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The fastest clipper ships cut the travel time from New York to San Francisco from seven months to four months in the 1849 Gold Rush.^[1]

A gold rush is a new discovery of gold—sometimes accompanied by other precious metals and rare earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century in Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Canada, South Africa and the United States, while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.

The wealth that resulted was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself was unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large fortunes, and the merchants and transportation facilities made large profits. The resulting increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. Historians have written extensively about the migration, trade, colonization and environmental history associated with gold rushes.^[2]

Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly, as expressed in the California Dream.

Gold rushes helped spur a huge immigration that often led to permanent settlement of new regions. Activities propelled by gold rushes define significant aspects of the culture of the Australian and North American frontiers. At a time when the world's money supply was based on gold, the newly mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the gold fields.

Gold rushes extend as far back to the Roman Empire, whose gold mining was described by Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder, and probably further back to Ancient Egypt.

Life cycle of a gold rush

Panning for gold on the Mokelumne River

A man leans over a wooden sluice. Rocks line the outside of the wood boards that create the sluice.

Swedish gold panners by the Blackfoot River, Montana in the 1860s

Jets of water at a placer mine in Dutch Flat, California sometime between 1857 and 1870

Within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge. They may also progress from high-unit value to lower unit value minerals (from gold to silver to base metals).

A rush typically begins with the discovery of placer gold made by an individual. At first the gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a gold pan or similar simple instrument. Once it is clear that the volume of gold-bearing sediment is larger than a few cubic metres, the placer miners will build rockers or sluice boxes, with which a small group can wash gold from the sediment many times faster than using gold pans. Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only a simple pan or equipment that may be built on the spot, and only simple organisation. The low investment, the high value per unit weight of gold, and the ability of gold dust and gold nuggets to serve as a medium of exchange, allow placer gold rushes to occur even in remote locations.

After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organisations and higher capital expenditures. Small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels. Water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques of ground sluicing, hydraulic mining and dredging may be used.

Typically the heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins of lode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Hard rock mining, like placer mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital and technology. The surface outcrop of a gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, and the ore needs only to be crushed and washed (free milling ore). The first miners may at first build a simple arrastra to crush their ore; later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore more quickly. As the miners dig down, they may find that the deeper part of vein contains gold locked in sulfide or telluride minerals, which will require smelting. If the ore is still sufficiently rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter (direct shipping ore). Lower-grade ore may require on-site treatment to either recover the gold or to produce a concentrate sufficiently rich for transport to the smelter. As the district turns to lower-grade ore, the mining may change from underground mining to large open-pit mining.

Many silver rushes followed upon gold rushes. As transportation and infrastructure improve, the focus may change progressively from gold to silver to base metals. In this way, Leadville, Colorado started as a placer gold discovery, achieved fame as a silver-mining district, then relied on lead and zinc in its later days. Butte, Montana began mining placer gold, then became a silver-mining district, then became for a time the world’s largest copper producer.

Gold rushes by region

Australia

Ballarat's tent city in the summer of 1853–54, oil painting from an original sketch by Eugene von Guerard

Various gold rushes occurred in Australia over the second half of the 19th century. The most significant of these, although not the only ones, were the New South Wales gold rush and Victorian gold rush in 1851,^[3] and the Western Australian gold rushes of the 1890s. They were highly significant to their respective colonies' political and economic development as they brought a large number of immigrants, and promoted massive government spending on infrastructure to support the new arrivals who came looking for gold. While some found their fortune, those who did not often remained in the colonies and took advantage of extremely liberal land laws to take up farming.

Gold rushes happened at or around:

New Zealand

In New Zealand the Central Otago Gold Rush from 1861 attracted prospectors from the California Gold Rush and the Victorian Gold Rush and many moved on to the West Coast Gold Rush from 1864.

North America

The first significant gold rush in the United States was in Cabarrus County, North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799 at today's Reed's Gold Mine.^[4] Thirty years later, in 1829, the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern Appalachians occurred. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848–55 in the Sierra Nevada, which captured the popular imagination. The California gold rush led directly to the settlement of California by Americans and the rapid entry of that state into the union in 1850. The gold rush in 1849 stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, and led to new rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland. Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America: Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, in Nevada, in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, Idaho, Montana, eastern Oregon, and western New Mexico Territory and along the lower Colorado River. Resurrection Creek, near Hope, Alaska was the site of Alaska's first gold rush in the mid–1890s.^[5] Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes were Nome and the Fortymile River.

Miners and prospectors ascend the Chilkoot Trail during the Klondike Gold Rush.

Klondike

One of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon Territory (1896–99). This gold rush is immortalised in the novels of Jack London, and Charlie Chaplin's film The Gold Rush. Robert William Service depicted with talent in his poetries the dramatic event of the Gold Rush, especially in the book The Trail of '98.^[6] The main goldfield was along the south flank of the Klondike River near its confluence with the Yukon River near what was to become Dawson City in Canada's Yukon Territory but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement and promoted the discovery of other gold finds.

South Africa

In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was important to that country's history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and tensions between the Boers and British settlers.

South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total world output in 1896. At the time of the South African rush, gold production benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the MacArthur-Forrest process, of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore.^[7]

South America

5-gram gold coin from Tierra del Fuego by Julius Popper

Between 1883 and 1906 Tierra del Fuego experienced a gold rush attracting a large number of Chileans, Argentines and Europeans to the archipelago. The gold rush begun in 1884 following discovery of gold during the rescue of the French steamship Arctique near Cape Virgenes.^[8]

Mining industry today

There are about 10 to 30 million small-scale miners around the world, according to Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM). Approximately 100 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on small-scale mining. For example, there are 800,000 to 1.5 million artisanal miners in Democratic Republic of Congo, 350,000 to 650,000 in Sierra Leone, and 150,000 to 250,000 in Ghana, with millions more across Africa.^[9]

Notable gold rushes by date

Rushes of the 1690s

• 
  Brazilian Gold Rush, Minas Gerais (1695)^[10]

Rushes of the 18th century

• 
  Carolina Gold Rush, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, US (1799)^[4]

Rushes of the 1820s

• 
  Georgia Gold Rush, Georgia, US (1828)

Rushes of the 1840s

• 
  California Gold Rush (1848–55)


• 
  Siberian Gold Rush, Siberia, Russian Empire
  

Rushes of the 1850s

• 
  Queen Charlottes Gold Rush, British Columbia, Canada (1850); the first of many British Columbia gold rushes
  


• Northern Nevada Gold Rush (1850–1934)^{[clarification needed]}


• 
  Victorian gold rush, Victoria, Australia (1851–late 1860s)


• 
  Kern River Gold Rush, California (1853–58)


• Idaho Gold Rush, also known as the Fort Colville Gold Rush, near Colville, Washington (1855)


• 
  Gila Placers Rush, New Mexico Territory (Arizona) (1858–59)


• 
  Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, British Columbia (1858–61)


• 
  Rock Creek Gold Rush, British Columbia (1859–1860s)^{[clarification needed]}


• 
  Pike's Peak Gold Rush, Pikes Peak, Kansas Territory (present-day Colorado) (1859)


• 
  Ballarat, Victoria, Australia

Rushes of the 1860s

• 
  Holcomb Valley Gold Rush, California (1860–61)


• 
  Clearwater Gold Rush, Idaho (1860)


• 
  Central Otago Gold Rush, New Zealand (1861)


• 
  Eldorado Canyon Rush, New Mexico Territory (Nevada), (1861)


• 
  Colorado River Gold Rush, Arizona Territory (1862–64)


• 
  Boise Basin Gold Rush, Idaho (1862)


• 
  Cariboo Gold Rush, British Columbia (1862–65)


• 
  Montana Gold Rush, including Bannack, Virginia City (Alder Gulch), Helena (Last Chance Gulch), and Confederate Gulch, Idaho (1862–1864) and Montana (1864–1869)^[11]


• 
  Stikine Gold Rush, British Columbia (1863)


• 
  Owyhee Gold Rush, Idaho (1863)


• 
  Owens Valley Rush, Owens Valley, California (1863–64)


• 
  Leech River, Leechtown Gold Rush, Vancouver Island (1864–65)


• 
  West Coast Gold Rush, South Island, New Zealand (1864–67)


• 
  Big Bend Gold Rush, British Columbia (1865—66)


• 
  Francistown Gold Rush, British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (1867)^[12]


• 
  Omineca Gold Rush, British Columbia (1869)


• Wild Horse Creek Gold Rush, British Columbia (1860s),^{[clarification needed]}


• Eastern Oregon Gold Rush (1860s–1870s)^{[clarification needed]}


• 
  Kildonan Gold Rush, Sutherland, Scotland (1869)^[13]

Rushes of the 1870s

• 
  Lapland gold rush, Finland, 1870


• Cassiar Gold Rush, British Columbia, 1871


• Palmer River Gold Rush, Palmer River, Queensland, Australia (1872)


• 
  Pilgrim's Rest, South Africa (1873)


• 
  Black Hills Gold Rush, Black Hills of South Dakota and Wyoming (1874–78)


• Bodie Gold Rush, Bodie, California (1876)


• Kumara Gold Rush, Kumara and Dillmanstown, New Zealand (1876)^[14]

Rushes of the 1880s

• 
  Barberton Gold Rush, South Africa (1883)


• 
  Witwatersrand Gold Rush, Transvaal, South Africa (1886); discovery of the largest deposit of gold in the world. The resulting influx of miners became one of the triggers of the Second Boer War of 1899-1902.


• 
  Cayoosh Gold Rush in Lillooet, British Columbia (1884—87)


• Tulameen Gold Rush near Princeton, British Columbia^{[clarification needed]}


• 
  Tierra del Fuego Gold Rush, southernmost Chile and Argentina (1884–1906)

Rushes of the 1890s

• 
  Cripple Creek Gold Rush, Cripple Creek, Colorado (1891)


• 
  Western Australian gold rushes, Kalgoorlie and Coolgardie, Western Australia (1893, 1896)


• 
  Mount Baker Gold Rush, Whatcom County, Washington, United States (1897–1920s)


• 
  Klondike Gold Rush, centered on Dawson City, Yukon, Canada (1896–99)


• 
  Atlin Gold Rush, Atlin, British Columbia (1898)


• 
  Nome Gold Rush, Nome, Alaska (1899–1909)


• Fairview Goldrush, Oliver (Fairview), British Columbia Canada

Rushes of the 1900s–1910s

• 
  Fairbanks Gold Rush, Fairbanks, Alaska (1902–05)


• Goldfield Gold Rush, Goldfield, Nevada^{[clarification needed]}


• 
  Cobalt Silver Rush, 1903–05, Cobalt, Ontario, Canada


• 
  Porcupine Gold Rush, 1909–11, Timmins, Ontario, Canada – little known, but one of the largest in terms of gold mined, 67 million ounces as of 2001

Rushes of the 1930s

• Soviet gold rush - notably involving Gulag slave labor in the Kolyma region^[15]


• 
  Kakamega gold rush, Kenya, 1932


• 
  Vatukoula Gold Rush, Fiji, 1932

Rushes of the 1970s

• 
  Serra Pelada, Brazil
  

Rushes of the 1980s

• Amazon Gold Rush, Amazon region, Brazil^{[clarification needed][16]}


• Mount Kare Gold Rush, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea^[17][18]

Rushes of the 21st century

• Great Mongolian Gold Rush, Mongolia (2001)^[19]


• Apuí Gold Rush, Apuí, Amazonas, Brazil (2006);^[20] approximately 500,000 miners are thought to work in the Amazon's "garimpos" (gold mines).^[21]


• 
  Peruvian Amazon gold rush, Madre de Dios (2009)^[22]

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Gold rush (category)

• Object of History: the Gold Nugget


• PBS' American Experience: The Gold Rush


• Exploring the California Gold Rush


• The Australian Gold Rush


• 
  Off to the Klondike! The Search for Gold — illustrated historical essay

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