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Gold Rushes The first gold rush started back in 1849 in California when the Swiss adventurer John Augustus Sutter sent out a party of men to harness a stream on the lower slopes of the Sierra Nevada with a view of harnessing it for a sawmill. James Marshall the forman found yellow specks in the bed of the mill race he was building, from that little incident word spread like wild fire and the price of shovels went up from one dollar to ten dollars. The first 60,000 men arrived on foot after travelling across America what a bonanza it became. Within months another 40,000 plus prospectors arrived fully armed with shovels and pans after booking their passage on various steam ships from all over the world. These men became known as the “forty-niners” and all they wanted to do was to strike it rich in the Sacramento valley. They swarmed in like locusts and reduced this once fertile valley into a waste land together with the man who was responsible for it all John Sutter lost everything he had built and died in poverty some years later. Over the next 10 years these prospectors worked long hours forever watching the gold dust and nuggets settling in the bottom of their pans. However there were some who were looking for the bigger prize “The Mother Lode” where this alluvial gold had originally come from. Eventually it was two Irishmen Pat McLaughlin and Peter O’Riley who did find it way up in the Sierras. It was spotted in an outcrop of quartz and even though this reef was only a small one in real terms, over the next ten years it produced £135 million worth of gold and £170 million silver. |