Miners, Mine towns and Gold

Miners, the wrong Sort of Migrant

The early migrants made the long and generous trek westwards in search of a better life for them and their families. There was another group of people travelling to California, they weren't travelling with their families and they weren't intending to settle down.

Gold Rush

In 1848 gold was accidentally discovered in California, the news reached the Eastern states and the rest of the world. Within months 40,000 men were reported to be travelling the Great Plains and 60 ships carrying gold miners left ports in America and Europe. Many of the men weren't miners, but men who wanted to get-rich-quick, by the end of 1849, there were 90,000 miners, who were nicknamed the 'forty-niners'. Most didn't find gold  and wandered back home or drifted from mine to mine. Some however did strike gold and became extremely rich.Gradually the gold in California, which was near the surface and easy to mine was exhausted and men began the long journey home. In 1858-1859 gold was discovered in Pikes Peak region of The Rocky Mountains1860 it was discovered in Idaho1862 it was discovered in Montana1863 it was discovered in Arizona1874 it was discovered in the Black Hills of Dakota

Miners and Mining Towns

The early miners had to live somewhere, and so hundreds of towns sprung up, only to vanish when the gold ran out and the miners moved on. When the miners weren't working, the miners took themselves to local saloons, San Francisco for example had around 537 saloons, where the miners could drink and gamble all day and where prostitutes could charge up to $400 a night.By the mid 1850s, the surface gold in California was almost exhausted and the 'forty-niners' left and the professional miners moved in. Many of these had worked in the tin and gold mines in Cornwall and were able to sink and work in deep mines. There were backed by businessmen working in the east coast states of the USA, who put money into machinery and mills. These professional miners built and lived in permanent miners towns, and brought their families with them.

How Was Law And Order Kept

The early-mining towns were tough, lawless places, run by men with the fastest guns. Claim-jumping (Stealing one man's claim to a mine after gold had been discovered there) was the most common crimes. The miners set up their own courts, which dispensed rough justice and were often corrupt.When the professional miners moved in with their families and the towns became more permanent, the system of management of law and order became more formalized. Town meetings chose a chairman and officers. Claimed to mines had to be recorded, sheriffs were appointed to arrest criminals and court of miners decided on guilt or innocence as well as punishments. Bu trails were quick and justice was rarely fair, punishments were usually flogging,banishment or hanging. Sometimes the courts could not cope with level of lawlessness and so citizens began setting up vigilance committees who took law into their own hands. Vigilantes held instant trials, after which a condemned man would be seen hanging from a nearby tree, guilty or not.There were times when this worked well, in the 1860s, the people Bannack, Montana, were terrorised by a well-organised gang of about 100 road agents. It gradually became clear that Henry Plummer, the elected sheriff was a well respected member of the gang. A vigilance committee was set up and a member of the gang confessed, Plummer was caught and hanged in 1864.However before long, people in the townships began to fear the vigilantes, it was too easy to execute someone who had gotten on the wrong side of an influential citizen.

What was the impact of discovery of gold in the West

- It increased the supply of money and encouraged investment in the mining industry- It stimulated the rapid growth of San Francisco as a financial centre- It ensured that when a railroad was built across America in the 1860s, it went to California and not Oregon.- The wealth created gave the USA a leading role in world trade- It stimulated the movement west in the 1850s- it also lead to racial conflict with American workers, often refusing to work with Chinese miners- Taxes were imposed on foreign miners, which lead to resentment- The Native Indians of California were virtually wiped out

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