- California's population grew from about 14,000 in 1848 to 100,000 in 1850 and to 380,000 by 1860. While the majority of immigrants were from the United States, forty-niners also came from China, Australia, many Latin American Nations, and all parts of Europe to prospectors camps like Yreka, Spanish Bar, and Grass Valley.
Over the next decade, three mining regions developed in California. The first was in the mother-lode region of the Sierra Nevada from Sutter's Mill south to Maririposa.
The second was to the north in Nevada County. And the third area, in the northern coastal ranges west of Shasta, was never exploited fully because of its isolation and rough terrain.
The earliest placer miners sought the eroded Gold in the form of dust, flakes, and nuggests. Found in stream beds and in gravels laid down by ancient rivers, this supply of Gold was exhausted quickly, and miners were forced to turn to other techniques requiring greater cooperation, sophistication, and expenditure.
Eventually deep mines were dug to tap the original deposits if Gold. Rock was hauled to the surface, crushed, and treated to extract the precious dust. Such work, however, required huge amounts of capital, and the individual placer miners either went to work as a wage laborer, returned home, or wandered on to Gold strikes in Colorado, Nevada, Idaho, Montana, and Arizona between 1859 and 1890. Subsiquent Gold strikes in Australia (1851), the TRANSVALL (1886) in South Africa, the KLONDIKE(1896), and ALASKA (1898) produced sumilar sequences of events.
The Gold rush drew not only fortune hunters but also merchants, artisans, and farmers to the American West. This boom in turn encouraged construuction of wagon roads and railroads and attracted essential outside capital. Gold production provided wealth for an expanding American economy and stimulated technological advances later used elsewhere in the United States and the world.
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