gold rush
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Early prospectors in the US gold rush, about 1867. After gold was discovered in California in 1848, men streamed west in their thousands – they were dubbed the ‘forty-niners’ because they left home in 1849.
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Workers mining, panning, beating, and weighing gold in California, USA. A number of Californian towns owe their origin to the gold rush of 1849–56.
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Gold dust was legal tender for purchases during the Alaska Gold Rush; Dawson City, Klondike, Alaska, 1899. Over 100,000 people from around the world stampeded towards the Yukon in 1898, propelled by dreams of gold. Some 60,000 died on the arduous journey to Dawson City.
| Large influx of gold prospectors to an area where gold deposits have recently been discovered. The result is a dramatic increase in population. Cities such as Johannesburg, Melbourne, and San Francisco either originated or were considerably enlarged by gold rushes. Melbourne's population trebled from 77,000 to some 200,000 between 1851 and 1853, while San Francisco boomed from a small coastal village of a few hundred people to the largest city in the western USA during the California gold rush of 1848–56. |
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