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The miners, forever known as the forty-niners, produced the second gold rush in the USA in 1849. It started when the news of the discovery at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 spread around the world. James W. Marshall worked for Capt. John Sutter and entered into a partnership with Sutter in 1847 to build a sawmill on the South Fork of the American River. The sawmill was completed by 1848, and on January 24th while inspecting the tailrace he spotted something yellow glistening in the water. After many test performed, by both Marshall and Sutter, it was indeed determined to be gold. They both agreed to keep the discovery a secret, but the news soon leaked out, and the great California forty-niner Gold Rush took off with a roar. By the summer of that year some 2,000 miners were working along the river. In the beginning it was mostly Mexicans and Americans that were mining the placer gold. Then thousands and thousands swarmed in from all over the world looking to get rich. In 1848 there were only 7 Chinese in California. By 1852 there were 20,000 and they were still coming in. Most of the immigrants settled in the southern part of what was known as La Veta Madre by the Mexicans, or the Mother Lode by the Americans. The American miners felt they had more rights to the gold than the foreigners did. Consequently they banished Mexican miners from Quartzburg, and chased the French and Chileans from Mokelumne Hill. Chinese miners were driven away from their richest claims and the American miners seized them for themselves. I guess because of the huge mixture of nationalities, it was just easier to refer to them all as the forty-niners. California’s admission into the union became official on September 9, 1850 as president Fillmore signed the admission act into law. Placer mining in the Mother Lode continued, but by the late 1850’s placer mining was generally no longer a profitable venture. Soon deep shaft (quartz) mining became a business, and many of the forty-niners joined the large companies working in the mines. Gold production from the lode mines continued into the mid-20th century. The oldest, largest and richest gold mine in California, the Empire Mine is located in Grass Valley. From 1850 until its closing in 1956, it produced 5.8 million ounces of gold, which is estimated to be only 20% of the available gold . . . 80% remains in the ground. Today the site is an 845 acre state park with many of the old buildings, as well as the entrance to 367 miles of abandoned and flooded mine shafts and tunnels. The owners cottage, the restored grounds and gardens as well as 12 miles of trails through the forested back country for hiking, bikers and horse back riders are available to the public. This is a favorite tourist attraction today. California forty-niners produced 106,276,163 ounces of gold, over 34% of the total production in the USA. The locations by county, and the amount of gold produced in each location of California is available in “THE GREAT AMERICAN GOLD RUSHES”, Volume I in “THE GREAT AMERICAN SERIES” of e-books on gold.
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