Gold fever: the rushes that filled continents

On 24 January 1848, James Marshall was building a sawmill for John Sutter on the South Fork of the American River, at Coloma in California. In the mill's tailrace he found gold. Word leaked out and reached San Francisco in March 1848.^1,2

What followed was the fastest migration the world had seen. California had about 14,000 non-Indian people when gold was found. By the end of 1849 it had nearly 100,000, and by 1852 about 250,000. The 1850 census counted 92,597 people. California became a state in 1850. We compare the numbers in our story gold rushes then and now.^4,5

The Census Bureau estimates that 750,000 pounds of gold were recovered from 1848 to 1855. That is about 340 t.⁵

The men who started it did badly. Adventurers seized Marshall's property, disputed his title to the land and left him in extreme poverty. John Sutter fared no better. His workers deserted, diggers overran his lands and the Supreme Court rejected his claim to 33 leagues of land.^3,6

Gold also had to get out. From 1849 steamers carried mail and gold from San Francisco to Panama. The Winfield Scott left San Francisco on 1 December 1853 with 1 million dollars in gold and was wrecked the next night. Treasure sent to Panama from 1854 to 1869 totalled 9,053,526 dollars.^7,8

As surface gold ran out, miners went underground. The Empire Mine in Grass Valley ran from 1850 to 1956 and produced nearly 6 million troy ounces of gold. Cornish miners worked it from about the mid 1850s. Its deepest shaft went more than 5,000 vertical feet down.⁹

One man who went to California was Edward Hargraves. He sailed to the diggings in 1849 and noticed that the rocks looked like those of the Blue Mountains back in New South Wales. On 12 February 1851 two men he had taught to wash gold in a cradle, Lister and Toms, found gold at Lewis Ponds Creek near Bathurst.¹⁰

Within a month a thousand men were looking for gold at the field named Ophir. It was the first publicised Australian gold rush. The colony's legislative council later granted Hargraves 10,000 pounds as a reward.¹³

He was not the first to find gold there. In 1840 the explorer Paul Strzelecki found gold-bearing quartz in the Wellington district. Governor Gipps asked him not to publicise it, for fear of unrest among convicts and labourers. The find stayed quiet until the 1851 rush.¹¹

The rush moved south. Gold was notified in the Yarra Ranges and the Pyrenees of Victoria on 5 July 1851, and the Mount Alexander, Ballarat and Bendigo fields followed. Between 1851 and 1861 an average of more than 40,000 people a year reached Victoria. Victoria was Australia's largest gold producer for 47 years, until 1898.^12,13

The fields were rich. Ballarat produced about 9.3 million ounces of gold from 1851 to 1870. Bendigo produced 447,212 ounces in 1858 alone, and its first reefs opened in 1854.^18,19

In the peak years from 1852 to 1855, Victoria produced most of the world's gold. Escorts carried about a tonne a week to Melbourne. The ship Madagascar sailed from Port Phillip in July 1853 with more than 60,000 ounces of gold dust for the Bank of England. It was never seen again.^20,21

Australia gold production, 1851 to 1910

The chart shows Australian gold output through the rush years. Australia mined 9.944 t of gold in 1851 and 76.069 t in 1860. For gold mining in Australia today, including its record of 327.952 t in 2020, see our guide to mining in Australia.^14,15

The diggers had grievances. Miners at Ballarat opposed the gold licence system. On 30 November 1854 about 500 gathered under the Eureka flag and elected Peter Lalor as their leader. On 3 December police and troops attacked the Eureka Stockade. Six police and troopers and at least 22 diggers died, and 125 miners were taken prisoner.²²

Thousands of Chinese miners came too. Lowe Kong Meng, born in British Penang, reached Victoria in 1853. In 1854 he founded Kong Meng and Co. to supply Chinese miners with goods from China, India and elsewhere. On 30 May 1859 he led a delegation of Melbourne's Chinese merchants to the Chief Secretary to argue against the residence tax.²³

Victoria also gave the world its most famous nuggets. On 9 June 1858, twenty-two Cornish miners of the Red Hill Mining Company found the Welcome Nugget at Bakery Hill, Ballarat, about 55 m underground. It weighed 68.98 kg.¹³

Eleven years later came something bigger. In 1869 the Welcome Stranger was found just under the soil at the base of a tree. It weighed about 70 kg. Geoscience Australia calls it the largest gold nugget ever found.¹³

In New South Wales, a mass of reef gold weighing 286 kg came out of Bernhardt Holtermann's Star of Hope mine at Hill End on 19 October 1872. It was the largest specimen of its kind. The photographers Merlin and Bayliss recorded it before it was crushed.²⁴

Gold seekers moved from field to field around the Pacific. On 25 May 1861 Gabriel Read found gold at Gabriels Gully in Otago. New Zealand's Department of Conservation calls it the country's first major gold rush. Dunedin's population jumped and Otago became the wealthiest province.²⁵

In British North America, gold found in the Fraser River in 1857 became a full rush in 1858. Parks Canada puts the number of miners at about 30,000, and many were American. The rush led Britain to create the Colony of British Columbia in 1858, partly from fear that the United States would annex it.^26,27

Further north in the Cariboo, Billy Barker and seven partners struck rich gold at 40 feet on Williams Creek in 1862. The boom town of Barkerville grew up around the strike. Barker is often called a Cornishman. He was in fact born in Cambridgeshire, and the Dictionary of Canadian Biography finds no evidence for the tale that his wife spent his fortune.²⁸

In 1859 placer miners near Virginia City, Nevada, made two strikes of silver and gold ore. The National Park Service calls it the first major silver strike in the United States. The towns of Virginia City and Gold Hill grew from about 4,000 people in 1862 to about 25,000 by 1874.^33,34

The lode carries the name of Henry Comstock. He did not find it. Patrick McLaughlin and Peter O'Riley found the outcrop on 8 June 1859. Comstock claimed ownership and was given a share, but he never shared in the millions the mines produced. He shot himself in Montana in 1870.²⁹

About 7 Mt of ore was milled from the Comstock Lode from 1860 to 1880, and it was exhausted by 1881. About 7,500 t of mercury was lost in processing it.³⁵

Some people did get rich. John Mackay rose from common miner to partner in the Big Bonanza, and estimates put his assets as high as 100 million dollars. George Hearst paid 3,000 dollars in 1859 for a one-sixth share of a Comstock mine, and left the Comstock with nearly 100,000 dollars.^36,37

The Colorado rush of 1858 to 1859 took the name Pikes Peak, but most of the early finds were far from the mountain. As many as 100,000 people may have set out in 1859. Only about 40,000 reached Denver, and about 10,000 were left in Colorado by early August 1859.³⁰

In 1874 an army expedition under George Custer went into the Black Hills, and one of its members found gold at French Creek. The Treaty of 1868 had set the land aside as part of a Sioux reservation. Prospectors came anyway. The Homestake claim was located near Lead in April 1876 and sold in 1877 to George Hearst and partners.³⁸

The Homestake became the largest and deepest gold mine in North America. It produced 41 million ounces of gold and 9 million ounces of silver before it closed in 2001.³⁹

One prospector could have owned half of it. In 1874 Thomas Walsh turned down an offer of half of a Deadwood prospect that later became the Homestake. He made his fortune anyway, from the Camp Bird gold mine near Ouray, Colorado, which he found in 1881.³¹

Colorado has two more myths worth fixing. In 1891 Mollie Gortner found gold near Cripple Creek and became the first woman to stake a claim in her own name there. An official survey still credited the find to "Mr M. C. Gortner". And the Titanic survivor Margaret Brown, whose family wealth came from Leadville mine shares, was never called Molly in her lifetime.^32,40

In August 1896 a party camped near the Klondike River found gold on Rabbit Creek, soon renamed Bonanza Creek. Parks Canada dates the find to the afternoon of 16 August. The party was Skookum Jim, also called Keish, his nephew Dawson Charlie, George Carmack and Kate Carmack. Accounts differ on who deserves the credit. Skookum Jim is generally held to be the discoverer.^41,42

George Carmack filed the first claim on 24 September 1896, probably in his name because he was the only Euro-American in the party. Kate Carmack, a Tagish woman, had sewn and baked for miners before the strike. The family claims produced close to a million dollars of gold in four years. George later left her almost penniless.^47,48

The world found out a year later. The steamship Portland reached Seattle on 17 July 1897 with 68 miners and more than a ton of gold. Between 1897 and 1900 more than 100,000 people set out for the Klondike. No more than 40,000 reached Dawson City.^44,49

Parks Canada estimates that Dawson City had 20,000 to 30,000 people at the height of the rush in 1898 and 1899. By 1918 it had fewer than 1,000.⁵⁰

The rush's best known writers mined little or no gold. Jack London sailed for the Klondike at 21 in July 1897 and crossed the Chilkoot Pass. He left with scurvy in the spring of 1898. His Yukon stories made him a fortune. Robert Service, the Bard of the Yukon, was a bank clerk, never a prospector.⁴⁵

Women were few. In 1901 only one percent of Yukon miners were women. Nellie Cashman, who had joined about 200 prospectors heading to the Cassiar district in 1873, was one of them. She told reporters she spent every cent she made on more claims.⁴⁶

The last of the great 19th century rushes was in the desert of Western Australia. In September 1892 Arthur Bayley and William Ford found gold at Fly Flat, later Coolgardie. Bayley took 554 ounces to the warden at Southern Cross. Bayley's Reward went on to produce more than 500,000 ounces over about 70 years.^51,52

In June 1893 Paddy Hannan, Thomas Flanagan and Dan O'Shea found gold near Mount Charlotte, about 40 km north-east of Coolgardie. On 17 June Hannan rode to Coolgardie with about 100 ounces to file a reward claim. Within about a week more than 1,400 men were working the new field.^53,55

Western Australia passed Victoria as Australia's top gold producer in 1898. Its output peaked at 2,064,803 fine ounces in 1903. The Golden Mile at Kalgoorlie has since produced about 58 million ounces.^12,51

The goldfields had no water. The Goldfields Water Supply Scheme pumped water 566 km from Mundaring Weir to Kalgoorlie, lifting it 390 m over the Darling Scarp. Work began in 1898 and the scheme opened in January 1903.^56,57

A future president learned his trade here. In 1897 the 22 year old Herbert Hoover was sent to inspect mines near Coolgardie for Bewick Moreing. He persuaded the firm to develop Sons of Gwalia and ran it until late 1898. He became President of the United States in 1929.⁵⁴

The Super Pit at Kalgoorlie is now one of Australia's best-known open pit gold mines. See the largest gold mines and our gold page for where gold is mined now.⁵⁸

How did the rushes compare? The table sets the main measures side by side for California, Victoria, the Klondike, the Witwatersrand and Western Australia. Each figure links to its source.^4,12,44,61

Drag to turn the globe

The rushes changed world gold supply. The US Mint estimated world output at an average of 186.47 thousand ounces a year from 1493. By 1899 it put world output at 14,837.775 thousand ounces.⁵⁹

World gold production, 1493 to 1899

Next: diamonds and deep gold

The chart has a sharp rise at the end. It was not caused by a prospector with a pan. In 1868 a German explorer named Carl Mauch found a gold field in the Transvaal that nobody took seriously for about 15 years. When they did, in 1886, it turned out to be the largest gold field on Earth, and the men who mined it had made their first fortunes in diamonds. Read on in chapter 6: diamonds and the Rand.^61,81