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Article: Forty-Niners
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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FORTY-NINERS
FORTY-NINERS.
The discovery of gold in the Sierra in January 1848 brought hundreds of thousands of fortune hunters to California over the next few years: the forty-niners. The first to find gold tried to keep it secret, but the strike was too huge to conceal. News of the strike reached Yerba Buena, on San Francisco Bay, in May 1848. Immediately, two-thirds of the population dropped whatever they were doing and headed for the gold fields. As the word spread over the world, people from Europe, Chile, Hawaii, China, Mexico, Australia, and especially from the eastern United States converged on California. Ninety percent were men, but women also joined the gold rush.
Thousands ...