The directory «Plots»

Gold Rush

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold. Several gold rushes took place throughout the 19th century in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United States. Gold rushes helped spur permanent non-indigenous settlement of new regions and define a significant part of the culture of the North American and Australian frontiers. As well, at a time when money was based on gold, the newly-mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the gold fields. The history of gold rushes extends back to the Roman empire as well as the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and probably yet further back to Ancient Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The first known map is of a gold mine in Nubia, for example. The gold mining activities were described by Diodorus Siculus and Pliny the Elder.

North American Gold rushes

The first significant gold rush in the United States was the Georgia Gold Rush in the southern Appalachians, which started in 1829. It was followed by the California Gold Rush of 1848–49 in the Sierra Nevada, which captured the popular imagination. The California gold rush led directly to the settlement of California by Americans and the rapid entry of that state into the union in 1850. Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America, gradually moving north: Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, and the Rocky Mountains. One of the last "great gold rushes" was the Klondike Gold Rush in Canada's Yukon Territory (1898–99), immortalized in the novels of Jack London, the poetry of Robert W. Service and films such as Charlie Chaplin's The Gold Rush. Resurrection Creek, near Hope, Alaska was the site of Alaska's first gold rush over a century ago, and placer mining continues today. Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes were Nome and the Fortymile River. The gold rush in 1849 stimulated world-wide interest in prospecting for gold, and led to new rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland.

Australian Gold rushes

The Victorian gold rush, which occurred in Australia in 1851 soon after the California gold rush, was the biggest of several Australian gold rushes. That gold rush was highly significant to Australia’s, and especially Victoria's and Melbourne's, political and economic development. With the Australian gold rushes came the construction of the first railways and telegraph lines, multiculturalism and racism, the Eureka Stockade and the end of penal transportation. Many of those involved in mining in Victoria later travelled across the Tasman Sea to take part in the Central Otago Gold Rush, New Zealand's biggest gold rush. This kick-started New Zealand's economy and made the city of Dunedin a major financial center in the young colony.

South Africa

In South Africa, the Witwatersrand Gold Rush in the Transvaal was equally important to that country's history, leading to the founding of Johannesburg and tensions between the Boers and British settlers.

Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly. The significance of gold rushes in history has given a longer life to the term, and it is now applied generally to denote any capitalist economic activity in which the participants aspire to race each other in common pursuit of a new and apparently highly lucrative market, often precipitated by an advance in technology.

Within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge. They may also progress from high-unit value to lower unit value minerals (from gold to silver to base metals).

The rush is often started by a discovery of placer gold made by an individual or small group. At first the gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a gold pan or similar simple instrument. Once it is clear that the volume of gold-bearing sediment is larger than a few cubic meters, the placer miners will build rockers or sluice boxes, with which a small group can wash gold from the sediment many times faster than using gold pans. Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only a simple pan or equipment that may be built on the spot, and only simple organization. The low investment, the high value per unit weight of gold, and the ability of gold dust and gold nuggets to serve as a medium of exchange, allow placer gold rushes to occur even in remote locations.

After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organizations, and higher capital expenditures. Small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels. Water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques of ground sluicing, hydraulic mining, and dredging may be used.

Typically the heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins of lode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Hardrock mining, like placer mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital and technology. The surface outcrop of a gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, and the ore needs only to be crushed and washed (free milling ore). The first miners may at first build a simple arrastre to crush their ore; later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore more quickly. As the miners dig down, they may find that the deeper part of vein contains gold locked in sulfide or telluride minerals, which will require smelting. If the ore is still sufficiently rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter (direct shipping ore). Lower-grade ore may require on-site treatment to either recover the gold or to produce a concentrate sufficiently rich for transport to the smelter. As the district turns to lower-grade ore, the mining may change from underground mining to large open-pit mining.

Many silver rushes followed upon gold rushes. As transportation and infrastructure improve, the focus may change progressively from gold to silver to base metals. In this way, Leadville, Colorado started as a placer gold discovery, achieved fame as a silver-mining district, then relied on lead and zinc in its later days. Butte, Montana began mining placer gold, then became a silver-mining district, then became for a time the world’s largest copper producer.

Canada, 2008, Gold Rush

Falkland Islands, 1999, Halk of «Vicar of Bray»

Falkland Islands, 1999, Panning for gold, 1849

Falkland Islands, 1999, Gold rocking crandle, 1849

Falkland Islands, 1999, «Vicar of Bray»

Falkland Islands, 1999, «Vicar of Bray» in San Francisco

Irland, 1988, Eureca Stockade

Irland, 2001, Peter Laior

Irland, 2001, Life in gold camp

New Zealand, 2006, Gold Panning

New Zealand, 2006, Settlement at Kurunui Greek

New Zealand, 2006, Chines prospectros

New Zealand, 2006, Last Otago gold escort

New Zealand, 2006, Waterfront at Lunedin

Panama Canal Zone, 1949, ”Forty-niners“ Arriving at Chagres

Panama Canal Zone, 1949, Journey by ”Bungo“ to Las Cruces

Panama Canal Zone, 1949, Las Cruces Trail to Panama

Panama Canal Zone, 1949, Departure for San Francisco

USA, 1948, Sutter’s Mill, Coloma,California

USA, 1950, Gold Miner, Pioneers and S.S.Oregon

USA, 1959, Henry Comstock at Mount Davidson Site

USA, 1998, Gold Prospectors

USA, 1999, Prospectors

Canada, 2008.08.01, Fort Langley. Gold Rush