When did the Gold Rush end?

It played a huge impact on populations in California and the surrounding areas. It was the discovery of gold by James Marshall in Coloma in 1848 that started the whole thing.

It wasn’t long before word of the discovery had traveled to lands across the whole world. People began traveling to California in search of the gold and the riches that it could bring. Approximate numbers showed that about 150,000 people traveled to California by boat, while 150,000 more people traveled across the land. The sudden growth from prospectors and their families caused small towns to grow, like San Francisco. It also contributed to the addition of more schools, churches, and roads. The Gold Rush, and the increase in population density, directly led to California’s admittance into the nation as a free state.

In the beginning the gold was mainly gathered from local small waterways through a technique called panning, which is the use of a sifter pan to filter out the dirt and small particles while the gold is left in the pan. By the end of the Gold Rush in 1855, more complicated methods for gathering the gold had been invented, and these methods included equipment for mining the gold from the surrounding underground rock formations.

Related Pages:

• What year was gold discovered in California?
• Who was president during the California gold rush?
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• Memoirs of the Gold Rush
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