The California Gold Rush
Tha California Gold Rush was a major event in American history, impacting thousands of people all over the country and the wider world. To tell you all about it, we’re delighted to welcome our two hosts who lived through it: Enos Christman and Ellen Apple.
Hello! My name is Enos Christman, and I guess it’s my job to tell you all about the gold rush. Well, the whole thing started back in 1848, when a guy called James Marshall found gold at John Sutter’s Mill out in California. Just one year later, the whole world had gone gold mad! Thousands of people from every corner of the earth flocked to California to try and get some of the gold for themselves and make their fortune — and I was one of them! I was only 20 years old at the time, and boy, was it a long journey to make. I set off from my home in Pennsylvania in July 1849, and didn’t see the golden hills of California until February the following year, 222 days later! We didn’t have aeroplanes back then — I had to sail the entire way. It was hard to leave my home and all my family and friends behind, especially my girlfriend, Ellen Apple.
Did someone mention me? I’m Ellen Apple, and let me tell you, I was not happy when Enos decided to go to California. 3 years he would be gone. 3 years! And this was before the invention of mobile phones and video calls by the way! You guys don’t know how easy you have it now. Whilst Enos was away, the only contact we had was through letters we wrote to each other. Posting mail across the country was slow back in those days — it could take weeks for your letter to even be delivered, and months to get a reply back. We had it hard, but I tried not to complain. I knew that Enos would never be satisfied if he did not go to California and try to get rich. He was desperate to be able to take care of me and thought he would return with pockets full of gold.
That’s right! I arrived in California with golden dreams, just like thousands of others who made the journey west. In fact, more than 80,000 people had arrived in the state before I even got there. We immediately set out to work, trying to find gold that would make us rich. In the early days of the gold rush, gold could be found in riverbeds. It was hard work, but by washing the gravel at the bottom of the river you could find small flakes of gold or even golden nuggets if you were lucky.
Unfortunately, not many people were lucky though. Hardly any of the miners that went to California actually made any money. I sent letter after letter to Enos telling him to come home if he could not find much gold — all I cared about was him returning home to me as soon as possible. But he was not easily persuaded.
After several months of panning for gold in the riverbeds, I had not made very much money at all. I didn’t want to return home empty handed though, and so I looked for other ways of making money. As it turned out, although it was hard to get rich as a miner, it was much easier to make a fortune by selling things to the miners. I got a job at a local newspaper as a printer, and managed to earn much more than I had been in the gold fields with my pick and shovel. Merchants were the real winners in the gold rush — some of them made millions.
Enos didn’t quite make that much, but still, he managed to earn enough to bring him safely home to me, which is all that counts. He left California in June 1852 and sailed to New York, before reaching Pennsylvania in late July, where I was waiting for him. We had not seen each other in just over three years — I was sure glad to see him! And, although he didn’t come back with pockets full of gold as he had hoped, we still had each other and a happy lifetime together ahead of us. Other miners weren’t so lucky. Some wandered those California gold fields for years, searching for treasure that they never found. Some died penniless out in that wilderness, whilst others didn’t make it through the horrendous journey they had to make to get there or to return. All things considered, we were very lucky because, although the gold rush might sound fun, the truth is it really wasn’t.
