THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH - WINNING THE WEST

by Pam North

In 1848, the news of gold discoveries in far-off California set off an
explosion of immigration of hopeful adventurers determined to find their
fortunes.  Had the forty-niners had a realistic picture of what actually
lay ahead for them in their quest, they likely never would have ventured
west.  Mining reporter Eliot Lord wrote in the early 1880s, "Mining
is, perhaps, the only business pursuit in which men stake large fortunes
on the acquisition of prizes against the balance of probabilities.  It is 
certainly the only business undertaking where skill, energy, foresight and 
industry, aided by ample capital, will not command a measure of success."
Despite the truths portrayed in this quote, during the next sixty years
countless optimists would attempt to conquer the odds and hardships inherent
in the pursuit of gold.

The California gold rush, precursor to the later one in Colorado beginning
in 1859, attracted immigrants, by land and sea, from every corner of the
globe.  The area was a magnet for greedy, materialistic and impatient
people whose sole obsession was to get rich quick.  Violence and ignorance
prospered, and were the root of all other evils.  Standards of behavior
and impunity of crime were shocking in the extreme, but the lust for easy
wealth and exciting adventure beckoned irresistably, and the incoming 
adventurers tossed away values that they had spent years assimilating.
Vice thrived.  Gaming houses operated with marked dice, watered-down liquor 
and oiled cards; drugs and prostitutes were readily available.  Women, of 
which there was a tremendous scarcity, were usually engaged in the world's 
oldest occupation, and an appalling slave trade in young Oriental girls 
soon prospered as well.  Racism ran rampant.  Uncontrolled price-gouging 
was enthusiatically engaged in by merchants; quick "justice" that was usually
a mockery of what it represented was common, and all evils were often protected
by the very law-enforcement officials who instead should have been combating
them.

The metamorphosis of California's gold rush generated the same pattern
Colorado's would follow a few years later.  The noisy, chaotic camps
of flimsy tents and huts would be replaced by slightly more substantial
wooden buildings, which, in turn, would be consumed by one or more major
fires.  Before the embers had cooled, brick and stone replacement
structures of several floors would be under construction, this time with
more planning and foresight, and a full-fledged town would begin to emerge,
with real streets, luxury hotels and restaurants, shops and stores added
to what had basically been a collection of saloons, brothels and flophouses.
The population, initially a collection of scruffy prospectors, miners and
laborers, would become a multicultural throng of people in a variety of
occupations, many of whom would make more money than the miners if they
could fulfill a particular niche that was in demand, and take advantage
of the outrageous prices that could be extracted for a needed service.
Clever entrepreneurs, like the tailor named Levi, whose sturdy pants with
double seams and metal studs became the obligatory miner's uniform, made
their fortunes around the quest for gold rather than engaging in that 
back-breaking and often futile occupation themselves.

As respectable women began to come to the area, the previous savagery
began to wane;  society of the more normal type began to nudge the
vice and corruption into more secret corners, and families settled in.
At that point banks, schools and churches were built, and the demand for
culture would be met with the formation or importation of theater companies
and orchestras.  Communications improved; roads were built; stagecoach
and mail services were instituted.  Society that aspired to law and
order began to flourish, and the return to civilization, forgotten in the
delirium for easy gold, began in earnest.

Thousands of adventures tasted defeat in the gold rush, and many returned,
penniless, to the places from which they had come.  Still others, however,
 stayed on in this wild and beautiful country because they found that they 
wanted to live nowhere else.  They could begin their lives anew, often with 
more freedom and favorable prospects than those they had left behind.

Gold had fulfilled its function; it had attracted the men who conquered
the region and made of it the promised land, and in their efforts the West
was irreversibly won.