Anybody's gold
...ast and to most eastern states. People had been reading accounts in newspaper articles on how many people were getting rich overnight. Although California was swarming with people at the time it was in for a big surprise. During December of 1848 President James K. Polk confirmed the presence of gold in California. It was at this time that the rush had actually started. The discovery of gold was beginning to make John Louis O’Sullivans’s idea of Manifest Destiny, the spread of the United States from coast to coast, inventible. People came from all over, many selling their possessions to make their journey to gold sites. Gold-seekers known as Forty-niners came from as far as Europe and Australia in search of fortune. Since there was no Panama Canal at this time, land routes from the east to California were extended. Also a miner could boat to Panama, trek through the country to the Pacific Ocean, and take a ship to San Francisco. Getting through Panama was tough for travelers. Many were plagued by malaria carried in mosquitoes on the rancid swamplands which needed to be crossed. Those who made it to the west coast of Panama would still wait up to three months to ride an overcrowded ship to San Francisco. A large amount of Forty-niners used the cheapest means of travel by crossing the North American continent in ox drawn wagons. They traveled on anyone of the many trails stretching from coast to coast. Trails like the Oregon and Mormon trails were used to cross the Great Plains into California. Rains in the spring made most trails impassible and a cholera epidemic killed thousands. Regardless, over 200,000 people made it to California by 1852. This was a large increase considering San Francisco was populated at a little over 800 a year prior the rush. However, according to Steve Wiegard, a writer for the Sacramento Bee, “One in every five miners who came to California in 1849 was dead within six months.” Although the death rate was high, California sustained the required population to become a state. California was admitted as the 31st state of the union in 1850. For the obvious reasons, most profits were made in the first year of the rush. There was more gold and less people. It wasn’t uncommon to see claims anywhere from $300 to $400 a day from a single miner. This amount today is worth from $7000 to $9400 , quite the daily wages! In the first year of the rush over $10 million dollars worth of gold was mined. This would be worth roughly $234 million dollars today . This radical gain helped the United States’ economy thrive. This is the contrary to how gold affected the Spanish earlier in U.S history. When large amounts of gold were mined and brought back to Spain it went unused and became worthless because of its high quantities. The U.S succeeded because the gold that was mined was instantly put into circulation. Prices for necessities in San Francisco had increased, eggs became very pricey and one had to pay $20 or $470 in today’s money, for a pair of boots. In following years profits decreased per person due to the increase of population. Few made it rich. Many lost money paying for travel, tools and housing, failing to earn it back in gold. Gold mining was becoming more of a gamble than an investment. With the increasing number of people losing...