California Gold Rush Research Paper

Words: 566
Pages: 3

In 1849, many people from all over the world began making their way to California. Those people gained the nickname of the 49ers, this was because they began moving in 1849. There were many people traveling there. There was an estimate made that around 100,000 people went to California during the gold rush. Some of these people have come from very far away places all around the world. Some of those places people were traveling from were the United States, Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii, and China. All were places people were traveling from. The reason so many of these people were making their way to California was because of this, maybe life changing event that was going on, the gold rush. The gold rush first started from the discovery …show more content…
People started traveling to California with the hope of getting rich and getting a piece of the gold. During the time of the gold rush, an estimated amount of around 2 billion dollars worth of gold had been found in the different parts of California, this is worth up to around 20 billion today. This newfound money helped grow the economy and funded many dreams like the cross-country railroad. This railroad helped many people travel the world by making moving over long distances much simpler. Another thing that happened because of this substantial number of people who kept on coming, new homes needed to be created to hold all these people. And with that, many cities were created for all these new people. These cities were called boom towns, these cities were being created and funded by many people and their money. One person who was very involved during this time was Samuel Brannan. He made lots of money during this time by opening stores and selling many things to miners, he would sell about 5,000 dollars of goods a day, this is equivalent to around $120,000 in 2005 dollars. And with all of his success in his business, he was considered the richest man in California during the 1850s and