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THE HISTORY OF GOLD
Focus On Gold Part2
Article # : gold155
Crime, surprisingly, was minimal. Theft was made virtually obsolete in the face of so much wealth just lying around in local rivers and streams. That changed, however, once the "pickings" got leaner and claims were disputed.
By the end of the first year of the 1849 California gold rush it is estimated that close to 100,000 individuals seeking their fortunes had made it to area diggings. They came from foreign lands as well. In fact 25% of all 49'ers were not Americans. They hailed from as far away as China, Australia, England and France.
1850 marked the year that the Foreign Miners Tax was evoked. Talk about discrimination--this tax of $20 a month was primarily aimed at Chinese and Mexican workers, but affected all foreign gold seekers as well.
Due mostly to the protests of Irish, English and German miners, the fee was lowered to $4 monthly in early 1853.
Many of the people who came from other lands during the gold rush to California did not necessarily come of their own free will! Australia emptied many of her overcrowded prisons and shipped criminals to America's gold fields. Louis Napoleon, president of France, held a lottery in 1850 that would send the poor to California to seek their fortunes. This too was just a way of unloading undesirables, political enemies, prostitutes, etc., while lining his own pockets with the lottery proceeds.
Sam Brannan will go down in the annals of history as an extraordinarily astute businessman. During the first year of the California gold rush, instead of heading to the newly discovered gold sites, he stayed behind to open several general stores. These were located in and around the area of Sutter's mill and fort. They were stocked with all the provisions needed by miners in the field such as picks, shovels, pans, and food.
It is said that Brannan bought up every available pan to be had in San Francisco at 20 cents each and later sold them for anywhere from $10 to $15 each. The store at the fort is estimated to have grossed nearly $40,000 during the first four months. Most of his accepted payment was in gold and he amassed a fortune without ever putting a pan in water.
Just ten short years after the discovery of gold at Sutter's Mill, California had extracted more than half a billion dollars worth of gold. This was 35 times the amount the United States paid Mexico for the California Territories.
At the start of the California gold rush there was no fixed price for the yellow metal. It was a supply and demand situation, with a fluctuating value between a low of $6 per ounce to a high of $18 per ounce. The price finally stabilized in 1854 at $16 per ounce with the opening of a branch of the United States Mint in San Francisco.
Much has been written about all the silver that had been mined at Virginia City's Comstock Lode, but it was gold that started that rush. In twenty years of mining, the major ore was silver (57%), but gold was second by only a small margin (43%).
Placer deposits provided the earliest recoverable gold (nuggets in streams and rivers). Then men had to tunnel into the earth to extract lode deposits. Today it is deep (2,000 ft.) drillings in sedimentary limestone rock and epithermal deposits in ancient reefs that provide the gold. The earlier discoveries of sculptured and will defined nuggets are becoming harder to find with each passing decade, especially in higher weight categories. A one-ounce, high character nugget today is harder to find than a comparable five-carat diamond.
Source: The New 49ers