Gold rush

For other meanings, see Gold rush (disambiguation)

A California Gold Rush handbill

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold. In the history of the United States, Australia and Canada, several gold rushes took place throughout the 19th century, first in the Appalachians, and later in the Sierra Nevada, the Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, and the Rocky Mountains. One of the best-known gold rushes was the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898-99 in Canada's Yukon Territory. Gold rushes helped spur permanent population of new regions and define a significant part of the culture of the North American frontier. Similar gold rushes took place during the 19th century in New Zealand, Scotland and South Africa.

Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly. The significance of gold rushes in history has given a longer life to the term, and it is now applied generally to capitalism to denote any economic activity in the participants aspire to race each other in common pursuit of a new and apparently highly lucrative market, often precipitated by an advance in technology.

Life cycle of a gold rush

The discovery of gold in a new region typically began with a spontaneous discovery of "free gold" by a single individual. This free gold was usually placer gold in the beds of streams that descend from a nearby mountain range. Propagation of the news of the discovery typically resulted in a large influx of prospectors to join existing groups and to form new ones. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by a longer period of prospecting in upper canyon walls for lode gold. Typically the heyday of a gold rush, when the lodes had not yet all been prospected, would last only a few years. In some cases, the depletion of gold was followed by a transition to a silver boom, and then a period of mining of other lesser value minerals. For significant gold-producing areas, the initial rush phase would be followed by a transition to modern industrial mining of ore.

What distinguished gold rushes from gold exploitation campaigns of previous eras was the relative democratization in the participation of mining enterprises. The early New World expeditions of the European colonial powers, notably the Spanish Empire, were driven largely by the search for gold. The expeditions of earlier eras were typical state enterprises, however, and were usually accompanied by state military support. Gold rushes, by comparison, reflected a spontaneous grassroots capitalism akin to homesteading, but centered on mining rather than agriculture. In some places, notably California, the gold rush era is celebrated as embodying an archetypal founding of the state itself.

Factors that led thousands at a time to abandon daily Industrial Revolution drudgery and travel to gold fields (diggings) included

• relative improvements in transport networks;
• improvements in the means of communication that supported rumour-distribution chains,
• some social discontent, and
• an international gold-based monetary system.

Only a few miners made fortunes, several suppliers (such as Levi Strauss and John Mohler Studebaker) and traders made good money, and numerous unfortunates endured hardship and privation in exotic frontiers of civilization for little ultimate reward. Demographically, several gold rushes shook up the patterns of settlement, resulting in the opening up of previously sparsely-settled areas and a Cantonese diaspora around the Pacific Rim.

Gold-rush culture, often reflected in popular song, tended to promote self-images of robust masculinity.

Notable gold rushes

Rushes of the 1830s

• the southern Appalachian Mountains of the United States, north of Atlanta and west of Charlotte; in Georgia in the late 1830s

Rushes of the 1840s

• California (1848), the California Gold Rush;

Rushes of the 1850s

• Australia (1851), the Victorian gold rush
• Fraser Canyon Gold Rush 1858-1861, the first of the British Columbia Gold Rushes
• Colorado (1859), the Colorado Gold Rush
• Northern Nevada from the 1850s

Rushes of the 1860s

• Idaho (1860), aka the Fort Colville gold rush
• Cariboo Gold Rush in 1862-65, a British Columbia Gold Rush
• Omineca Gold Rush, 1860s, also a British Columbia Gold Rush
• Wild Horse Creek Gold Rush, 1860s, also a British Columbia Gold Rush
• Central Otago Gold Rush, 1861-63, in Otago, New Zealand
• the Black Hills and other areas in Montana after 1863
• Eastern Oregon in the 1860s and 1870s
• Kildonnan, Sutherland, in the Scottish Highlands, 1869

Rushes of the 1880s

• Transvaal, South Africa (1886), the Witwatersrand Gold Rush; the resulting influx of miners was one of the triggers for the Second Boer War
• Cayoosh Gold Rush in Lillooet, British Columbia

Rushes of the 1890s

One of the best-known gold rushes was the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898-99; the main goldfield was along the south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon at what was to become Dawson City in Canada's Yukon Territory but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement and promoted the discovery of other gold finds there.

The Klondike gold rush sparked the largest mobilization of goldseekers in history. Millions started on the journey although ultimately only a few hundred thousand reached the "Yukon Ports" or other disembarkation points such as Edmonton, Alberta. Only 35,000 finally reached what was to become Dawson City, at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers, to be faced by famine, fire and some of the world's bitterest and darkest winters.

The Klondike Rush brought prospectors to other locations in the Far North, with several other smaller rushes occuring as spin-offs. Three of the better-known of such rushes were:

• Atlin Gold Rush (1898)
• Nome, Alaska (1898)
• Fairbanks, Alaska (1899)

South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23 % of total world output in 1896. Gold production on both the Klondike and South Africa benefitted from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore.

Australia had a second major gold rush in the 1890s:

• Western Australia (1890s), the Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie gold rushes

See also

• Charlotte Mint
• Dahlonega Mint
• Gold as an investment
• Gold prospecting
• Gold standard
• Placer mining
• Silver rush
• After the Gold Rush, Neil Young album of 1970
• Lead boom in the Wisconsin-Illinois-Iowa region around Dubuque and Galena.

External links

• The Australian Gold Rush
• Off to the Klondike! The Search for Gold — Illustrated Historical Essay