Gold: Life In The California Gold Rush

Gold, gold, gold in California! It lasted barely a decade. However, the California Gold Rush was a grand adventure for a generation of brash young men, most of them citizens of a brash young nation. The journey to California for finding gold was hard and dangerous—the forty-niners had a tough time.

In 1849 the East was electrified by some news. These news stated that crossing the continent, on the West and, close from Mexico, golden nuggets were lying in the ground. After hearing that in California a man could take a fortune out of the hills and streams with just a shovel, a tin pan, a wooden, and a cradle, the Argonauts swarmed West by the thousands. They took their names — the forty-niners— from the year the rush began, 1849. These people called Argonauts made tough decisions to head West, for example, they abandoned their farms and apprenticeships, and they deserted from their families and fiancées.

Life in the Diggings

Some of the typical things that happened in the diggings were horse races, people getting drunk or already drunk, others reading the bible besides a cabin, and miners washing their

Most of the vessels were abandoned by passengers and crew who rushed off to the diggings. Abandoned vessels were leased for $3,000 a month — more than they ever earned afloat, and they were run aground too. Life was cheap in this new-born city, for example, a dozen of eggs cost six dollars. It was the most exciting city on earth by the 1850’s. Each day San Francisco built about thirty houses and got news of two murders and one fire. The young and armed male population used to drink at more than forty hundred bars and gamble at more than one thousand dens. Gambling halls earned hundreds of thousands of gold in an average day. There were six big fires in San Francisco within eighteen months with losses of twenty-five million dollars and hundreds of lives. However, after each disaster, the city rose once more, bigger and