The Gold Rush Impacts

Jaqueline Lopez

Jaqueline Lopez
Professor Cheek
March 10, 2015

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On January 24, 1848 was a big day in California history, for it was the day gold was
discovered in Sutter's mill. It is recorded that James Marshall was the founder of the gold and the
one that began a great movement called the Gold Rush. The gold rush was a great movement that
changed California. For years California was just a piece of unclaimed land until the gold rush
began and in a year tops California became a state. The population grew immensely in over a
year that California was able to become a state. The gold rush sounded as a great thing but it was
not. It had many impacts, gender roles were switched, not many found gold, there was a great
amount of migration.
The gold rush had many impacts on people but one of them was the gender roles
switched. This movement was dominantly male with a few women who went to mine as well.
Men had to do all the cooking and washing since they were all alone. An Anglo man once wrote,
"If, as at home, we had others to attend to household arrangements, it. . .would be different, but
here everything must be done by ourselves" (114).1 Men had to do the laundry, cook, and sew
their clothes, things that was a woman's job. The few women that were there also did mining but
then began earning more money by cooking for the men. A man described it like this:
Women here are doing full as well as men. They can get for cooking sometimes as high as
$30 per day, and for washing they can even as high as $50 to $60. One young lady who
came in last fall now has over $3000 clear.2
Even though women went in search for gold, they were doing better and starting their own
businesses by cooking and cleaning for the men.
The gold rush was a time were many were finding gold in the land, but some were not as
lucky as others. Even though there was gold in the land, not every section they looked in had
gold. Many had to search for days in dangerous places to find it. In a letter from a man named

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William Swain he writes to his brother trying to convince him of not showing up. He writes,
"...George, I tell you this mining among the mountains is a dog's life. A man has to make a
jackass of himself packing loads over mountains that God never designed man to climb..."3
Since gold was not found in small places they had to search in higher places that cost many their
life. Even though some did find gold, they could have been small amounts or big amounts. The
ones that found small amounts would get frustrated and go back home. Many would get lucky
like a young man named Alfred Doten, who described it like this:
Moody and myself prospected all day and found a great place to work over in the North
Gulsh. There are some ten or fifteen people at work there and now and some of them are
doing well-Blakely made 80 dolls. and one piece of it weighed 41 dollars - old Mr. French
made about 90 dollars today - and others from 40 to 50 dollars apiece, but these rich spots
are very scarce.4
The gold rush was the sole reason California became a state because of the quantity of
people who migrated there. When word got out that gold was discovered people began coming
from many places and began to settle there. The population increased causing it to become a
state, making it one of the biggest impact in California. "The news quickly traveled to the Pacific
Basin port towns that were linked to San Francisco by sailing routes. As a result, early
prospectors included Hawaiians, Peruvians, Mexicans, and Chileans."5 Also there was many
Chinese who came to work in the mines. There was a variety of races that came in search for an
opportunity in finding gold and becoming rich. Some were looked down upon and separated
from the rest because discrimination has always existed. The Chinese had their own campsites
away from the whites.

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California was a place where gold was found one morning and as word spread out it
became a big movement. It was the reason California became a state. Gender roles were
switched in where the men had to do all the cleaning and cooking. Some miners were lucky to
find big amounts of gold while others were not so lucky. Population increased as many people
began coming in search for gold. They were coming from all over the world in search for an
opportunity.

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Notes
1. Anglo man statement. Additional "plotlines" in the Gold Rush, part II: Understanding
"difference and domination" through race, ethnicity, and gender.
2. Anonymous letter written in January, 1850. Kalamazoo Gazette, March 29, 1850
3. Excerpt from William Swain letter to brother George, January 6-16, 1850. Reprinted
by permission of Simon and Shuster from The World Rushed In: The California Gold Rush
Experience by J.S. Holliday, Copyright (c) 1981 by J.S. Holliday.
4. Alfred Doten, "My Advetnures in the California Diggings." Reprinted by permission of
University of Nevada Press, from The Journals of Alfred Doten, 1849-1903, edited by Walter
Van Tiburg Clark, Copyright (c) 1973 by University of Nevada Press.
5.News of Gold in California. http://weareca.org/index.php/en/era/1820s1850s/overview4.html