4.3 How did the discovery of gold change California?

Students study how the discovery of gold and the spread of its news throughout the world affected the multicultural aspects of California’s population. Students can compare the long overland route over dangerous terrain to the faster sea route, either via Panama or around Cape Horn. Teachers can read aloud excerpts from Richard Henry Dana, Jr.’s Two Years Before the Mast. The arrivals of Asians, Latin Americans, and Europeans are included as part of this narrative. Students can also explore how the gender imbalance between women and men in California during the gold rush era allowed women who wished to participate in the gold rush to pass as men and led to a number of men to take on women’s roles. To bring this period to life, students can sing the songs and read the literature of the day, including newspapers. They might dramatize a day in the goldfields and compare the life and fortunes of a gold miner with those of traders in the gold towns and merchants in San Francisco. Students might also read historical fiction, such as Legend of Freedom Hill by Linda Jacobs Altman and By the Great Horn Spoon by Sid Fleischman, which will provide an opportunity to incorporate the CCSS Reading Literature standards and allow students to contrast historical fiction with primary sources, secondary sources, and other informational texts.

Students may learn how historical fiction makes the story of history come alive but should learn about the problems of using historical fiction as the sole sources of information about a subject or time period.

Students may also read or listen to primary sources that both illustrate gender and relationship diversity and engage students’ interest in the era, like Bret Harte’s short story of “The Poet of Sierra Flat” (1873) or newspaper articles about the life of the stagecoach driver Charley Parkhurst, who was born as a female but who lived as a male, and who drove stagecoach routes in northern and central California for almost 30 years. Stagecoaches were the only way many people could travel long distances, and they served as a vital communication link between isolated communities. Parkhurst was one of the most famous California drivers, having survived multiple robberies while driving (and later killing a thief when he tried to rob Parkhurst a second time).

Students also learn about women who helped to build California during these years, such as Bernarda Ruiz, María Angustias de la Guerra, Louise Clapp, Sarah Royce, and Biddy Mason, as well as the participation of different ethnic groups who came to the state during this period, such as those from Asia, Latin America, and Europe, as well the eastern part of the United States. Students consider how the Gold Rush changed California by bringing sudden wealth to the state; affecting its population, culture, and politics; and instantly transforming San Francisco from a small village in 1847 to a bustling city in 1849. The social upheaval that resulted from the lure of gold and massive immigration caused numerous conflicts between and among social groups. The mining camps were one site of conflict, as miners of different ethnicities and races fought for access to wealth. American miners fared best, as California introduced a foreign miners tax on non-Americans.

Students can read some of the many stories about the California mining camps and explore the causes and effects of conflict in the camps by expressing their ideas in letters to the editor of an 1850s newspaper, or creating virtual museum exhibits about life in a California mining camp.

Another clear example of conflict during the Gold Rush era and early statehood was the loss of property and autonomy for many of the state’s earlier Mexican and Indian residents. In addition, great violence was perpetrated against many Indian groups who occupied land or resources that new settlers desired. Additional harm came by way of the Indian Indenture Act of 1850, which forced many Indians – mostly Indian youth – into servitude for landowners. The Gold Rush also caused irreparable environmental destruction through the introduction of hydraulic mining in the 1850s, which clogged and polluted rivers throughout the state, at great cost to the farmers affected downstream. Examining the development of new methods to extract, harvest, and transport gold during this period allows students to see direct interactions between natural systems and human social systems (California Environmental Principle II), See EEI Curriculum Unit Witnessing the Gold Rush 4.3.3).