A week before this historic treaty was signed, an event occurred that set in motion an unprecedentedly rapid development of the Western economy. James W. Marshall, a New Jersey carpenter, was working with his partner John A. Sutter at his sawmill located on a tributary of the South Fork of the American River, 56 kilometers (35 miles) north of Sacramento. On January 24, 1848, Marshall noticed flakes of yellow metal in the river water, which turned out to be gold.
By the end of the year, Marshall’s discovery marked the beginning of the greatest Gold Rush in U.S. history. The news quickly reached the then capital of California – Monterey, and then – and the east coast of the United States, causing a real “gold rush” everywhere.
Gold prospectors began arriving at the mining camp called “49th Mile”.
Monterey was depopulated overnight. Every man able to move his legs and many women left the town and rushed to the American River. Soldiers went AWOL, even deserted the forts, servants left their homes. Everyone was disrupted by the rumors about the success of prospectors, who in a few hours or days washed up whole piles of gold and made fortunes of thousands of dollars.
In 1849, about 80,000 people worked in the state’s gold mines. This phenomenon went down in U.S. history as the “forty-niners movement”.
Soon the whole world learned about this discovery, and thousands of desperate seekers of adventure, gold and happiness – French, Mexicans, Chileans, Chinese – rushed to California. This did not please the citizens of the United States, who believed that they alone had the right to mine gold here. And in 1850 the California authorities introduced a special tax for foreigners – 20 dollars a month. At that time the amount was huge, and the Americans got rid of almost all competitors.
Gold mining was concentrated in the area of the Mother Lode lands, in the west of the Sierra Nevada hills. The population of California began to grow rapidly and by 1849 had increased by more than 90,000 people and by 1852 had already reached 220,000.
Two years later, the Gold Rush ended as abruptly as it had begun. Gold mining took on an organized, industrial character. Most of the prospectors who had gotten rich from gold mining went into farming, trading, or left the state as large mining companies took their place.
Incidentally, the world-famous denim clothing company was born during these times.
In 1850, Levi Strauss, a twenty-year-old immigrant from Bavaria, arrived in California to offer gold prospectors strong fabric for tents. But soon it became clear that much more necessary than tents are strong pants. The fact is that at the time, pants were made of woolen cloth. I don’t have to explain how uncomfortable that was! And not just because it was hot, but because wool pants had to be patched endlessly.
Levi Strauss offered the cowboys and gold prospectors pants of the cut they had adopted (a basque in the back, which allowed them to do without a belt, patch pockets, double stitching, rivets), but sewn not from leather, but from a kind of blue sailcloth or tarpaulin (once this fabric was used for sails, and in Strauss’s time – for tents). The fabric was tear-resistant and washable, which was much more hygienic than leather clothing in the field.
The first pants with the Levi’s brand name went on sale at the very beginning of 1853. And soon the tiny cabin in one of the mining settlements, which served as an office for the junior partner of the firm, literally burst with orders: among the gold miners quickly spread the news of heavy-duty work pants “from Levi’s”.
One of the consequences of the gold rush in California was the rapid development of the Western economy. In 1848, only 400 settlers moved to California. Most of them were engaged in agriculture. And the gold rush attracted 25,000 settlers in one year alone. A decade later, industry already dominated California’s economy (even over gold mining), and per capita income in the state was the highest in the country.