Essay Sample on California Gold Rush

Merriam Webster defines opportunity as a favorable junction of circumstances.  Oppression is defined as a sense of being weighed down in body or mind.  “The California Gold Rush is considered by many historians to be the most significant event of the first half of the nineteenth century” (PBS).  The Gold Rush was definitely an opportunity.  It was a choice people made.  No one held a gun to anyone’s head to go find gold, so oppression is out of the equation.   America is the known as the land of opportunity.  There is a wealth of opportunity for anyone that enters the country.  There is also a wealth of opportunity for anyone born in America.  This holds true from the beginning America was founded to present day.  The California Gold Rush was one of the biggest opportunities for Americans during the middle 1800s.  Why was the Gold Rush an opportunity?  The Gold Rush helped individuals and families find opportunities away from the East.  It was not just about finding the gold.  It was about creating a new life.

In early 1848, James Marshall, found some flakes in the base of the river in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. He was working in a power mill for John Sutter at the time.  Marshall’s discovery came at a great time for America because a treaty was signed after the Mexican-American War and California then became part of America.  This treaty led to the gold being on American soil.  This allowed Americans to prosper from the gold.  This allowed Americans the opportunity to change who they were, where they were, and their circumstances (whether they turned out good or bad).

Marshall and Sutter did try to keep their discovery a secret, but like all great secrets, it came out and then it hit the newspapers.  At first, there was not a whole lot of stock put into the discovery, but a man name Sam Brannan started a ruckus with his small portion of gold from Sutter’s Creek.  This created a mass exodus towards California.

The news spread and then people began to see that fortunes were going to be made.  At first, men hit the trail for the opportunity to find the gold.  Men borrowed money, mortgaged things, sold everything they owned for the opportunity to find gold. There were promises to their wives and families back home, that gold would set them for life.  These individuals wanted more for themselves and more for their families.  Opportunity was at their fingertips.

The California Gold Rush created a large migration towards the west.  People left their homes and begin to create a new life out west.  This not only helped them, it helped the economy in America.  That was an opportunity for America to prosper even more than it already had.  The migration, caused by the gold rush caused Americans to think bigger and bolder for the future.  

When news of the gold findings first broke out it was people from California, Oregon, Mexico, Chile, and Peru that headed west.  People in the east were not really quick to jump on this bandwagon because the proof was so far away.  “Skeptical editors downplayed the notion, despite letters from California like the one in the September 14 issue of the Philadelphia North American that read, "Your streams have minnows and ours are paved with gold.” (PBS)  In December of 1848, President James K. Polk, mentioned it in his State of the Union Address and then the rest of Americans became believers.

Once word got out the amount of people that arrived in California had boomed to around 100,000 people and almost two thirds of them were Americans.  Mining was not an easy way of life.  The miners learned quickly that it was really hard labor.  Mining is not just digging.  Mining means individuals move rock, dig dirt, and they had to traipse in freezing water to pan for the gold.  They chose this way of life.  Choosing something like the gold rush was an opportunity.  

The individuals that decided to follow the path to gold were not oppressed.  If they became oppressed it was of their own choosing.  They made the choice to go search for something, which may or may not have come to fruition.  If they did not strike it rich, that was their fault and not anyone else’s.  Even if a miner did not strike it rich, that miner changed his life and the course of his life because he seized an opportunity that changed who he was, when he started.  The miner took a favorable set of circumstances and changed the course of his life.