Transcript
Gold Rush from The History Channel (A&E Television Networks, 2006) 44:30.
transcript
10 DAYS THAT UNEXPECTEDLY CHANGED AMERICAJ. S. Holliday Gold had been discovered many times. Had been discovered by the Egyptians, and the Romans, and the Greeks, and the Hittites, and the Babylonians, and never in the past had there been a gold rush. Because when the gold was discovered in the past it was owned by the Emperor, the Czar, the Pharaoh, the King who had the means to say, "stay out, this is mine. You can't have it." But you could in California because it was free and there was no one here. You could come to California, dig it up, put it in your pockets, pay no taxes, it's yours, go home with it. Absolutely astonishing, that's the news.
Zachary Drake On January 24th, 1848, a carpenter named James Marshall discovered gold in a California river. So began the gold rush that would propel the creation of the State of California overnight. Fuel vast industrial growth and ultimately help make America a world economic power.
Grey Brechin It was like a big lottery. It is the idea of limitless opportunity of limitlessness itself. Hard to imagine the United States without that idea that ah, there's nothing to stop us.
J. S. Holliday Next to the civil war no event in the 19th century had a greater impact. More reverberating influence than the California gold rush.
JANUARY 24, 1848 GOLD RUSH Producer Michael Ehrenzweig Writer Joseph Dorman
Zachary Drake Within a decade over a quarter million people descended on California making it one of the largest migrations of its kind.
Directed by Rob Epstein & Jeffrey Friedman JoAnn Levy Author, They Saw the Elephant
JoAnn Levy It was not a religious persecution. It was not a political persecution. It was an influx of people immigrating from all over the world on behalf of greed.
Zachary Drake In December 1848, President James Polk made the announcement that gold had been discovered in America's California Territory. Newly won at the Mexican-American war.
The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such extraordinary character as would scarcely can man belief.,
Zachary Drake Polk's speech electrified the nation. The idea of California gold and that a person could strike fabulous wealth captivated people's imaginations. Gold seekers had a choice, they could make their way to the far off land by ship which took up to five months or they could take the overland route across the Missouri frontier.
J. S. Holliday Author, The World Rushed In
J. S. Holliday California in 1848 had a total population non-Indian population of maybe 12,000. There was not one bridge, not one school, not a hospital, not a library. It was the Siberia of the Spanish Empire, you couldn't drag people up here.
Grey Brechin Author, Imperial San Francisco
Grey Brechin Now remember that California at that time was one of the most remote parts of the world. Many people had no idea where it was, it just been acquired by the United States less than a year before. And suddenly there were thousands, tens of thousands of people who wanted to leave for that place to see if they could get in on the ground floor.
Zachary Drake In Youngstown, New York, 27-year-old William Swain was typical of the thousands of ordinary Americans animated by the discovery of gold, who would come to be known us "forty-niners". Newly married with a daughter. He placed his family in the care of his brother George and set off for California with the hope of using the gold he found to invest in his farm back home.
J. S. Holliday The newspapers across America were field with news of tens of thousands of people leaving. And William was reading about the gold rush and he thinks I should go. I can do better there in California than I can here. So George you stay, you take care of my wife and mother, and oversee the farm and I'll be back. He has this moral compulsion to go, the right thing to do.
Zachary Drake It took months to get from New York to the edge of the American frontier then Independence, Missouri. For many coming from the east, this is where their real journey would begin. It was an amazing sight. Thousands of people camped out for miles around these towns preparing themselves and anxiously waiting to leave.
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Zachary Drake Sarah Royce and her husband Josiah were among the thousands who had already come west to homestead on the frontier in search of greater opportunity. The Royce's like so many others were tempted by the news of gold to continue their journey westward. Sarah was 30 years old when she set out on the trail from her home in Iowa with her husband and young son.
SARAH ROYCE The morning of that 30th of April was not very bright, but neither was it very gloomy. Rain might come within the hour. I would not consent to delay our departure for fear of the weather. Had I not made up my mind to encounter many storms? If we are going let us go, and meet what we are to meet, bravely.
JoAnn Levy Sarah Royce was a woman of cultivation and refinement, religiously inclined, so she was a lady. They started late and they traveled slower because Sarah want it to observe the Sabbath so they didn't travel on Sundays. This put them really at the tail end of the immigration. When they left Salt Lake they left alone, one wagon heading out into the desert.
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Ben Kerns Wagonmaster and Folk Historian
Ben Kerns They have reached often 15 to 20 miles a day. Then that's about what we done, we figured tried to set my camp sites up till about 15, 18 miles a day. The Oregon trail was the one that went from Independence, Missouri to Independence, Oregon. The trail was just like it was a hundred years ago. By go down the trail and think about the people that went over that trail and ah, and try to figure out, you know, why they went or what they did.
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JoAnn Levy It's hard to imagine the numbers 1849 25,000 people and they're all leaving at pretty much the same time. They can't go across that river and get started on that journey until the grass is up. So its late April, early May they're all going at once. They may have lack for luck but they never lacked for company.
J. S. Holliday The journey across the western wilderness was a journey that took 5, 6 months walking with the mules or oxen. And you couldn't get lost, the trail was half a mile wide. As far west as you could look there were wagons as far east as you could look there were wagons. When they came to a river crossing there would be like a traffic jam. Twenty, 50, 60, 70 wagons all piled up tryin' to get across, sometimes you had to wait two or three days.
Zachary Drake In May, William Swain set out for unknown territory along the Santa Fe road crowded with emigrants in their wagons. A few days later he wrote to his wife.
WILLIAM Dear Sabrina, my prospect brightens as I near the land of gold and promise. And if good luck attends me, I am confident that the enterprise will be one of advantage to us all. I enjoy myself far better than I expected I could when absent from my family. Although my strongest feelings are entwined around the family circle. As ever, your affectionate husband, William.
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Zachary Drake The trail and unending line of emigrants in their wagons grew thick with cast off debris including old food, and oxen, and mules that had perished in the journey. The few sources of water were often unclean and cholera broke out. By the time the gold seekers had reached Fort Laramie, not yet half way to California 15,000 of the 25,000 migrants would die from cholera which struck suddenly and killed swiftly.
JoAnn Levy There were accidents with the wagons, there were drownings in the rivers, there were gun shot wounds, people who were not accustomed to arming themselves that they, they had to because they thought they're gonna defend their families against Indians. The Indians were already living there for long time and it must have been just unbelievable to them to see this hordes of people suddenly coming through. And they were always very eager to help because they wanted them to keep going.
Ben Kerns They didn't know what they would gettin' into where there was gonna have to cross a creek or river or whatever, you know, and the weather, you know, early spring they had a lot ah, they dealt with a lot of weather. There were so many people that came through, and you know, all their livestock kinda ready ate the grass. So they didn't really have much, you know, feed for their livestock.
JoAnn Levy In 1849, cholera really stopped the emigration west, and there was probably six percent mortality. Very dangerous also because of yellow fever and malaria, and so forth. There was a place half way that was called, "Dead American Burying Ground". It was all very deadly.
Zachary Drake The final obstacle facing the migrants was the Sierra Nevadas. The great barrier behind which California lay. With the arrival of October came the danger of getting trapped in the snow, now descending upon its mountains.
J. S. Holliday By the time they come to the Sierra Nevadas' they were exhausted and they have suffered three months of toil and torment. And now they have to climb across the Sierra Nevada and bring themselves back down in the ah, Sacramento Valley.
Zachary Drake Sarah Royce and her family, still traveling alone made a wrong turn at a crucial pass taking them deep into the desert.
JoAnn Levy That moment never ever left Sarah's memory. She wrote, "so there was nothing to be done but turn back. Turn back, what a chill the word sent through one. Turn back on a journey like that in which every mile had been gained by most earnest labor. It seemed like the certainty of every step was all that made the next step possible. And now, for miles we were to go back. In all that long journey no step ever same so heavy, so hard to take is that with which I turn my back to the sun the afternoon of October 4, 1849".
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Zachary Drake In late October, after harrowing months on the trail the Royce's finally made it to the top of the Sierra Nevadas' and arrived at California. William Swain arrived the few weeks later. Both parties would eventually make it through, barely escaping the threat of winter. It was six months since Sarah Royce had left Iowa. And eight months since William Swain had left his home in New York. They still had no idea if they would ever see a speck of gold.
Jim Miller Early Miner Historian
Jim Miller I would have been a Forty-Eighter given the choice, given the choice. I actually am what they call, State Park concessionaire. I have a contract with the State of California to run a historical business. So this is ah, a great outlet for my interest in history. All the gold in the world doesn't amount to very much so, it just seem so special and I think it so ah, different in everything else. It's beautiful and it's rare. And ah, it has a romance so it captured people from day one.
Zachary Drake Discovery of gold in California free for the taking unleashed a torrent of gold seekers who flooded the territory. The first miners arrived from Oregon, Mexico, and South America where news of gold had traveled fastest. And then in a huge wave from the east 90,000 people by ship and overland, within five years a quarter of a million souls would arrive. The mining camps were temporary affairs. Sarah Royce settled with her family in a camp called "Weaverville" and wrote about the influx of gold seeking miners.
SARAH ROYCE We reach to Pleasant Valley gold mine where I found two or three tents and a few men with their gold washing pans. They had been at work there for awhile but said that little diggings were pretty much work out. And their going over to Weaver Creek where very fine prospects had lately been struck. And there was quite a town growing up.
Zachary Drake By the time William Swain arrived in late 1849, the easy gold found in river beds was all but gone. Still he remained optimistic.
WILLIAM SWAIN The job cost a great deal and much hard work. Many among(ph) had acquired a large fortune with half the exertion we have made. We are not discouraged, we are confident of success.
Grey Brechin Author, Farewell, Promised Land
Grey Brechin Many people had been led to believe that the gold were just lying on the ground waiting for, to be picked up. And of course that wasn't true, what they found was that there was a lot of it but very soon there were a lot of people to go after this wealth too. And the getting of it was an extraordinarily difficult.
J. S. Holliday Historian, California Historical Society
J. S. Holliday If you've ever been in that country you go up under the Mokelumne River under that Feather River, Yuba River. You look at miles and miles of nothing but rocks. Big rocks, small rocks, gravel and you have to with a shovel, with your hands dig up all of that and get down below to where the gravity has taken the gold. You gotta clear all of that in order to get at the gold.
Jim Miller They used to say that it was something between a ditch digger and a well digger, pretty much that's what you were doing. You're pretty much in the gravel digging everyday and then the hard process of separating the gold from the gravels. It was probably some of the most difficult work they ever did in their lives.
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Zachary Drake In time, it took more work and ingenuity to find the gold that lay more deeply embedded.
Gil Morris Miner and Tour Guide
Gil Morris You can be wandering around out here in these canyons and ah, you'll come across a mine. Our destination is right down there that's where were goin'. The old hidden treasure. A lot of history, a lot of history.
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Gil Morris In 1860's a hard rock miner walk in to a mine. He picked up a hammer and a piece of steel. It took him somewhere's around 14 months to get this far but what they were looking for right over your head. There's an old saying, "don't stare the gold nugget too long it'll mesmerize you". Some men can't handle it. They'll sell everything in the world to go find two bits if it was a gold. Once you see that happen, you can recognize the symptoms. I had a touch of it, oh yes, I had a touch of it, but it didn't take me long. Get out of that 'coz you can go broken, in a hurry boy really, really quick. There's easier ways to make a living.
Grey Brechin The very name of gold has uhm, a capacity to stun the mind into uncritical rapacity. And so it was drawing people in because of the just the very word uhm, and the prospect of becoming enormously wealthy.
Jim Miller Considering the gold was around 16 dollars to the ounce ah, if they were in finding at least an ounce a day then they weren't doing very well. But some guys were finding hundreds of dollars a day uhm, you know, that's a thing as that ah, most of the claim seem so exaggerated by our stunners today but truthfully there were people who were finding gold by the pounds per day. And then just a little ways away somebody would be barely scraping out a living.
J. S. Holliday This isn't farming. This isn't putting down roots figuratively or literally. This isn't building the future, this is taking, plundering, and moving on to build a better life some place else.
Zachary Drake California was new American territory only recently won in the Mexican-American war. But it had long figured in America's dream to dominate the continent and not a few people suspected that the territory would yield mineral richest. Five years before James Marshall's momentous discovery, gold had been successfully mined in Southern California.
Grey Brechin Mining engineers have the same ah, commerce follows the flag, but the flag follows the peak which means that nations will actually do whatever is necessary to acquire precious metals and resources needed for continued growth. And so I think that the Mexican-American war in fact is a, is a real classic demonstration of that because I think that was partly fought for the gold in California.
Zachary Drake On September 9th, 1850, some two years after its acquisition California became the 31st American state. Its rapid march to statehood was unprecedented and it was all due to the gold rush. But official statehood could not paper over California's more complex cultural reality. Succeeding generations of Mexican families known as, "Californios" had ruled the land for years leaving on it the deep imprint of their own culture and society.
Holly Alonso Director, Peralta Hacienda Historical Park
Holly Alonso It was a very close in it, very unified culturally conservative society, very, very tradition bound, very secure in that sense culturally. Mariano Vallejo was the most famous of the Californios. He was very exceptional, a man of amazing ability, and he wrote a history of California of many volumes. He had 66,000 acres, he was very, very wealthy, very, very powerful. He greeted the Americans with open arms when they first came because it was promised that Mexican land claims would be respected. Uhm, and so he had no, he, he was very optimistic.
Zachary Drake For Vallejo, a California in American hands held out the promise of an even grander future.
MARIANO VALLEJO When we join our futures to her, we shall not become subjects but fellow citizens possessing all the rights of the people of the United States. We shall have a stable government and just laws. California will grow strong and flourish. And her people would be prosperous, happy, and free. Look not therefore with jealousy upon the hearty pioneers, who'll scale our mountains and cultivate our unoccupied plains. But rather welcome them as brothers who come to share with us a common destiny.
Holly Alonso The Americans were arriving with the idea that they had rights to homestead. The Californios were totally shocked because all kinds of people were just coming and building houses on their land. They were just sweating with greed let's say, and not, and would stop at nothing. Very quickly after the gold rush, after few years the Californios realized that their language, and their land, and their culture that the days were numbered.
J. S. Holliday Author, The World Rushed In
J. S. Holliday There was a wonderful sense of escape in California. Mining camps numbered many hundreds. And it reflects their sense of escape in their freedom to be found in the names of the mining camps. They call them Princess, You Bet, Red Dog, Blue Tent. One of my favorite names for ah, mining camp was a town called "Gaugia(ph)". Now you would name a town in Massachusetts or Illinois, "Gaugia(ph)"high. The best example of the sense of freedom, the sense of saying hi mom, I'm free from you guys back home. I can do what I want, we name our town as "Gaugia(ph)". There was one called, "Ladies Crevice." There was a sense of saying, "we're beyond the rules that you live by". The know of life generally comes from mothers and wives, maybe through preachers on Sunday. That's absent in California in 1849. California begins free from the great word of "know".
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Zachary Drake Among the few women in the overwhelmingly male dominated camps Sarah Royce described the miners she saw around her.
SARAH ROYCE Roughly reared frontier men. Most as ignorant of civilized life as savages. Reckless bravados carrying their characters in their faces and demeanor.
Zachary Drake California gold was a magnet, drawing people from all over the world from 30 states and as faraway as China.
Dr. Herbert Yee Gold Rush Immigrant Descendant
Herbert Yee In 1851, my great grandfather Dr. Yee Fam Chong came up to Fiddletown and build this store out of rammed earth. This is common in South China. Perhaps he wanted to look for gold in the beginning but he was already a Chinese doctor at a young age of 25, he decided that here it, is better probably, but do more, make more money being a doctor then he go out looking for gold. We were curiosity and we were well alike, we were small people and we wore strange looking clothes. But as time go by, they decided that well, we were good worker. This is where we started up in America.
Marshall Long Stage Coach Driver
Marshall Long This ride is as near to what it would have been like during the California gold rush as we can make it possible. Stage travel was quite expensive and it was used by people who did have money. The once who really got rich during the Gold Rush were the merchants, the folks who operate the stage lines, the saloons, the mercantiles, the people who supply the miners are the once who really got rich and a lot of miners came here were not successful, the once that stayed and started their own business are the ones who usually made the money.
J.S. Holliday People needed everything, they needed boots and tents and shovels pick axes and drills and champagne and canned oysters and tents and mirrors and they needed luxuries and they needed necessities. There is so many ways in making money, you could open a bar a, a, saloon. You could open a boarding house, a laundry, ah, a lumber mill, a whore house. You could enter into businesses that you wouldn't dare undertake back home where mother would be nearby.
Zachary Drake When Sarah Royce's husband finally gave up in his search for gold, he opened a store in Weaverville and Sarah helped him run it.
SARAH ROYCE Payments were made almost exclusively in gold dust. Coin was very rare in the mines at that time, so we had our little gold scales and weights and I soon became quite expert in handling them.
Grey Brechin Author, Imperial San Francisco
Grey Brechin I haven't been able to find anybody who became lastingly rich uhm, on gold in the Gold Rush. And the people who got rich were the people who "mined the miners" and where you get dynastically rich is by owning the land and using the gold as bait to draw people in to increase the value of the land.
Zachary Drake The Gold Rush created a booming real estate market, towns sprung up overnight.
JoAnne Levy Author, Unsettling the West
JoAnne Levy In 1849, everybody describe San Francisco as a city of tents. By the end of 1853, more than 600 brick and stone buildings, 12 daily newspapers, 9 insurance companies, 27 government foreign counsels. Four years, it was a cosmopolitan city of the world in four years.
San Francisco had in real estate term, location, location, location. It's, at the entrance to the greatest harbor on the Pacific Coast. It's at the mouth of the greatest river in California, the Sacramento River and it's at the entrance to the greatest gold region in the history of the world, San Francisco, what a place to be. And yet booms from the very outset. San Francisco becomes the point into which the supplies are shipped by a thousands of ships from all over the world to unload everything that California needs.
J.S. Holliday It was a place that attracted people from all over the world, it was a port city. It was violent, it was lawless, it was extremely cosmopolitan right from the beginning and a place where pretty much anything goes for a prize.
Zachary Drake In Gold Rush San Francisco, the line between the moral and the immoral, the legal and the illegal had yet to be sharply drawn.
JoAnne Levy All those men out there alone, what an opportunity. Prostitution was not against the law so it was just an economic move on the part of women it was a smart thing to do. These were very elegant establishments, we don't see what would be called disreputable society. It looked like society, the girls would entertain, they would play the piano and sing. And money was not exchanged, instead the gentlemen would buy Champagne and pay a great deal for the bottle of champagne.
Zachary Drake Gangs controlled the city streets and even had the city sheriff on their pay roll. One member of San Francisco's board of supervisors an ex-convict named James Casey killed a journalist who had written articles exposing him. The young city's lawless quality was evident in its very social fabric as Sarah Royce discovered.
SARAH ROYCE In the immense crowds flocking hither from all parts of the world, there are many of the worst classes. This were constantly lying in the way as tempters of the weak. It was very common to hear people started on this downward moral grade, deprecate the very acts they were committing and saying, "But here in California we have to do such acts."
J.S. Holliday I think what it is meant to the psyche, the spirit of California to have the 49ers as founding fathers ah, as compared to the pilgrims. Put a difference, I think what is meant to California's image to have San Francisco robust, sinful San Francisco as the mother city rather than Boston or Philadelphia. So California begins with the mascularity, with a freedom, all these factors mixed together create a culture in a society unlike any we've ever known before.
Zachary Drake The vast numbers of men descending on California had soon depleted its rivers of their gold deposits. The search now turn to the gold hidden in the landscape.
J.S. Holliday Historian, California Historical Society
J.S. Holliday As there is gold in the bottom of a modern river so there would be gold in the bottom of a geologic river, a river that flowed millions of years before. How can we get at that ancient river bed. It's buried under 10 or 15 feet of gravel and rock and sand, how do we get at it.
Grey Brechin Author, Farewell, Promised Land
Grey Brechin Hydraulic mining was using hydraulic pressure by damming the rivers higher up, bringing the water down under pressure through iron pipes and then releasing it with great nozzles against gold bearing banks. And this would wash all of it away.
J.S. Holliday Great undertaking, great risk taking, great daring, great engineering feats. The technology involved, the sense of overcoming nature, a plundering nature. Millions upon, millions upon, millions of tons of gravel and sand and rock are washed by hydraulic mining into river beds, into creeks were they accumulate. In order to get at the gold, we have made a destruction of the countryside. There's no one to say no, no one says you can't do this, it's done.
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Zachary Drake The 49ers devastation of the land was matched by the destruction of California's native American tribes in the rush for gold. Many were uprooted and decimated by Whites anxious to steal their gold rich lands. The Yosemite led by Chief Tanaya decided to resist, they fought a series of bloody skirmishes that became known as the Mariposa War. In the end they were out matched, the Yosemite were the last the tribe to surrender.
Don Ryberg Chairman, Tsi-Akim Maidu Tribal Council
Don Ryberg My family was running for their lives like the rest of the Indians. It was open season, they were hunted down like rabbits, squirrels, everybody was, went out and shooting Indians. That was what people were doing and, and some of them made an enterprise out of it, they were getting paid for ah, scalps in heads. The Federal Government made ah, treaties with our people and never ratified the treaties because the land was too valuable for Indians. So that left the people inaundated by miners, its outland, their fruit source was gone. The rivers were ruined, no fish, they killed all the game. So they were starving, they ah, turned into beggars.
Grey Brechin They were efforts on the part of the miners to eliminate the Indians because the Indians were in the way so to speak. We brought an anti-Indian, get rid of the Indian, shoot the Indian, the dead Indian is the only good Indian attitude with us from the east to California.
Zachary Drake California's governor, Peter Burnett expressed his attitude bluntly.
Peter Burnett The war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Inidan race becomes extinct.
Zachary Drake For individual miners, dreams were turning to dust. Mining was increasingly controlled by the newly rich financially elit of San Francisco.
Grey Brechin What you had to do to get the gold as it begun to run out is to mechanize and that required men to pool capital as the kind of technology became more and more expensive. Eventually that would lead to the formation of the stock market in 1862. But at that time it was moving from labor intensive to capital and technology intensive simply because the easily available gold was running out.
J. S. Holliday It's no longer possible for the individual to strike it rich although some still do. Because we begin to shift from individual enterprise to a corporate structure where you become a laborer ah, as back east in the mill. The most commonly asked question is "how many people struck it rich?" There's no possible way of knowing, there were hundreds of thousands of people here, they didn't register to vote, they didn't claim citizenship, they just came and they left.
Zachary Drake After two years of frustrating hard work William Swain, like most other miners gave up his search for gold. Swain decided to go back east to his family and farm. Wiser, if no richer bringing with him just $500 and gold far from the riches he had hoped for.
William Swain, age 71
WILLIAM SWAIN I have seen many hardships, dangers and provisions and made nothing by it. But I arrived home with my health and I shall be ever glad that I have taken this trip, absence from my friends has given me a true valuation of them and also it has thought me the blessings and comforts of home.
Grey Brechin What the gold rush did was to draw hundreds of thousands of people into California what had been formally a kind of at least as far as the United States went a sort of vacuum on the mountain. It populated it before everything between in the middle of the country had been populated. So you had two centers of population on the coasts, I mean the United States starting to move into the mid-west but then California is a center of population. A railroad was needed to bind the country together.
Zachary Drake On June 28th, 1862, Congress authorized the building of the Trans Continental Railroad with consequences few could foresee.
J.S. Holliday Author, The World Rushed In
J.S. Holliday Building a railroad across this Sierra Nevada was a monumental undertaking, tunnels miles long cut through a granite gorges to be spanned. An enterprising unlike anything we've ever known before.
Zachary Drake Four men made wealthy by the gold rush. Banker Charles Crocker and merchants Mark Hopkins, Leland Standford and Collis Huntington joined forces to create the Central Pacific Railroad. The men became known as the "Big Four."
Grey Brechin Author, Imperial San Francisco
Grey Brechin Collis Huntington's genius was to realize that they could live rich what capital they have through strategic bribery in Washington, D.C. where he went to lobby for the railroad while his partner Leland Stanford distributed bribes in Sacramento and served as Governor of California. Nice conflict of interest if you happened to be trying to build a railroad.
Zachary Drake The government was accepting much risk and people like Huntington and Standford would be making the profits. But they were also visionary builders who fiercely believe that their railroad was important for California's growth and for the countries. Collis Huntington bluntly explained how the Big Four worked in Washington.
COLLIS HUNTINGTON If you have to pay money it's have the right thing done. It is only just and fair to do it. If a politician won't do right unless he is bribed to do it, I think it is man's duty to go up and bribe.
Grey Brechin Charles Crocker, the construction boss of the railroad imported thousands of Chinese men from China to do the work at the absolute minimum possible cost. At first, he was scoffed at because the Chinese were considerate to be small and unable to do this very, very hard work. Of course, the bosses also consider them to be expendable too.
Dr. Herbert Yee Gold Rush Immigrant Descendant
Dr. Herbert Yee They said that any race of people that can build the Great Wall of China 3000 mile over the toughest terrain mountains, could be able to build this railroad. We showed them that we were good worker and so by the time we finished, there was 15,000 Chinese building the railroad. I think it was properly close to 1500 died that 5 years.
Zachary Drake The Chinese workers were fearless and adept, scaling the Sierra Nevada Mountains, they nimbly set up explosive charges to blast the right of way for the tract. It was an extremely hazardous trade, it took six years. On May 10th, 1869, at Promontory Point, Utah, Leland Standford drove in a symbolic golden spike to complete the Trans Continental Railroad.
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Zachary Drake The building of the railroad linked California to the nation has never before. It made industrial production possible on a national scale. Now a company in a single city could mass produce goods cheaply and ship them anywhere in the country. But the progress spurt by the rush came with a price.
Holly Alonso Director, Peralta Hacienda Historical Park
Hooly Alonso Just after the Gold Rush the Californians were very optimistic about what the future would hold because after all their rights to their land were guaranteed and the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. But waiting in the wings was the Yankee lawyer to help them prove the legitimacy of their title they would then have to pay the lawyer in the only currency they had which was land.
Grey Brechin The Mexican rancheros had a very different attitude towards land than the Anglos who came in with the gold rush and took over the land uhm, with the conquest of California. For the rancheros, there was a family property that would be passed on from generation to generation. It wasn't a commodity that could be traded in a way that we think of land which is real estate.
Zachary Drake Mariano Vallejo who had once welcomed the Americans in their system of just laws spent years and tens of thousands of dollars in court after court trying to protect his property with little success.
MARIANO VALLEJO These thieves in frog coats wrapped about with the mantel of the law took away our lands and building and with no scruple or whatsoever and thrown themselves as powerful monarchs in our houses.
Zachary Drake Mariano Vallejo, the former owner of a vast state died virtually penniless in a home provided for him by his son-in-law. As the rush subsided, some miners gave up and went home. Sarah Royce settled with her family in Northern California where she became a teacher. Her journal, West Ward Migration became a legacy to her son, Josiah, who would one day write a great history of the state his family had chosen to adopt as its own.
Grey Brechin When the Gold rush happened, Henry David Thorreau was observing and that he said that it was the greatest disgrace to humanity. He was decrying the kind of speculative uhm, quality of it, the materialism of it, the way that it dissolve social belongs. It did all of those things and it resort of set the United States on this course of mobility, of believing that if things don't work out here, there's always something up ahead, something around the bend. That's where the gold is and ussually it's out West.
J.S. Holliday The Gold Rush is a story of immense imaginative enterprise of opportunity of freedom, it's a enormously positive force. A man wrote a letter to his family and he said, "The independence, the liberality, the rapid march of this country make a man feel sad and insignificant at the prospect of returning to the old beaten path at home." The independence, the liberality, the rapid march of this country, things are happening here compared to ah, ah, the old beaten path at home.
Zachary Drake In 1890, the U.S government officially declared the closing of the American frontier. After the vast migration initiated by the rush, westward expansion had to come to an end. The discovery of gold in a California river on January 24th, 1848 set in motion one of the world's largest and fastest growing economies and gave birth to a new nation, setting the stage for the American century to come.
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