Gold rush
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A gold rush or gold fever is a discovery of
In the 19th century, the wealth that resulted was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself proved unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large fortunes, and merchants and transportation facilities made large profits. The resulting increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. Historians have written extensively about the mass migration, trade, colonization, and environmental history associated with gold rushes.[2]
Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free-for-all" in
Gold rushes helped spur waves of immigration that often led to the permanent settlement of new regions. Activities propelled by gold rushes define significant aspects of the culture of the Australian and
The Gold Rush was a topic that inspired many TV shows and books considering it was a very important topic at the time. During the time, many books were published including The Call of the Wild, which had much success during the period.
Gold rushes occurred as early as the times of Ancient Greece, whose gold mining was described by Diodarus Sicules and Pliny the Elder, and probably further back to ancient Greece.
Surviving the gold rush
Within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge.
A rush typically begins with the discovery of
After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organisations 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
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. Hard rock 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 arrastra to crush their ore; later, they may build stamp mills to crush ore at greater speed. As the miners venture downwards, 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.
By region
Australia and New Zealand
Various gold rushes occurred in Australia over the second half of the 19th century. The most significant of these, although not the only ones, were the New South Wales gold rush and Victorian gold rush in 1851,[3] and the Western Australian gold rushes of the 1890s. They were highly significant to their respective colonies' political and economic development as they brought many immigrants, and promoted massive government spending on infrastructure to support the new arrivals who came looking for gold. While some found their fortune, those who did not often remained in the colonies and took advantage of extremely liberal land laws to take up farming.
Gold rushes happened at or around:
- Victoria
- Bathurst, New South Wales
- Beechworth, Victoria
- Bendigo, Victoria
- Canoona, Queensland
- Charters Towers, Queensland
- Coolgardie, Western Australia
- Gympie, Queensland
- Gulgong, New South Wales
- Halls Creek, Western Australia
- Hill End, New South Wales
- Kalgoorlie, Western Australia
- Queenstown, Tasmania
In New Zealand the
North America
The first significant gold rush in the United States was in
The gold rush in 1849 also stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, leading to further rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland. Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America:
One of the last "great gold rushes" was the
The most successful of the North American gold rushes was the
Africa
In South Africa, the
South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total world output in 1896. At the time of the South African rush, gold production benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists, the MacArthur-Forrest process, of using potassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore.[13]
South America
The gold mine at El Callao (Venezuela), started in 1871, was for a time one of the richest in the world, and the goldfields as a whole saw over a million ounces exported between 1860 and 1883. The gold mining was dominated by immigrants from the British Isles and the British West Indies, giving an appearance of almost creating an English colony on Venezuelan territory.
Between 1883 and 1906 Tierra del Fuego experienced a gold rush attracting many Chileans, Argentines and Europeans to the archipelago. The gold rush began in 1884 following discovery of gold during the rescue of the French steamship Arctique near Cape Virgenes.[14]
Mining industry today
There are about 10 to 30 million small-scale miners around the world, according to Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM). Approximately 100 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on small-scale mining. For example, there are 800,000 to 1.5 million
In an exclusive report, Reuters accounted the smuggling of billions of dollars' worth of gold out of Africa through the United Arab Emirates in the Middle East, which further acts as a gateway to the markets in the United States, Europe and more. The news agency evaluated the worth and magnitude of illegal gold trade occurring in African nations like Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia, by comparing the total gold imports recorded into the UAE with the exports affirmed by the African states. According to Africa's industrial mining firms, they have not exported any amount of gold to the UAE – confirming that the imports come from other, illegal sources. As per customs data, the UAE imported gold worth $15.1 billion from Africa in 2016, with a total weight of 446 tons, in variable degrees of purity. Much of the exports were not recorded in the African states, which means huge volume of gold imports were carried out with no taxes paid to the states producing it.[16]
By date
Before 1860
- Brazilian Gold Rush, Minas Gerais (1695)[17]
- Carolina Gold Rush, Cabarrus County, North Carolina, US (1799)[4]
- Georgia Gold Rush, Georgia, US (1828)
- California Gold Rush(1848–55)
- Siberian Gold Rush, Siberia, Russian Empire
- Queen Charlottes Gold Rush, British Columbia, Canada (1850); the first of many British Columbia gold rushes
- Northern Nevada Gold Rush (1850–1934)[clarification needed]
- Victoria, Australia (1851–late 1860s). Known as the Golden Triangle, it incorporated areas such as Ararat, Castlemaine, Marybororgh, Clunes, Bendigo, Ballarat, Daylesford, Beechworth, and Eldorado.
- Kern River Gold Rush, California(1853–58)
- Idaho Gold Rush, near Colville, Washington (1855; also known as the Fort Colville Gold Rush)
- Gila Placers Rush, New Mexico Territory (present-day Arizona; 1858–59)
- Fraser Canyon Gold Rush, British Columbia (1858–61)
- Rock Creek Gold Rush, British Columbia (1859–60s)[clarification needed]
- Pike's Peak Gold Rush, Pikes Peak, Kansas Territory(present-day Colorado; 1859)
1860s
- Holcomb Valley Gold Rush, California (1860–61)
- Clearwater Gold Rush, Idaho (1860)
- Central Otago Gold Rush, New Zealand (1861)
- Eldorado Canyon Rush, New Mexico Territory (present-day Nevada; 1861)
- Colorado River Gold Rush, Arizona Territory (1862–64)
- Boise Basin Gold Rush, Idaho (1862)
- Cariboo Gold Rush, British Columbia (1862–65)
- Montana Gold Rush (1862–69), including:[18]
- Last Chance Gulch) (1862–64)
- Confederate Gulch (1864–69)
- Stikine Gold Rush, British Columbia (1863)
- Owyhee Gold Rush, Southeastern Oregon, Southwestern Idaho (1863)
- Owens Valley Rush, Owens Valley, California (1863–64)
- Leechtown Gold Rush, (south of Sooke Lake), Leech River, Vancouver Island(1864–65)
- West Coast Gold Rush, South Island, New Zealand (1864–67)
- Big Bend Gold Rush, British Columbia (1865—66)
- Francistown Gold Rush, British Protectorate of Bechuanaland (1867)[19]
- Omineca Gold Rush, British Columbia (1869)
- Wild Horse Creek Gold Rush, British Columbia (1860s)[clarification needed]
- Eastern Oregon Gold Rush (1860s–70s)[clarification needed]
- Kildonan Gold Rush, Sutherland, Scotland (1869)[20]
1870s
- Lapland gold rush, Finland, 1870
- El CallaoGold Rush, Venezuela, 1871
- Cassiar Gold Rush, British Columbia, 1871
- Palmer River Gold Rush, Palmer River, Queensland, Australia (1872)
- Pilgrim's Rest, South Africa (1873)
- (1874–78)
- Bodie Gold Rush, Bodie, California (1876)
- Kumara Gold Rush, Kumara and Dillmanstown, New Zealand (1876)[21]
1880s
- BarbertonGold Rush, South Africa (1883)
- largest deposit of gold in the world. The resulting influx of miners became one of the triggers of the Second Boer Warof 1899-1902.
- Lillooet, British Columbia(1884—87)
- Tulameen Gold Rush, near Princeton, British Columbia[when?]
- (1884–1906)
- Baja California Gold Rush, in the Santa Clara mountains about sixty miles southeast of Ensenada (1889)[22]
- Amur gold rush, on the China-Russia border. Some miners in the region formed independent proto-states such as the Zheltuga Republic.
1890s
- Cripple Creek Gold Rush, Cripple Creek, Colorado (1891)
- Coolgardie, Western Australia (1893, 1896)
- Mount Baker Gold Rush, Whatcom County, Washington, United States (1897–1920s)
- Klondike Gold Rush, centered on Dawson City, Yukon, Canada (1896–99)
- Atlin Gold Rush, Atlin, British Columbia(1898)
- Nome Gold Rush, Nome, Alaska (1899–1909)
- Fairview Goldrush, Oliver (Fairview), British Columbia, Canada
20th century
- Fairbanks Gold Rush, Fairbanks, Alaska (1902–05)
- Goldfield Gold Rush, Goldfield, Nevada[when?]
- Timmins, Ontario, Canada – little known, but one of the largest in terms of gold mined, 67 million ounces as of 2001
- Iditarod Gold Rush, Flat, Alaska, 1910–12, where gold was discovered by John Beaton and William A. Dikeman in 1908
- Soviet gold rush - notably involving Gulag slave labor in the Kolyma region[23]
- Kakamega gold rush, Kenya, 1932
- Vatukoula Gold Rush, Fiji, 1932
- Serra Pelada, Brazil
- Mount Diwata Gold Rush, Monkayo, Philippines, 1983-1987[24]
- Amazon Gold Rush,
- Mount Kare Gold Rush, Enga Province, Papua New Guinea[26][27]
21st century
- Great Mongolian Gold Rush, Mongolia (2001)[28]
- Apuí Gold Rush, Brazilian Portuguese: garimpos).[30]
- Madre de Dios (2009)[31]
- Tibesti Mountains gold rush, Chad, Libya and Niger (2012)[32]
- Gold rush in South Kivu, Democratic Republic of the Congo (2021)[33][34]
See also
References
- ISBN 978-1612308975.
- .
- ISBN 978-1-74110-492-9.
- ^ a b "The North Carolina Gold Rush". Tar Heel Junior Historian 45, no. 2 (Spring 2006) copyright North Carolina Museum of History.
- JSTOR 25462518.
- ISBN 978-0-19-503863-7.
- ^ "Gold Rushes: The First Gold Rush". Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Archived from the original on 30 January 2022. Retrieved 30 January 2022.
- ^ Halloran, Jim (September 2010). "Alaska's Hope-Sunrise Mining District". Prospecting and Mining Journal. 80 (1). Retrieved 28 November 2016.
- ^ "Biographie".
- ^ "The gold exploration surge continues in Timmins". 22 August 2022.
- ^ Turner, Bob; Quat, Marianne; Debicki, Ruth; Thurston, Phil (2015), "Timmins: Canada's greatest goldfields!" (PDF), Natural Resources Canada and Ontario Geological Survey 2015, GeoTours Northern Ontario series
- OCLC 1196176649.)
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link - ^ Micheloud, François (2004). "The Crime of 1873: Gold Inflation this time". FX Micheloud Monetary History. François Micheloud: www.micheloud.com. Archived from the original on 2006-05-20.
- ^ Martinic Beros, Mateo. Crónica de las Tierras del Canal Beagle. 1973. Editorial Francisco de Aguirre S.A. pp. 55–65
- ^ Soaring prices drive a modern, illegal gold rush, New York Times, July 14, 2008
- ^ "Gold worth billions smuggled out of Africa". Reuters. Retrieved 24 April 2019.
- ^ "Gold rush". Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Retrieved 2008-08-31.
- ISBN 978-0-295-97129-2. Retrieved 19 December 2014.
- ISBN 9781740595452– via Google Books.
- ^ "The Baile an Or project– Scotland's Gold Rush Retrieved: 2010-03-31". Archived from the original on 2011-06-25. Retrieved 2010-03-31.
- Encyclopedia of New Zealand (1966).
- ^ Flanigan, Sylvia K. (Winter 1980). Thomas L. Scharf (ed.). "The Baja California gold rush of 1889". The Journal of San Diego History. 26 (1). San Diego Historical Society Quarterly.
- ^
Levitan, Gregory (2008). "1: History of gold exploration and mining in the CIS". Gold Deposits Of The CIS. Xlibris Corporation. p. 24. ISBN 9781462836024. Retrieved 2017-10-29.described in his book (1938) that by 1933 all plans to put prospectors back to work in the field had been worked out and implemented as rapidly as possible. Regulations to govern relations between prospectors and Gold Thrust were drawn up, setting in motion a Soviet gold rush.
The early 1930s were marked by the decision of the Communist Party Politburo to reinstate the institution of prospectors who had been banned as antisocialist elements in the second half of the 1920s. Littlepage
- ^ Rationalizing Mining Operations at the Diwalwal Gold Rush Area, Monkayo, Compostela Valley
- ^ Marlise Simons (1988-04-25). "In Amazon Jungle, a Gold Rush Like None Before". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-08-31.
- ISBN 978-0646482811.
- ISBN 978-0947062804.
- CNNMoney.com. Retrieved 2011-04-24.
- ^ Jens Glüsing (February 9, 2007). "Gold Rush in the Rainforest: Brazilians Flock to Seek their Fortunes in the Amazon". Der Spiegel. Retrieved 2011-04-24.
- ^ Tom Phillips (January 11, 2007). "Brazilian goldminers flock to 'new Eldorado'". The Guardian. Retrieved 2011-04-24.
- ^ Lauren Keane (December 19, 2009). "Rising prices spark a new gold rush in Peruvian Amazon". The Washington Post. Retrieved 2011-04-24.
- ^ Chamberlain, Gethin (January 17, 2018). "The deadly African gold rush fuelled by people smugglers' promises". The Guardian. Retrieved 2019-02-27.
- ISSN 0013-0613. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
- ^ "Congo bans mining in South Kivu village after gold rush". Reuters. 2021-03-04. Retrieved 2021-03-29.
Further reading
- Ngai, Mae. The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (2021), Mid 19c in California, Australia and South Africa [ISBN missing]
- White, Franklin. Miner with a Heart of Gold – Biography of a Mineral Science and Engineering Educator. FriesenPress. 2020. ISBN 978-1-5255-7765-9 (Hardcover) ISBN 978-1-5255-7766-6 (Paperback) ISBN 978-1-5255-7767-3 (eBook).
External links
- Object of History: the Gold Nugget
- PBS' American Experience: The Gold Rush
- Exploring the California Gold Rush
- The Australian Gold Rush
- Off to the Klondike! The Search for Gold Archived 2016-04-02 at the Wayback Machine – illustrated historical essay
Gold rushes of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries | |
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Part of a series on Gold mining |