The term gold rush refers to earlier times in history, when a large vein of gold was discovered and people rushed to the area expecting to get rich quickly. One of the more famous historical gold rushes occurred in 1848 in California.

The Discovery Of Gold

John Sutter was an early settler in California who despite his great debt was considered one of the wealthiest men in the area. He sent off his men to build a sawmill and when the mill was almost completed, James Marshall, one of the workers, spotted a large piece of gold in the water. For reasons of their own, both Sutter and Marshall wanted to keep the gold a secret because they knew it would bring outsiders to the area.

Stories spread anyway and Sam Brannan figured out if people rushed in to get the gold that, he could make a profit from the influx of people. One day, Brennan rushed through the San Francisco area yelling about the gold that had been found after he had bought up all the tools in the area that are useful in prospecting for gold. Brennan made an estimated thirty-six thousand dollars because of his promotional run.

After President James Polk made a comment about the amount of gold in the area, people began to abandon their lives to rush out to California. By 1949, gold fever and the gold rush had struck and that immense rush out to California caused the participants to be called “forty-niners”.

Forty-Niners Head West

Easterners could travel out west by taking a six months long journey by ship around South America or by walking out to California. The sea route was eventually shortened by a taking a trip through Panama although the land travels through the rainforest was arduous.

Many of the travelers were stranded in Panama for long periods waiting for a ship to California. People from the mid-States walked west to California. Their route was also treacherous especially when the travellers ran out of water.

The Place Gets Crowded With Panners

With all the gold panners who kept coming in, there came to be a lack of goods and supplies for everyone in the gold rush area. Even though many people had lots of money, just paying for food, water and other things necessary to life became very expensive. Rough camps were a common site in the area. Many women came out to California because women were scarce in the area and they could earn good money for their needed domestic skills. There were enough success stories to keep people interested in panning for gold in California.

The Gold Runs Out

By mid-1949, the gold ran out yet still travellers came to the area expecting to make their fortune. Frustration set in and many of the forty-niners were getting desperate. There were fewer success stories yet enough so some people just would not give up on their dreams of striking it rich. Some of the forty-niners never made it back home despite their promises of returning home rich someday.

The gold rush of California is a striking example of what people are willing to do in order to strike it rich. The broken dreams and getting rich experiences are both extreme experiences that resulted from the gold rushes.

In the past, students wanting to learn about the gold rush had to spend hours at the library pouring over books and hoping to develop an understanding of what it must have been like. Today, children can experience this time in history in ways that have never before been available to them. By simply doing an online search for gold rush museums, any student can quickly find themselves taken virtual tours of history and learning about it in an interactive way and not trying to imagine it from books.

Alaska

One such online resource is http://www.library.state.ak.us/goldrush/. Here, students of all ages or anyone who is interested can peruse maps, read stories, examine a miner?s life and even meander through what they call the Alaska Gold Lode. This is a section of the website devoted to photos and other images from the Alaskan gold rush. As an added bonus, this library offers information for teachers to help them teach this historical event in a way that all students can understand.

California

The website http://www.museumca.org/goldrush/ is another resource on any student?s path to gold rush understanding. In 1848, gold was discovered at Sutter?s Mill, which kicked off the great California gold rush and this, along with a veritable fountain of other vital information is just a few mouse-clicks away. Like the Alaskan state library webpage, this site offers curriculum materials, images, stories and even information on the rush for silver and the effects of this push on Native Americans in the area.

The Klondike

Historical gold rush information can also be found on the Internet at http://www.lib.washington.edu/specialcoll/exhibits/klondike/. This site specializes in information from the Klondike gold rush that includes stories, photos, art, and many other ways that a student can begin to understand the nuances of being a miner in this area at that time. When the promise of gold drew men to the area, they often arrived without prior understanding of the bitter cold. This meant they were often horribly underequipped, but suffering gold fever so badly they wouldn?t leave.

Where else can a student learn of these events so completely as when they travel through the Internet to some of the most important gold rush locations? The Klondike, California and Alaskan gold rushes were some of the most important events in mining history. There is no longer any good reason why any student should have to learn these events in the back room of some stuffy library when they are easily accessible online with a variety of options for students to use in order to learn as much as they can about the gold rush.