The Forty-Niners
In 1849 the gold rush boomed, launching one of the largest emigrations in American history. Miners and businessmen rushed to the newly annexed California in search for gold. This large rush inspired more digging and gold-panning on the pacific coast. America had gold fever at this point in time. The uninhabited lands of California were peculiarly lawless, however. This caused even more incentive being in California there was no private property nor taxes, gold was just simply for the taking. This time period spawned major innovations in gold recovering techniques. Necessity is the mother of invention, thus people found quicker and more efficient ways to find, dig, and, recover gold. In the first five years roughly 370 tons of gold was recovered, around 16 billion in modern day prices. People were inspired from gold in California they searched for less populated and saturated areas of the west coast. The gold rush had influences on the what land America obtained, Alaska and Hawaii had lots of untouched areas of gold as well as untapped areas of oil. The gold rush caused Natives in California to be moved to reservations. Many Natives had moved into the California area to escape being put in reservations in the region of the Great Plains.
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A poster advertising the gold rush in California.
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