the
California Gold Rush;
Rushes of the 1850s
*
Queen Charlottes Gold Rush, 1850 British Columbia
*
Australia (1851), the
Victorian gold rush*
Fraser Canyon Gold Rush 1858–1861
*
Colorado (1859), the
Colorado Gold Rush* Northern
Nevada from the 1850s
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 and other areas in
Montana after 1863
* Eastern
Oregon in the 1860s and 1870s
* Kildonnan,
Sutherland, in the
Scottish Highlands, 1869
Rushes of the 1880s
*
Transvaal,
South Africa (1886), the
Witwatersrand Gold Rush; 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 ColumbiaRushes of the 1890s
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)
South Africa
South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23 % of total world output in 1896. Gold production in South Africa benefitted from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists,
the MacArthur-Forrest Process, of using
potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore.
Australia
Australia had a second major gold rush in the 1890s:
*
Western Australia (1890s), the
Coolgardie and
Kalgoorlie gold rushes
*
Charlotte Mint*
Dahlonega Mint*
Gold as an investment*
Gold prospecting*
Gold standard*
Placer mining*
Silver rush*
After the Gold Rush, Neil Young album of 1970
*
Lead boom in the
Wisconsin-
Illinois-
Iowa region around
Dubuque and
Galena.
}}}
*
The Australian Gold Rush *
Off to the Klondike! The Search for Gold — Illustrated Historical Essay
