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The California gold rush (1848–1855) was a period of American history in which the most amount of gold seen at the time was discovered. The initial discovery of gold in America in 1848 attracted many immigrants who were intent on the opportunity and potential wealth that came with gold mining.
By 1852, there were 25,000; over 300,000 by 1880: a tenth of the Californian population—mostly from six districts of Canton province (Bill Bryson, p. 143) [19] —who wanted to make their fortune in the 1849-era California Gold Rush. The Chinese did not, however, only come for the gold rush in California, but also helped build the First ...
The effects of the gold rush were substantial. Whole indigenous societies were attacked and pushed off their lands by the gold-seekers, called "forty-niners" (referring to 1849, the peak year for gold rush immigration). Outside of California, the first to arrive were from Oregon, the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii), and Latin America in late 1848.
The Chinese came to California in large numbers during the California gold rush, with 40,400 being recorded as arriving from 1851 to 1860, and again in the 1860s, when the Central Pacific Railroad recruited large labor gangs, many on five-year contracts, to build its portion of the first transcontinental railroad. The Chinese laborers worked ...
The United States experienced several waves of immigration from the Chinese. [27] The California gold rush in the 1850s followed by the first transcontinental railroad in the next decade triggered the first migration. [28] Around 100,000 men from China, who were primarily from impoverished villages, relocated to Gold Mountain to look for gold.
After gold was found in the Sierra Nevada in 1848, thousands of Cantonese from Toisan City in Guangdong Province (Historically known as Canton) began to migrate to California in search of gold and riches during the California Gold Rush. Chinese people historically referred to California and British Columbia as Gold Mountain, as evidenced by ...
Other early immigrants worked as mine workers or independent prospectors hoping to strike it rich during the California gold rush. Although many of the earlier waves of Chinese immigration were predominantly men searching for jobs, Chinese women also began making the journey towards the United States.
1882 editorial cartoon. The arrival of three Chinese sailors to Baltimore in 1785 marked the first record of Chinese people in the United States. During the California Gold Rush in the mid-19th century, many Chinese immigrants came to the U.S., particularly the West Coast states, where they worked as gold miners and on large labor projects, including the transcontinental railroad.