Holub - What Was the Gold Rush?

What Was
the Gold Rush?

by Joan Holub

illustrated by Tim Tomkinson

Grosset & Dunlap

An Imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

For Elizabeth, Shelton, and Charlotte EnsleyJH

For Parker and ChaseTT

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Text copyright 2013 by Joan Holub. Illustrations copyright 2013 by Tim Tomkinson. All rights reserved. Published by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-1-101-61029-9

What Was the Gold Rush?

A gold rush happens when lots of people race off to where gold has just been discovered. They all expect to find gold and get rich. The first gold rush in the United States was in North Carolina in 1799. It began when a twelve-year-old boy found a seventeen-pound gold nugget in a creek. His family didnt know the nugget was gold, so they used it as a doorstop. Then, in 1802, they sold it for $3.50. They didnt know it was worth far moreover $350,000 in todays dollars! For fifty years, North Carolina produced more gold than any other state.

There was another gold rush in the Appalachian Mountains of Georgia thirty years later. The estimated amount of gold it produced every month in 1830 would be worth $14 million today.

But the most famous one is the gold rush of 1849. It happened when gold was discovered in Californiagold worth billions of dollars today. The biggest nugget found weighed 195 poundsas much as a grown man weighs!

In 1849, the majority of people in the United States lived east of the Mississippi River. The states with the most people were New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Virginia. After gold was discovered, people headed west hoping to get rich. The rumor was that gold was easy to find in California, but it might not last forever.

Men left their jobs and families in a hurry. These gold-hunters were called prospectors. They had other nicknames, such as forty-niners. They were also called argonauts, after a group of treasure-seekers in a Greek myth.

It was a long trip. Most went overland by covered wagon or took ships from the East Coast that eventually wound up in California. Some walked, with only a wheelbarrow or bag to carry their stuff.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans and foreigners caught gold fever. People went half crazy over the idea of making a fortune. Some did get rich. Some got very, very rich. But most didnt.

Still, it was an exciting time. And it all started by accident!

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CHAPTER 1

Striking Gold

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The big day was January 24, 1848. The place was the American River in Coloma, California. This was in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains.

A carpenter named James Marshall was building a sawmill there for John Sutter. The two men were in business together. Sutter already had a fort, a cattle ranch, a farm, and a home nearby. When the sawmill was finished, it would cut trees into lumber. The lumber would be sold. Marshall and Sutter would each get an equal share of the profits from the lumber business.

The crew building the sawmill had dug a shallow canal. It branched off from the American River. Water from the river could flow into the canal. Electricity wouldnt be available until the late 1800s. The force of the running water would turn the mills big wheel to operate the saw.

John Sutters fort

Foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Californiawhere much of the gold was found.

James Marshall was checking the canal when he spotted something shiny. Looking closer, he saw small golden rocks and flakes. They were in the water behind the mills wheel.

Quickly, he scooped some up in his hat. He went to show the men in his crew. Is it gold? they all wondered. Maybe it was only fools gold. That was the nickname for a mineral called pyrite. It looked like gold and often fooled miners. But pyrite was worthless.

Marshall knew that pyrite was brittle. Gold, however, was fairly soft and difficult to break. Taking a hammer, he pounded a few of the shiny pea-size nuggets. They didnt break. He boiled them in a pot of water with lye soap. He soaked the nuggets in vinegar. They didnt crumble or melt. It looked like hed found gold!

Marshall must have been an honest man. He didnt try to hunt for more gold or keep it for himself. Instead, he rushed to Sutter with the nuggets.

Sutter was excited, too. But he still wasnt sure the nuggets were gold. So the two men checked an encyclopedia. It said that a gold nugget is about eight times heavier than a rock of the same size. They weighed a nugget against other kinds of rocks. It was much heavier. They dripped a liquid called nitric acid on it. Metals such as silver, copper, or pyrite would have melted. However, their nugget didnt.