California Here We Come!

what everyone said during the gold rush probably

Welcome back to history class! I know it’s been a while, or two weeks, since we last spoke. I’ve been busy. I went to Oregon to visit my friend from middle school and to get away from San Diego for a bit. I also finished my first full draft of my thesis. Title reveal: “The Future is Sunny” and then a colon and then the serious title. Anyway, today isn’t about that. A few weeks ago I went to Knott’s Berry Farm (and fit four corn dogs in my fanny pack), the local amusement park that my eighth grade field trip was to. Everyone who grew up in Orange County has been there. It is known for its boysenberries, but also for all the crazy stuff that happens there. Maybe it’s all mythical, but I’ve heard about shootings, stabbings, and more. My crazy thing is that my friend from middle school (who I just visited) went on her first date during our field trip. The guy was on my water polo team, but went to a different school. The trip was the first, and only, time they ever hung out. I keep getting sidetracked, back to the point! Knott’s is themed around California history. There four main sections are boom town, 1950s, “camp fiesta” and camp Snoopy. The boom town, also called “ghost town” on the Knott’s website, is actually awesome. They have an old schoolhouse that acts as a mini museum to go along with an actual museum in the same section. Both the schoolhouse and the museum are actually really interesting and cool. If you know me, you know I love school. I have a tattoo from Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse because I think it’s so relatable, and the first line of the entire book is “Lilly loved school”. If that’s not me, I don’t know what is. All of this is to say that I loved the schoolhouse. There’s more to say about American travel westward, but today I’m focusing only on the California Gold Rush. I recently did an assignment on four letters written in 1849-1851 about the gold rush, so I already have some material ready to go. So imagine you’re a pioneer, sit on a wagon (a chair), and get ready to go west (read my Substack)!

You may have heard of Sutter’s Mill. If you have, that’s because it was how the California Gold Rush started. The first gold was found there in 1848. Sutter’s Mill is along the South Fork American River which is northeast of Sacramento. It is now part of the Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, if you want to visit. John Sutter, the founder (and a Swiss immigrant), was building a water-powered sawmill along the river when his carpenter, James W. Marshall found gold flakes. Sutter, being the businessman he was, struck a deal with Marshall to become partners and also keep the gold a secret. God knows Sutter didn’t want his mill overrun with literal gold diggers. Unfortunately for both Sutter and Marshall, this secret couldn’t keep. Sam Brannan can be blamed for that. In San Francisco, people didn’t believe that real gold was found. Brannan, a businessman and Mormon, was responsible for the spread. He ran a store in Sutter’s Fort, which mostly serviced employees from (you guessed it) Sutter’s Mill. People paid for their goods with the gold their found. He went to San Francisco and according to legend he ran around yelling “Gold! Gold on the American River!” with a small vial of the stuff. News spread across the country like wildfire after that.

People had already been heading west with the Manifest Destiny situation of 1845. For non-history people out there, or those who don’t remember from high school, Manifest Destiny was essentially the thought that Americans should expand all the way across North America. It was their destiny! Look up American Progress, the painting, and you’ll probably remember what I’m talking about. The guiding assumptions of Manifest Destiny was that the U.S. has moral superiority over anyone else occupying the land, thus meaning that citizens need to spread their republican government ideals to the ‘uncivilized’. Really the whole thing is a prime example of American exceptionalism, something you might recognize from modern times. I bring this up mostly to explain how immigrants flooded to California. In the late 1840s, there was no major railroad. Obviously there were no commercial planes either. If you wanted to travel west, you needed to find a wagon or a boat. The boat method would take time. According to George Harrington’s letters from 1849 (these are the ones I read for class), it took 160 days, including two short stops not amassing to over 20 days total, to hit California from Boston. Most ships stopped in Brazil and Valparaiso, Chile. That meant traveling all the way around South America. Almost half a year to get to California, and that was the easy way! This was by far the most common route. Most wagon trains didn’t go that far west. If you did want to travel by land however, it could take six to nine months depending on where you started from. A quick Google Maps search tells me that if I walked nonstop, and relied on a ferry, it would take me 42 days. Something tells me things moved a lot slower with a wagon and horses and a family. It comes at no surprise then that immigrants from (what is now) Hawaii, Oregon, Mexico, Chile, Peru, and of course China made it to San Francisco first. They hit California during 1848, the same year the gold was found. When they got there, they found a city of almost only women, as all the men had already hit the mines. East Coast miners took much longer, but made their way over by 1849. In case you were wondering, this is in fact why we have a football team called the 49ers. Fourty-niner was a term used for all the people who mass migrated to California in 1849.

Let’s talk about miner life, because it sounds terrible. Do you really think a place run and maintained by men could be all that successful? I don’t. Mining camps were pretty gross. There were little popup towns around the mines called boomtowns, because their growth was so sudden. Miners lived in poorly constructed tents, though some had homes. They were entirely responsible for their own wellbeing. This meant miners had to procure their own food, wash their own clothes, and clean up after themselves in ways they might not have been used to. Many boomtowns turned into legitimate cities by the end of the century. San Francisco? Boomtown. Chicago? Boomtown. New York? Not a boomtown, I just wanted a third city. People turned these towns into cities through labor and immigration. In the case of California, boomtowns grew as a result of the Gold Rush. As previously mentioned, Chinese immigrants came to San Francisco with gold in mind. This led to the creation on San Francisco’s Chinatown, the only part of the city where immigrants could own property. Upon arrival, desperately needing money, Chinese immigrants would take on poor jobs for reduced wages and longer hours. As a result, the state and federal governments released waves of legislation limited Chinese immigration and work, namely the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1879 that blocked Chinese immigration completely for 10 years. The Gold Rush is taught to fourth graders all across America. I highly doubt the racism woven within it all is conveyed.

Because there was no infrastructure and due to lacking sanitation measures, there was little in place to prevent illness. Cholera was everywhere. I’m just going to say it: cholera, a disease that comes from contaminated water, causes severe dehydration and diarrhea. Think of the worst diarrhea you’ve had, now multiply it times like 700. Its main cause is unsanitary conditions, so you can imagine how bad it was in the mines. In these camps, there was no government. In a group of almost all men you can imagine how much conflict there probably was, especially toward Native Americans. Manifest Destiny relied on the seizing of Native land, something the Gold Rush did with flourish. White settlers were paid for every Native American killed. By 1890, the California Native population was almost entirely eradicated. Not surprising considering this came after the smallpox epidemic of 1830s in which Native Americans contracted smallpox due to infected goods from white settlers, including the government. Britain used smallpox as warfare toward Natives in the 1700s as well. 100 years later and nothing changed. Do you think if Trump could give out smallpox blankets he would?

Remember my cowboy episode? Guess what! Men were gendered differently during the Gold Rush too. Some men would seek male companionship and same-sex relationships were not uncommon. It’s impossible to know the exact details on how many miners were involved, but it is very apparent that these relationships were normalized. Men would also take on jobs traditionally deemed female like washing, cooking, and mending. What choice did they have? Interestingly, some men would wear a handkerchief on their arm to show that they would dance the female part during big dances. In the same way the cowboys didn’t consider themselves gay, miners didn’t either. They more considered their actions to be out of necessity as opposed to a reflection of their true feelings. Some men even went out in women’s clothing, or drag. On the flip side, many women would act as men to do their jobs better. Could a woman really catch frogs in a layered dress? Jeanne Bonnet said no. John Chaffee and Jason Chamberlain were two clearly gay miners. They lived together for 50 years, having met in Massachusetts before going west. they never found gold, but they built a house and ran a store. While it is unclear if they had a sexual relationship, they were inseparable from 1846 until Chaffee died in 1903.

Women did eventually make their way toward the mines. A lot of people assume the women who went were just wives, but most weren’t. Some were miners, but most weren’t. The majority of women who came to the mines worked as prostitutes. The morality of life by the mines compared to life back east was different. Unless you were killing someone, you were probably ok. Apparently, by 1850, San Francisco had over 2,000 working prostitutes. Prostitution barely paid, but was likely the most common job for women near the mines. Chinese and Hispanic women were also involved during this time, but white prostitutes were always more expensive. When boomtowns brought in more families, instead of single miners, prostitution slowly became immoral as the west stopped being so wild. Some women were in business. The main businesses were hotels, laundries, and restaurants. Having a woman to clean, sew, and cook made a big difference in the boom towns. A small number of women got involved in the mines, but they were heavily discouraged from them. Marie Suize got arrested three times for wearing pants. So what I’m hearing is prostitution was all good but pants on a woman? Absolutely not! Pioneer life is so funny.

So how many people actually got rich from the Gold Rush? The answer is very few. Most found nothing. Many found a small amount worth only a modest amount. Very, very, very few found enough to be rich. Most men lost money in the camps, both through gambling and living expenses. This is a different question from was the gold Rush a success. In some ways it was as people made their way across the continent and new land was settled, fulfilling Manifest Destiny. Of course, it all came at a cost. Natives were driven out of their land to make way for miners. Many people died. The Gold Rush was without a doubt key in American expansion, especially to California, but not a lot of people won.

This seems like a good place to note that there are a whole bunch of gold rushes. I only talked about California, because that’s where I am, but there’s a few more. Most notably is the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896 to 1899. This happened long after California cooled down, but the need for gold sparked up again. People from California went to the Klondike region of Yukon, Canada, right on the Alaskan border. There was also a wave of Australian gold rushes across the 1890s. In North America, the two big ones are California and Klondike, though some people did try their luck in Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Oregon, and New Mexico. Ironically, nuggets of real gold are not worth all that much by today’s standards. You can buy a genuine Alaskan gold nugget starting at $50. I’m not saying it’s cheap, but you certainly wouldn’t get rich from selling a baby bit of gold. Kind of puts it in perspective how ridiculous it was to leave your family with the hope of finding a needle in a haystack or a nugget in a pile of rock.

I did not have the pleasure of learning about the California Gold Rush because I was elementary educated in New York. In all honesty, the Gold Rush is cool, but I don’t think I missed much. I think Californians are too sentimental about the whole thing. I’m not saying it isn’t important, I just think people need to consider it past the adventure of it all. It’s better for middle and high school students to spend time with. Luckily, I also didn’t have to learn about the missions. There will never be a Substack or radio episode on those. I would NEVER. The Gold Rush is responsible for modern California, and that should be appreciated. Most Californians seem to consider the Gold Rush a fond historical period they have almost a sense of pride in. However, we should not forget all of the suffering it caused to Native Americans and Chinese immigrants in particular. There’s actually a gold rush class offered at UCSD I never got to take because it’s always at 8 am. I may like history but unless they’re offering a class on The Muppet Show I’m not waking up that early for school. I have a book on the California Gold Rush I should also read. This whole thing makes me want to do a pioneer/prairie episode too, so expect that to come up at some point. I think that’s all I have for today. Don’t forget to tune in Mondays at 11 for my live broadcast on KSDT and remember not to do something just because everyone else is.

1. “Foggy Mountain Breakdown” by Earl Scruggs

2. “Rocky Top” by The Osborne Brothers

3. “Wide Open Spaces” by The Chicks

4. “Too Late to Cry” by Alison Krauss

5. “Going to California” by Led Zeppelin

6. “Dani California” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers

7. “California Dreamin’” by The Mamas & The Papas

8. “California Love (feat. Roger Troutman & Dr. Dre) by 2Pac

9. “Hotel California” by (the) Eagles

10. “It Never Rains in Southern California” by Albert Hammond