17 July 2022 - THE CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH

 

THE CALIFORNIA 

GOLD RUSH

G'day folks,

In 1848, James Wilson Marshall checked that the watercourse of the mill he was in charge of was clear of silt and debris. He peered through the clear water, saw something shining up at him, and later recalled: “It made my heart thump, for I was certain it was gold.”

It was. And Marshall’s discovery led to the famous frantic California Gold Rush when thousands of get-rich-quick hopeful prospectors from all over the world engulfed the area.

Marshall was born in 1810 in New Jersey and like his father he became a carpenter and wheelwright. When he was 18 he decided to head west and spent several unsettled years in Kansas, Indiana and Illinois. Then in 1844 he joined a wagon train going to California.

It arrived in July, 1845 at a Sacramento River settlement run by John Sutter. He was a German-born Swiss citizen and founder of the colony of Nueva Helvetia (New Switzerland, which would later become the city of Sacramento).

Sutter at first hired Marshall as a carpenter but later they went into partnership to build a sawmill along the American River at Coloma. Marshall agreed to operate it in return for a portion of the lumber.

Then came the gold discovery. The partners tried to keep it a secret but word got out and newspapers were soon reporting that large quantities of the precious metal had been found at Sutter’s Mill.

An early trickle of get-rich-quick hopeful prospectors turned into a flood and by August of 1848 an estimated 4,000 of them had converged on the area. It was said that about three-quarters of the male population of San Francisco had left home to join the hunt for gold.

The influx was to turn into a frenzy in December after President James Knox Polk publicly announced that Colonel Richard Mason, California’s military governor, had issued a positive report on the gold discovery. Polk said: “The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service.”

These comments by the President served as a launch button for the gold rush in 1849. Men all over the United States left their families after borrowing money, mortgaging their homes or using life savings so that they could get to California.

They were known as the Forty-Niners and were joined by hopeful speculators from around the world including Mexico, Chile, Peru and even China. By the end of 1849, the non-native population of California was estimated at 100,000, as compared to about 800 in March of the previous year.

Mining camps and new towns sprang up everywhere, bringing with them general stores, saloons and brothels. Gambling, prostitution, violence and general lawlessness in the overcrowded settlements was rampant.

So the men who came out of them were tough and determined. But striking it rich with a pick and shovel was not only hard work, it called for a lot of luck. And it is fair to say that luck for the prospectors pretty well ran out in 1853 when the new technique of hydraulic mining was introduced. The growing industrialisation of mining meant that gold became more and more difficult to reach for independent miners and their daily take sharply decreased.

Mining had reached its peak in 1852 when the California earth yielded gold worth about $81 million. It then started to decline, the take levelling off to around $45 million a year by 1857. The gold rush is considered to have ended in 1858.

As for James Marshall, the man who started it all, his sawmill failed after the men working for him all abandoned their jobs to look for gold. And Marshall failed to win legal recognition of his own gold claims. Resentful, he wandered around California for a few years until settling in a small cabin where he died in 1885.

 

2 July 2019 - NEVADA GOLD MINE NOW A TOURIST SPOT

NEVADA GOLD MINE 

NOW A TOURIST SPOT

G'day folks,

Located in the arid Nevada hills, the Techatticup Mine once spat out enough gold and silver to inspire murder, treachery, and claim-jumping. Now it has been restored and is partially open to visitors looking to take a tour through the rocky but, luckily, bloodless tunnels.

While the thick veins of precious metals were discovered in the hills of what is now Nelson, Nevada by Spanish explorers in the 1700s, digging did not begin in earnest until around a hundred years later in one of the largest mining booms in the state history. 

Hungry prospectors began to swarm the area around the mid-1800s, digging a warren of tunnels and shafts deep into the hills, following seemingly endless mineral veins into the ground. The area soon became a popular refuge for Civil War deserters who hid from battle in the remote and inhospitable desert climate.

Ownership of the mines soon became a hotly contested issue with groups of miners claim-jumping one another or simply murdering their competition. Soon the area became infamous as a lawless free-for-all where murder could be a nightly occurrence. At the peak of the criminal activity, local law enforcement refused to even enter the area.  

Eventually the boom subsided and the Techatticup Mine was abandoned leaving behind miles of tunnels and countless rickety sheds and houses. After decades of neglect the land was purchased by the Werly family who set to work restoring the historic buildings and even excavating and exploring the many tunnels. Today the Werlys themselves now offer historic tours through portions of the mines walking visitors some 500 feet into the hills over pits hundreds of feet deep, showing veins of gold and silver that still sit unmined in the rock.

The area has also been the setting of a number of films including 3000 Miles to Graceland, from which the remains of a fake exploded plane can still be seen.  

Clancy's comment: I'd like to visit this mine. The gold era in Australia has always enchanted me.

I'm ...

12 June 2016 - EDWARD HAMMOND HARGRAVES

EDWARD HAMMOND

 HARGRAVES

1816-1891

G'day folks,

Edward Hammond Hargraves was a gold prospector who claimed to have found gold in Australia in 1851, starting an Australian gold rush. Hargraves (1816-1891), gold rush publicist, was born on 7 October 1816 at Gosport, Hampshire, England, son of Lieutenant John Edward Hargraves and his wife Elizabeth, née Whitcombe. 

Educated at Brighton Grammar School and Lewes, he went to sea at 14 and arrived at Sydney in 1832. He worked on a property at Bathurst, gathered bêche-de-mer and tortoise shell in Torres Strait and in 1834 took up 100 acres (40 ha) near Wollongong. In 1836 at Sydney he married Elizabeth, née Mackay. In 1839 they moved to East Gosford where he became an agent for the General Steam Navigation Co. and with her dowry bought land and built the Fox under the Hill Hotel. In 1843 he forfeited his property, left his wife to look after a store and took up land on the Manning River.

Hargraves sold out and sailed for California on 17 July 1849. He returned to Sydney in January 1851, planning to win a fortune not so much by finding gold but by claiming the government reward for discovery of a payable goldfield. On his way to the Wellington district he saw promising specimens at Guyong and on 12 February, with John Lister, found five specks of gold in Lewis Ponds Creek. In the next weeks he traversed much of the area with slight success, but his campaign depended on finding rich deposits so he enlisted Lister and William, James and Henry, sons of William Tom, to continue the search. Hargraves had taught them Californian panning techniques and how to make and use a wooden cradle.

Hargraves returned to Sydney in March and interviewed the colonial secretary (Sir) Edward Deas Thomson. Encouraged by news from the Tom brothers, Hargraves wrote to the Sydney Morning Herald describing in general terms the rich fields. When sure of the government reward some weeks later he announced in the press the specific areas where gold existed and left for Bathurst early in May. He ignored pleas by the Toms and Lister for secrecy, named the area Ophir and whipped up enthusiasm in the Bathurst district. 

By 15 May over 300 diggers were at Ophir and the first gold rush had begun.
Although Hargraves exaggerated and falsified his finds he never denied his main purpose. The government gave him £10,000 and from 1877 an annual pension of £250. He was also showered with testimonials, valuable cups and other trophies. In 1851 be became a commissioner of crown lands for the gold districts and a justice of the peace. In 1853-54 Hargraves visited England, lived in style, met the Queen and in 1855 published Australia and its Gold Fields, which was probably ghosted. Some £3000 poorer he returned with a builder to erect, entirely of cedar, a fine house at Norah Head. 

He entertained lavishly and by the early 1860s was virtually penniless. Invited by governments he prospected in Western Australia in 1862 and South Australia in 1863. In 1861 he had begun to appeal to the Victorian government for the balance of its £5000 reward, of which he had received only £2381 6s. 1d. in 1854. When petitions failed, he sought help in 1867 from James Butters who persuaded a member of the Legislative Assembly to move for payment. The motion was lost and Hargraves went to Melbourne and in the Age charged politicians with corruption. Inquiry by a select committee found none of his charges proven. Deserted by the manipulators he had tried to use, he claimed to be specially shocked by Butters who had paid his hotel bills as a fellow Freemason but cast doubts on his honesty.

In New South Wales Lister and the Tom brothers realized too late that they too had been used by Hargraves. In 1853 a Legislative Council select committee heard long arguments about the 1851 events and, while upholding Hargraves's key role, recommended that £1000 be granted to the men taught by Hargraves and a similar amount to Rev. William Branwhite Clarke. 

Hargraves's polemical account of the matter in his book did not silence the increasingly bitter Toms and Lister. From 1870 they bombarded parliament with petitions and campaigned in pamphlets and press. 

Their persistence was rewarded in 1890 when a Legislative Assembly select committee found that although Hargraves had taught the others how to use the dish and cradle, 'Messrs Tom and Lister were undoubtedly the first discoverers of gold obtained in Australia in payable quantity', but the legend of Hargraves, 'the discoverer of gold' persists. He died in Sydney on 29 October 1891 and was buried in the Anglican section of Waverley cemetery. He was survived by two sons and three daughters and left an estate worth less than £375.

Clancy's comment: The gold era has always been my favourite part of our history.  A future book in a few months will be called 'Irish Gold'. It's about the Irish on the goldfields, and also about bushrangers.

I'm ...