page_title: California Gold Rush
section_title: Path of the gold
hierarchical_section_title: California Gold Rush / Profits / Path of the gold
caption_attribution_description: English: Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, California. Early daguerrotype. Signs in image include: California Restaurant, Book and Job Printing, Louisiana, Sociedad, Drugs &amp; Medicines Wholesale &amp; Retail, Henry Johnson &amp; Co, Alta California, Bella Union, A. Holmes. Français&#160;: Place de Portsmouth, San Francisco, Californie. Daguerrotype ancien. Les panneaux dans l'image incluent: California Restaurant, Book and Job Printing (imprimeur de livres et de cartes), Louisiana, Sociedad, Drugs &amp; Medicines Wholesale &amp; Retail (Médicaments, gros, détail) , Henry Johnson &amp; Co, Alta California, Bella &amp; Union, A. Holmes.
context_page_description: The California Gold Rush was a gold rush that began on January 24, 1848, when gold was found by James W. Marshall at Sutter's Mill in Coloma, California. The news of gold brought approximately 300,000 people to California from the rest of the United States and abroad. The sudden influx of gold into the money supply reinvigorated the American economy, and the sudden population increase allowed California to go rapidly to statehood, in the Compromise of 1850. The Gold Rush had severe effects on Native Californians and accelerated the Native American population's decline from disease, starvation and the California Genocide. By the time it ended, California had gone from a thinly populated ex-Mexican territory, to having one of its first two U.S. Senators, John C. Frémont, selected to be the first presidential nominee for the new Republican Party, in 1856.
  The effects of the Gold Rush were substantial. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, called "forty-niners". Outside of California, the first to arrive were from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands, and Latin America in late 1848.
context_section_description: Once extracted, the gold itself took many paths. First, much of the gold was used locally to purchase food, supplies and lodging for the miners. It also went towards entertainment, which consisted of anything from a traveling theater to alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes. These transactions often took place using the recently recovered gold, carefully weighed out.  These merchants and vendors in turn used the gold to purchase supplies from ship captains or packers bringing goods to California.
  The gold then left California aboard ships or mules to go to the makers of the goods from around the world. A second path was the Argonauts themselves who, having personally acquired a sufficient amount, sent the gold home, or returned home taking with them their hard-earned "diggings". For example, one estimate is that some US$80 million worth of California gold (equivalent to US$2.2 billion today) was sent to France by French prospectors and merchants.
  A majority of the gold went back to New York City brokerage houses.
  As the Gold Rush progressed, local banks and gold dealers issued "banknotes" or "drafts"—locally accepted paper currency—in exchange for gold, and private mints created private gold coins. With the building of the San Francisco Mint in 1854, gold bullion was turned into official United States gold coins for circulation. The gold was also later sent by California banks to U.S. national banks in exchange for national paper currency to be used in the booming California economy.
caption: Portsmouth Square, San Francisco, during the Gold Rush, 1851
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