page_title: California Gold Rush
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: California Gold Rush / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Sailing card for the clipper ship California, depicting scenes from the California gold rush. "A NEW AND MAGNIFICENT CLIPPER FOR SAN FRANCISCO. MERCHANT'S EXPRESS LINE OF CLIPPER SHIPS! Loading none but First-Class Vessels and Regularly Dispatching the great number. THE SPLENDID NEW OUT-AND-OUT CLIPPER SHIP CALIFORNIA, HENRY BARBER, Commander, AT PIER 13 EAST RIVER This elegant Clipper Ship was built expressly for this trade by Samuel Hall, Esq., of East Boston, the builder of the celebrated Clippers “SURPRISE,” “GAMECOCK,” “JOHN GILPIS,” and others, She will fully equal them in speed! Unusually prompt dispatch and very quick trip may be relied upon. Engagements should be completed at once. Agents in San Francisco. Msmmrs, DE WITT KITTLE &amp; CO. RANDOLPH M. COOLEY, 88 Wall Street, Tontine Building".
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: The Mexican–American War ended on February 3, 1848, although California was a de facto American possession before that.  The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided for, among other things, the formal transfer of Upper California to the United States.  The California Gold Rush began at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma. On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter on the American River. Marshall brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two privately tested the metal. After the tests showed that it was gold, Sutter expressed dismay: he wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold.
caption: Advertisement about sailing to California, circa 1850
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