California Gold Rush
Ana
2/16/11
One cold morning on Jan. 24, 1848 James Marshall was digging and he found a gold nugget. The miners stayed with him because they thought he was a lucky man. So they followed him everywhere. “ I reached my hand down and picked it up; it made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold. The piece was about half the size and shape of a pea. Then I saw another.” (James Marshall)
a year later In 1849 a lot of people knew about the gold because Sam Brannah told people that James Marshall found gold in California, so the people were starting their voyage.A lot of people had died on their way, a lot of people got very sick, and some people just turned around. People came from Europe, some from East Coast, and some people came from Asia by boat and by walking.
A lot of people found gold around Sutter’s Mill. In sawmill a man found gold but was not very happy. They used Placer mining to look for gold. They used pans and other things to sort the gold from the rocks. “The machinery is very simple, being an ordinary trough made of plank... with a sieve at one end to catch the larger gravel, and three ore four small bars across the bottom, to keep the gold from going out with the dirt and water at the lower end.”
James Marshall kicked off the California Gold Rush when he spotted some pea-sized bits of gold in a mill raceway. This map shows (in order) were James Marshall found gold.
Most of the Forty-Niners stopped in San Francisco to take a break and the people that were already there had a place they could rest because they said they knew where the gold was.
The weeks when Marshall found gold he got $112.81! When Marshall found gold he was happy that he found it but other people wished he had not found the gold. Some people say that Marshall was not that happy when Marshall found the gold, and some people say that he was happy when he found the gold. When people found gold they started to fight other people for the gold and a lot got badly hurt ,some people backed off and some people died.
(This is a piece of gold from California.)