The Day the World Changed Forever - Gold Rush Stories Part 45 - California Gold Rush

Gold Rush Stories Part 45 - The Day The World Changed Forever

THE MAN MADE HARBOUR AND THE BIRTH OF THE BLUE METAL INDUSTRY - KIAMA, SOUTH COAST NSW - Seagulls lined up on roof of Kiama Fish Co-Op Fishing Trawlers in Harbour Greystar Colllection Designer Jewelry Circle Pendant Grey fractal designBernard Holternman and the Holterman Nugget the largest gold nugget ever found GOLD RUSH STORIES PART 34 - HOW MUCH GOLD IS THERE?
James Wilson Marshall and the Coloma Valley plaque at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, California
James Wilson Marshall and the Coloma Valley plaque at Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park in Coloma, California
Sarah Stierch (CC BY 4.0)

 

THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH

On the 24th of January 1848, the world forever changed when James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma California.

This discovery would set off a chain of events that would secure America’s ascension and dominance as a world super power and economic powerhouse, the sudden population boom reinvigorating a flailing American economy, and facilitating California’s rise to statehood, in the Compromise of 1850.

Spanning from 1848 to 1855 the California Gold Rush was a virtual magnet for the near 300,000 drawn to California from across the globe.

Scholars estimate that approximately 90,000 people arrived in California in 1849, of which at least a third are estimated to have arrived from overseas, ballooning to over 300,000 hopeful souls by 1855.

(California Gold Rush, n.d.)

Ships Abandoned in Yerba Buena Cove San Francisco during the California Gold Rush 1849 (public domain image from Wikimedia)
Ships Abandoned in Yerba Buena Cove San Francisco during the California Gold Rush 1849
WIYC, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

…There is no mystery as to the cause which so suddenly and so largely raised wages in California in 1849, and in Australia in 1852. It was the discovery of the placer mines in unappropriated land to which labor was free that raised the wages of cooks in San Francisco restaurants to $500 a month, and left ships to rot in the harbor without officers or crew until their owners would consent to pay rates that in any other part of the globe seemed fabulous.

                              …Henry George; Progress & Poverty Book V Chapter 2

(Gold Rush, n.d.)

Miners Head Group of Miners Posing during the 1870's on the Gulgong Goldfields of the 1870's GOLD RUSH STORIES - PART 13 - DISCOVERY OF THE HOLTERMANN COLLECTION

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@kieran.wicks #question from @kieran.wicks #CalifornianGoldRush #Inflation #Gold #49ers #Compromiseof1850 #Didyouknow #historian #WorldChanging #SuperPower #SocialChange #AmericanHistory #GoldRushStories #OneTownataTime #historyofmoney #GoldFever #Emmigration #Economy #LivingArtLifestyle ♬ original sound - Kieran.Wicks

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:CaliforniaGoldRush.png

Map of the areas in Northern California to which gold prospectors flocked
James Wilson Marshall
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_W._Marshall#/media/File:James_Marshall2.jpg
A map of how the states were divided up from the compromise of 1850
https://owlcation.com/humanities/Compromise-of-1850-and-the-Civil-War-Cause-and-Effect
Auras Collection Designer Jewelry Circle Pendant rainbow fractal design uniqueHOW WERE SCARE CAMPAIGNS USED IN THE MEDIA POST WW2? GOLD RUSH STORIE PART 40
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A polymathic touring musician, film maker, historian and producer, for the past 8 years Kieran Wicks has navigated the Great Southern Land of Australia performing hundreds of shows to ravenous audiences, whilst simultaneously developing a vast catalogue of interviews, images and videos in the production of multiple formative docuseries including 'One Town at a Time', which records his musical journey, immersed in poignant, forgotten Australian history and poetry, in archives such as 'Gold Rush Stories' and 'Poetry of the Pioneers'.

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