Gold rush

A gold rush (of English Gold Rush, literally so " gold rush ", " Gold Scrimmage ", the connection with the German term noise is linguistically a false friend is ), more rarely, gold fever, is a period of increased immigration into an area in which there is either usable amounts of gold, or at least rumors of such occurrences.

The gold rushes of the 19th century brought many thousands of workers around the world to their jobs, for example in a factory of the industrial revolution to give up and - in some cases together with their family - to pull a gold field, there to seek their fortune.

• 2.2.1 Gold Rush of Bathurst, Bendigo, Ballarat and Mount Alexander
• 2.2.2 Gold Rush of Temora
• 2.2.3 Gold Rush of Teetulpa
• 2.2.4 Gold Rush of Coolgardie

History and Development of the Gold Rush

Special properties of gold and its rarity were the occasion for ascribing own mysticism. Again and again there were rumors fabulous cities or countries in which " the gold on the street is " (see also Cockaigne ). Even in the Bible, a legendary land of gold called Ophir is mentioned.

The Spanish conquistadors in Central and South America were looking for a golden city called Eldorado. There are various myths in a land of gold.

The emergence of a gold rush is dependent on information and transportation, so it is not surprising that all known gold rushes took place in a time and society that already have steam engines (railway, steamship ) and telegraph possessed, except the Brazilian gold rush from the year 1693rd At the same time great social upheavals took place. With the mechanization of industry and agriculture, many people were uprooted in their homeland and forced to emigrate (see also emigration in the 19th century). In their country of immigration, they had to - build a new life - often under difficult or adventurous conditions. This from their fate Wretched formed the basis of any real gold rush. This could towns, even large, arise, and in some cases (as in the California Gold Rush) he favored the spread of population over an entire country.

Factors favoring gold rushes at the time, were improved transport routes to the gold fields, first fast communication channels and the dissatisfaction of people with their life circumstances. Especially with Goldräuschen like the one in Alaska and Canada, where the path of prospectors was arduous and dangerous, many prospectors died already on the way. Especially with longer lasting Goldräuschen as the Colorado Gold Rush, it often happened that the prospectors continued to live there after the end of the gold rush, where they had spent a considerable part of their lives.

Famous gold rushes

The first known gold rush in history was triggered from 1693/95 through extensive discoveries in Brazil. He brought each year 10 to 15 tons of gold to Europe during most of the 18th century.

Gold rushes in the United States and Canada

In North America, there have been three major gold rushes. 1799 The first documented gold rush on U.S. territory occurred in Charlotte, North Carolina. The largest was the California gold rush. Furthermore, this also includes the " Colorado Gold Rush" and the Gold Rush of the Klondike River in Canada and the Yukon River in Canada. 1874 was discovered at Custer in the Black Hills in South Dakota gold, and it also resulted in a gold rush, during which the Cheyenne were expelled. Significant gold discoveries there were in St. Virginia / Montana, 1863, in Comstock Lode / Nevada 1859 ( silver also finds), in Oregon in 1850, in British Columbia in 1850 and Idaho in 1863. These findings triggered no or only a minor gold rush.

California Gold Rush

→ Main article: California Gold Rush

• Year of launch: 1848
• Highlight: 1849
• Location: near San Francisco, Sacramento, etc.
• Immigrants: mostly from the East Coast of the United States, such as New England

On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall discovered the first gold to build a sawmill for Johann August Sutter on the American River, near the present-day Californian capital Sacramento. The shopkeeper and newspaper publisher Samuel Brannan from the then small town of San Francisco opened more stores with goods for gold prospectors and solved with a newspaper article about the findings of the California Gold Rush from. 1849 most immigrants came ( around throughout South America, the Panama Canal was opened in 1914 ) by boat or overland. More than 80,000 people came alone within a year. Found a daily average of 30 grams of gold, which corresponded to 20 times the daily wage of a worker from the East Coast. 1853, the search for gold has been revolutionized by the introduction of a high-pressure water blasting unit. On September 3, 1850 California was ( inter alia because of the discovery of gold and the increasing colonization ) 31 U.S. state. The land on which took place the discovery of gold, actually belonged to the landowner Johann August Sutter, whose rights have been ignored, which thereby lost everything and died impoverished. He tried in vain to keep the gold discoveries on its territory secret. The story has been made ​​into a film in 1936 with Luis Trenker under the title The Emperor of California.

Colorado Gold Rush

• Year of launch: 1858
• Highlights: 1860s and 1870s
• Location: in the South Platte River to Denver etc.
• Immigrants: mostly from California (due to the rare gold finds there )

1858 in the South Platte River (north of Pike 's Peak ) and later found gold and silver. In the 1870s the state of Colorado had about 60,000 inhabitants. Many settlements emerged as Denver and grew. 1876 ​​Colorado became a U.S. state.

Black Hills Gold Rush

• Year of launch: 1874
• Highlight: 1876/77
• Location: Custer and Deadwood, South Dakota
• Immigrants: Often from Kansas ( they came over the Missouri River)

By 1860, reported the Roman Catholic missionary Father De Smet that he had Sioux gold from the Black Hills to see wear. Although the area was the natives assured by the Treaty of Laramie from 1868 to prospectors interested propagated to the region. 1874 then found prospectors first small deposits near Custer. The much larger deposits were discovered in Deadwood Gulch, prompting thousands of prospectors settlement Deadwood founded, although it was located on Indian territory.

Gold rush at the Klondike River

→ Main article: Klondike Gold Rush

• Year of launch: 1896
• Highlight: 1897/98
• Immigrants: only from California ( near San Francisco), then Europe and Asia

1872 was discovered in Alaska gold. It was Joe Juneau and Richard Harris, which this was achieved in Sitka. 1873 was followed by the discovery of gold in 1886 in Forty Mile and Circle. Cities like Dawson or Juneau, the capital of Alaska, were established.

On August 16, 1896 found George Washington Carmack and his Indian relatives Tagish Charlie (even this is disputed, his real name was Charlie Dawson ) and Skookum Jim gold in Rabbit Creek, near the tributary of the Klondike River in the Yukon River, was then hastily renamed Bonanza Creek. The original document of claim reservation, however, is to read a little indistinct, it may well also date to the 14th or 17th of August. The area was so remote that the customer or the paddle steamer Excelsior reached the outside world from the great gold discovery only on 14 July 1897. Immediately began the Gold Rush. First came mainly gold prospectors from San Francisco and the surrounding West Coast to the Klondike River. Later ( Chinese and Japanese ) and Europeans came (eg, German, Italian, Norwegian, British ) and Asians do so.

Most prospectors traveled by steamer to Skagway or Dyea, Alaska. From there we walked through the White or the Chilkoot Pass to Lake Bennett. On the mountain passes is the border between the U.S. and Canada, and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police had then just pass those resulted in at least a ton of food and equipment with them. Lakeside boats and rafts were built, which took the prospectors after Eisaufbruch in the Yukon River, and on this the about 740 kilometers to the Boomtown Dawson City. Many turned back to the grueling way, some of the gamble paid with their lives. Approximately 40,000 adventurers reached the legendary gold fields at the former Elchweide. Very few were rich, because they came too late, as the already in the region prospectors had secured the best claims.

Was processed Artistically the Gold Rush in the works of Jack London as well as in the poems of Robert W. Service. Became world famous Charlie Chaplin's movie gold rush, an ironic comment on the greed for money. In the comics the character Scrooge McDuck of the Klondike lays the foundation for his fortune and later recalled readily and often at this time.

Even today there are many prospectors in Alaska and the Yukon Territory. However, this no longer perform their work with pickaxe, shovel and gold pan after, but use modern machines. The soil is moved by means of large bulldozers and excavators and washed in so-called Sluice boxes. Thus even the smallest amounts of gold can be washed out.

Australian gold rush

In Australia there were several gold rushes, the first, triggered by the discovery of a 40- pound gold nugget, an immigration movement caused, which triggered nearly tenfold and social changes within about a decade, Australia's population, the Australia of the penal colony Australia civilized in a State walked.

Gold Rush of Bathurst, Bendigo, Ballarat and Mount Alexander

• Year of launch: 1851
• Highlight: 1850
• Location: everywhere ( from Bathurst ), particularly New South Wales and Victoria
• Immigrants: mostly Californians, British and Chinese

Edward Hammond Hargraves from New South Wales discovered on February 12, 1851 in a body of water near Bathurst the first gold nugget in Australia. It was a gold quartz block with a gold content of 40 kg. Hargrave had been two years previously searched unsuccessfully for gold in California before he went to Australia. The Australian government wanted to keep the Fund for fear of a similar gold rush in California as secret, but there was more gold discoveries near Melbourne at Mount Alexander in Victoria and in numerous other places in Australia. The gold deposits at Mount Alexander was in 1852 as the largest of the Earth, and in 1854 the first Chinese gold miners arrived there.

Early as 1852, the number of immigrants increased sevenfold to 95,000. In just one decade, the population grew to 1,200,000 inhabitants. The citizens were getting richer but there was always more unrest. As originally created as a convict colony British colony of the rights and entitlements of free citizens were not scheduled. There was from the beginning, civilian, not to manage the prison camp belonging to people, but they were all but out of the bearings depending. They formed with the judicial employees own class that as the dismissed convicts had for the new immigrants a clear distrust.

The gold Viewfinder Wanderer had to pay high license fees and had no right to vote because they had no lands. 1854 was killed in the course of the Eureka Stockade by the police, after which there were riots in Victoria, where 38 prospectors were killed in Ballarat a prospector. It attacked 400 police officers a rebellious group of 120 gold miners. The government then decided yet on the requirements ( no license fees, franchise, ...) to respond. 1861 founded a Chinese gold mining company, which was soon closed out by the British colonial authorities, because the Chinese sent the gold directly to China and so betrayed the crown to the tax.

Gold Rush of Temora

Before the Gold Rush in Temora, New South Wales began in 1879, this place was a small settlement of farmers, especially from Germany. In the vicinity of the place in 1869, gold was found, the gold rush began, but until 1879 a. At the height of the gold rush of the city had 20,000 inhabitants. In the gold box very large nuggets were found. The Mother Shipton Nugget, which broke into three pieces, weighed 308.35 ounces.

Gold Rush of Teetulpa

The Teetulpa - gold field in South Australia had towards the end of 1886 more than 5,000 prospectors, other sources speak of 7000. It was discovered on October 5, 1886 the Farmer Thomas Brady and Thomas Smith. It was lacking in water, and in December established the Water Conservation Department on equipment, which produced 27,000 liters of fresh water daily. On the first trading day for gold, on Christmas Day 1886, 200 ounces were offered.

Gold Rush of Coolgardie

The gold rush of Coolgardie in Western Australia began when Arthur Bayley and William Ford found there 200 ounces of gold over a period of five to six weeks. According to Bayley Ford was the first to find a nugget in a stone block of quartz in a place of Fly Flat is called. Three months later, on September 17, 1892, Bayley returned 554 ounces of gold ( 15.7 kg ) to Southern Cross, which this gold rush began. In 1898 Coolgardie was the third largest city in Western Australia with a population of 15,000 persons and other persons in the area. At its peak, 700 gold companies from Coolgardie on the London Stock Exchange were listed.

Patrick Hannan found near Coolgardie in the Kalgoorlie - Boulder area on June 17, 1893 Gold. Again, the water supply was the biggest problem, which was solved only in 1903 with the construction of a 540 km long water line, the Golden Pipeline.

As a result of this discovery of gold in the Yilgarn area, Irish geologist Edward Hardman by the Government of Western Australia has been employed for the search of economically recoverable gold fields. 1884 was the expedition of Hardman gold in streams on the Ord River in the eastern Kimberley, which suggested that gold deposits would be found in this remote area. It was found a year later gold deposits, but a gold rush began not one, probably the deposits were too low.

New Zealand gold rush

• Year of launch: about 1861
• Highlight: 1860
• Location: Otago
• Immigrants: mostly from Australia and California, and later from the Empire of China

In May 1861, discovered in Otago by Gabriel Read, who had previously mined in the gold fields of California and Australia, gold. Reads discovery was made public at a time when cash-rich mining companies in Australia ousted the independent prospector or replaced by cheaper Chinese wage laborers. Therefore, the message was well received in the Australian gold prospectors who translated tens of thousands to New Zealand. In the first three years there over 60,000 kg of gold were mined. Later, the Chinese took over the abandoned sites.

South African gold rush

• Year of launch: 1886
• Highlights: 1890s, 1900s, ...
• Location: Transvaal, esp Witwatersrand
• Immigrants: a few

1886 was found in the Transvaal gold on the Witwatersrand south of Pretoria. Unlike other gold deposits existed in the inhospitable South African desert area just a few immigrants. These foreigners bought on the local gold mines. Many blacks and poor whites took down the gold for the mine owners. Only a few "real" gold rush came. In 1900 the Transvaal was the largest gold producer in the world.