On 24 January 1848 James Marshall, a carpenter building a sawmill for John Sutter on the American River at Coloma, California, saw glints of gold in the water. The news leaked out, and by 1849 some 300,000 'forty-niners' from the United States, Latin America, Europe, Australia and China rushed to California. San Francisco grew from a village of 1,000 to a city of 25,000 in two years. The gold rush made California a state in 1850, but caused misery for the Native Californians, whose numbers fell from perhaps 150,000 to 30,000 by 1870, and for Chinese miners facing discrimination. Hundreds of tonnes of gold were taken out of the ground.
Before and after
- 1848Revolutions of 1848 in the German states
- from 1848 to 1849First Italian War of Independence
- from 12 January 1848 to 4 October 1849European Revolutions of 1848
- 24 January 1848California Gold Rush
- 24 January 1848Gold is found at Sutter's Mill: the California Gold Rush begins
- 2 February 1848Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo
- 16 February 1848Birth of Octave Mirbeau
- 21 February 1848Publication of The Communist Manifesto
- from 22 February 1848 to 2 December 1848French Revolution of 1848
More in Society, economy & sport
- 12 May 1792Founding of New York Stock Exchange
- 4 June 1880Introduction of Bulgarian lev
- 23 June 1894Founding of International Olympic Committee
- from 6 April 1896 to 15 April 1896The first modern Olympic Games open in Athens
- 1903Rise of Bolsheviks
- 1907Rise of scouting
The era
This moment belongs to the Industrial era (1760 CE to 1914 CE), steam, factories and revolutions. You can also browse everything in the 19th century.