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Mining. It Rocks!. Mining Communities Most miners were men, but some families and single women also came. Mining camps were usually just groups of tents and shacks. Some camps grew into towns with stores and businesses. As more families arrived, churches, schools, and newspapers sprang up.
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Mining It Rocks!
Mining Communities Most miners were men, but some families and single women also came. Mining camps were usually just groups of tents and shacks. Some camps grew into towns with stores and businesses. As more families arrived, churches, schools, and newspapers sprang up. Some camps grew into major cities such as Denver, Colorado. Mining as a Business At first individual prospectors worked mines with hand tools. When surface deposits ran out, large companies moved in to prospect with machinery. At that point, most miners went to work for large companies giving up on striking it rich. It was dangerous work, and some miners tried to organize unions for better working conditions, but mining companies resisted. Mining Culture After the California gold rush, each new strike inspired more settlers westward in hopes of finding the next Comstock Lode or Klondike River.
Discovery of Gold • John Sutter -- an affable Swiss immigrant to California in 1839. • Wanted to build a private empire • Built a fort, amassed 12,000 head of cattle, and took on hundreds of workers. • James Marshall and about 20 men were sent to the river by Sutter to build a sawmill • The sawmill was nearly complete when a glint of something caught Marshall's eye. It was January 24th, 1848. • "I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and shape of a pea. Then I saw another." • But it wasn't long before stories of gold filtered into the surrounding countryside. Yet there was no race to the American River. The news of Marshall's gold was just another fantastic tale -- too unlikely to be believed. • Sam Brannan- a San Francisco merchant, • a skilled craftsman of hype. Eventually, the Gold Rush would make him the richest person in California -- but Sam Brannan never mined for gold. • running through the streets of San Francisco shouting about Marshall's discovery • he wasn't planning on digging for it. He was planning on selling shovels. And the first person who sold shovels got a lot more gold that the person who had to dig for it." • Brannan keenly understood the laws of supply and demand. • His wild run through San Francisco came just after he had purchased every pick axe, pan and shovel in the region. A metal pan that sold for twenty cents a few days earlier, was now available from Brannan for fifteen dollars. In just nine weeks he made thirty-six thousand dollars.
The Pattern • Gold found- or at least reported as found • Population Boom- Boom Town • Gold either not found in abundance or it all gets mined out- Ghost Town < Nome, Alaska Goldfield, AZ >
Gold Fever • Farmers left their fields; merchants closed their shops; soldiers left their posts -- and made plans for California. Newspapers fanned the fires. • Horace Greeley the of New York Tribune: "Fortune lies upon the surface of the earth as plentiful as the mud in our streets. We look for an addition within the next four years equal to at least One Thousand Million of Dollars to the gold in circulation." • By early 1849, gold fever was an epidemic. • "In the Richmond, Indiana paper (in 1849) for example, there was a big ad. This guy was selling salve you got it in a bottle -- and for $2.50 or $5.00 you could get this bottle of salve. And all you did was rub it all over your body, get up on the top of the mountain and roll down and all the gold stuck to you; and guaranteed you by the time you got to bottom with one roll you'd have enough gold, when you scraped it off, to live happily ever after. That was all you needed. And he sold two types of salve, one for gold and one for silver. “
No expression characterized the California gold rush more than the words "seeing the elephant." Those planning to travel west announced they were "going to see the elephant." Those turning back claimed they had seen the "elephant’s tracks" or the "elephant’s tail," and admitted that view was sufficient. • The expression predated the gold rush, arising from a tale current when circus parades first featured elephants. A farmer, so the story went, hearing that a circus was in town, loaded his wagon with vegetables for the market there. He had never seen an elephant and very much wished to. On the way to town he encountered the circus parade, led by an elephant. The farmer was thrilled, but his horses were not. Terrified, they bolted, overturning the wagon and ruining the vegetables. "I don’t give a hang," the farmer said, "for I have seen the elephant." • For gold rushers, the elephant symbolized both the high cost of their endeavor—the myriad possibilities for misfortune on the journey or in California—and like the farmer’s circus elephant, an exotic sight, an unequaled experience, the adventure of a lifetime.
Weird Ways West • Rufus Porter, founder of Scientific American, planned to fly 49ers west on propeller-driven balloons powered by steam engines. He went to far as to advertise the expedition, and 200 brave souls signed up for the trip. But the "airline" never got off the ground. • Then there was the "wind wagon," sort of a cross between a sailboat and a wagon. It seemed like a good idea on paper; after all, it can be very windy in the West. A prototype was built and for a brief moment it barreled across the plains at the advertised 15 miles-per-hour. Then it went out of control and crashed. The inventor -- Wind-wagon Thomas -- kept trying for years, but never succeeded. • Others took a more low-tech approach, making the trip with only a simple wheelbarrow. It's hard to imagine pushing a fully-loaded wheelbarrow for 2,000 miles, but several dozen attempted the trip. For a time, they could outpace everything on the Trail, but human endurance has its limits. No one is quite sure if any of them made it all the way with their wheelbarrows.
The $100 drink of water • Would you spend $100 for a glass of water? Some 49ers on the California Trail did. • Because of poor planning, many western-bound 49ers were unprepared for the hot, dry deserts of Nevada. A few sharp businessmen in California knew this and took advantage of the situation. They traveled eastward with barrels of water. Extremely thirsty, many 49ers paid $1, $5, even $100 for a glass of precious water. • But water was not the only expensive item on the Oregon-California Trail. For example, at the start of the journey, flour could be purchased for $4.00 a barrel, but further along the price rose to a sky-high $1.00 per pint. Other staples could also be quite expensive: • Sugar $1.50 per pint • Coffee $1.00 per pint • Liquor $4.00 per pint • Surprisingly, there were other staples that were amazingly cheap. For example, at Ft. Laramie, bacon could be had for a penny per pound. Those who had excess bacon often considered it worthless and dumped it by the side of the road. One emigrant reported seeing ten tons on one pile. • Why the wide disparity in prices? The basic laws of supply and demand were at work. Most wagon trains took too much bacon and so it had little trading value. Water, on the other hand was in short supply and thus commanded a high price.
Traffic on the Trail • Bumper-to-bumper highway congestion isn't just a modern phenomena. Rush hour traffic on the Oregon-California trail was just as bad -- probably worse. • The image of a lone wagon on the endless prairie is largely myth; it's more accurate to imagine a moving city. Many reported seeing wagons all the way to the horizon day after day. • And just like today's highways, there was quite a bit of jockeying for position. The goal was to get in front of the pack because anyone who was behind had to eat the billowing dust kicked up by the wagons ahead. Competition was fierce; those in the back often had to put on goggles just to see. • The crowded conditions got even worse in the evening when the wagons came together to camp. Many 49ers discovered that previous wagon trains had overgrazed the prairie, and so there was no remaining grass for the oxen and mules to graze. So it was not uncommon for 49ers to venture miles off the trail in the evening in search of grass for their animals. • A more serious consequence of all this crowding was poor sanitation. Each new wagon train dug their latrines near the previous group's -- and there was often leakage into the water supply. The result was illness and death.
To California via Antarctica • Not every 49er used the Oregon -California Trail. There were other routes to gold country -- one came perilously close to Antarctica! • Those who did not want to endure a four month walk across the west, traveled to California by ship. Trouble was, there was no direct water route to the west coast. So a ship leaving New York had to travel all the way to the tip of South America -- skirting the edge of the the Antarctic continent -- before heading north to California. It was a difficult trip that sometimes took a complete year. • So it was inevitable that several shortcuts were developed for the gold-crazed 49ers who were in a big hurry to get west. The most popular cutoff involved taking a ship to the Isthmus of Panama, then trekking overland to the Pacific side (remember, there was no Panama Canal then) where another ship would pick them up -- hopefully. • When the 49ers got to the Pacific side, they waited and waited for weeks, or even months. When a ship finally did arrive, passage might cost $500 or $1000, and sometimes there was no space at any price. • Even worse, many of the Pacific-side ships were unseaworthy and sank en route. In the end, many regretted not taking the overland route.
Okay, so who, how, but where? • California- 1849 • Cherry Creek, CO- 1858 * William Larimer- “I am Denver City” • Comstock Lode- 1859 • Yukon Gold Rush- 1897
The Miner • People, men almost exclusively, from all jobs and locales • Expensive to head west and get started • Many left families at home in towns out West • Most “busted”, some very wealthy in the end • Mining takes a large corporation to be profitable usually
Individual Miners • John W. Mackay- “Big Bonanza” on silver • Comstock Lode- Henry Comstock, $11,000 • Panning for gold • Laws amongst miners
Law and Order • The gold rush had attracted a less desirable crowd. Crooks, bandits, claim jumpers, professional gamblers and others came to take advantage of the wealth. • No Laws • Claims in some camps- only one 10 foot square • Claim Jumping- taking someone else’s claim. • Swindlers would also "salt" the ground, scattering a little gold around and then sell the land for lots of money. • Punishment for crimes was often fast and simple. Fines or banishments. Small crimes were punished by flogging with a whip. For more serious crimes, such as robbery and murder, the punishment was hanging. • The government could not control the crime. People set up vigilante groups to track down criminals and ensure justice. • Bull Fighting- brought by Mexicans was changed to “bear v. bull”- The Bear would bear-hug the bull and pull it down. The Bull would charge the bear trying to gore it swinging its head upward. (Wall Street Jargon: A Bear market is down and the Bull Market is up.)
Gold Country • Most of the world's gold is locked deep underground -- embedded in hard rock. But California gold was different -- easily accessible to anyone with a few simple tools and a willingness to work hard. • It's free politically. It doesn't belong to anybody. There is no sign that says keep out. There's no government. There's no wire. There's no order. There's none of the normal obstacles; political obstacles. The California Gold Rush is there, open, free. There is no military force here to impose any rules. There's no taxes collected, no tax collectors. There's no judicial system. There are no boundaries, there's no rules. It's there, it's free. • It was free -- and it was plentiful. Soon there was too much money in California and too little of everything else. The lessons of supply and demand were often painful. A forty-niner who earned a dollar a day back home, could make twenty-five dollars in a day of mining -- but that was often just enough to buy dinner. • Camps sprouted up and evolved into ramshackle boomtowns to serve the growing population -- places with accurate names like: Hangtown, Gouge Eye, Rough and Ready, and Whiskeytown. Places to avoid -- were it not for the gold. Places that were wild, open, free.
Collision of Cultures • Many mines, especially in the south, were worked by foreigners who came solely for the gold. Chinese, Chileans, Mexicans, Irish, Germans, French, and Turks all sought their fortune in California. • Foreign miners had no intention of staying in California. Their goal was to get the gold and get home. But hauling gold out of the country was a difficult operation -- bandits often preyed on foreigners. The Chinese had a unique solution- melting it down into cooking utensils. • California legislature passed the Foreign Miners Tax in 1850, a $20 per month levy payable by every foreign miner • Yet one ethnic group did not do well -- the original residents of California's gold country: Native Americans. Uninterested in gold or in mining -- they were almost immediately annihilated. 300,000. And it was quickly reduced to only 50,000. • Southerners who brought their slaves to help in the digging quickly found out that 49ers didn't take kindly to that idea -- but it wasn't because of an opposition to slavery. The miners had quite a different reason for objecting. • In 1850, California was admitted to the Union as a free state
Women in the Mining Community • One woman made $18,000 just from a single Dutch oven. Women relished their first taste of economic independence. If you could wash clothes, you could make $8 a dozen. If you could cook a meal, you could sell it for $5- $10, if you could run a boarding house, you could clear a $200 a week, if you could get enough boarders. And a number of women simply put to use their domestic skills which was a very smart thing to do. Because men didn't want to cook. And there were all those men with dirty shirts and hungry bellies waiting for somebody to come and take care of them." • "A fellow who got married charged $5.00 for people to come to his wedding so they could see his bride. “
Entrepreneurs • Sam Brannan- cornered the market on certain goods and raised the price. • Levi Straus- pants out of canvas and the use of metal rivets • Phillip Armour- opened a meat market and processing plant • John Sudebaker- wheelbarrow maker turned covered wagon maker for the Oregon Trail • Wells and Fargo make Wells Fargo, a giant in banking.
