Thesis : The California Gold Rush set a major foundation for California. This changed California's politics, social state, and increase of population.
Culture/Social
At first gold could be found throughout California, especially in the streams and rivers. As these deposits were snatched up, individual panning gave way to larger mining operations. During that time Mine temperatures could reach 150 degrees, and the mines were cramped, poorly ventilated, and dangerous. Nevertheless, a miner could make good money. At a time when the average American farm laborer made about ten dollars a month, a skilled or lucky miner could make sixteen dollars a day for an ounce of gold.Many of the new arrivals set up businesses to exploit the new fortunes. By 1850, Sacramento housekeepers could make $150 a month. One woman made $100 a week by doing laundry. At the same time, the cost of living soared out of control. The average daily wage may have been ten dollars, but expenses could reach eighteen dollars a day.Mining communities constituted a new, strangely egalitarian society. Almost exclusively male, this ragged band of adventurers lived on the edge of civilization. There was no way to distinguish between the newly wealthy and the newly destitute.This equality did not extend to non-whites, however. The new settlers harassed Native Americans and Mexican-Californians (Californios), chasing them from their land. Later, miners would riot against Chinese laborers who were brought to work on the transcontinental railroad.The miners's camps were rough places, filled with rampant theft and vigilantism. One immigrant's wife, Louise Clapp (1819-1906), wrote letters (later published) to her sister in New England under the pseudonym Dame Shirley that described "murders, fearful accidents, bloody deaths, a mob, whippings, a hanging, an attempt at suicide, and a fatal duel." Yet California exerted its own kind of charm. As Clapp wrote to her sister, "I like this wild and barbarous life. ( The Gold Rush)
Population
Thousands of men made their travel plans. Some went alone; others formed companies to defray the cost. The wealthy boarded ships that would take them around the southern tip of South America. Others sailed to Panama, crossed the isthmus by train, and then continued to San Francisco. Most took overland routes, often following paths that the U.S. Army had so recently tread.All of the roads to California were long and difficult. The travelers risked storms around Cape Horn, Chile, and tropical disease across Panama. By land, they had to deal with harsh conditions, poorly charted trails, and hostile Native Americans. So many people suffered in one desert, on the doorstep of southern California, that the place was named Death Valley.The Forty-Niners, as they were called, crowded into hastily constructed camps around San Francisco, Sacramento, and other small cities. New towns with colorful names like Poker Flat, Hell's Delight, and Whiskey Bar sprang up almost overnight. Within one year, the population of California jumped from less than 20,000 to over 100,000. San Francisco changed from a sleepy port village to a bustling metropolis. Finally In 1850 California passed as a state because it had the amount of population in that territory to become a state. (The Gold Rush Of 1849)
Profit Making
The discovery of gold in California capped the most dramatic period of expansion in American history. Under James K. Polk's "Manifest Destiny" presidency, the United States nearly doubled its size by annexing the Oregon Territory south of the 49th Parallel and capturing the northern half of Mexico in the Mexican War. The Gold Rush, by inducing rapid settlement of the farthest reaches of those new American lands, consolidated Polk's territorial gains and made the United States into a true transcontinental empire. California's application for statehood in 1850, however, revealed just how fragile the political structure holding that empire together really was. The promise of future westward expansion had allowed the partisans of the slave South and free North to defer settlement of the sectional question ever since the ratification of the Constitution. Each side imagined the future settlement of the West with their own kind would eventually settle the slavery question in their favor. California's application to join the USA as a free state, despite its southerly latitude, threatened to upset the delicate sectional balance in the Senate, and proslavery politicians demanded certain concessions from their Northern colleagues in order to accede to California's statehood. The result, the Compromise of 1850,created a free California but imposed a Fugitive Slave Law that inflamed antislavery opinion in the North, beginning the decade-long descent from sectional crisis to the Civil War. ( California state library)