The gold rush and the lithium rush compared

The California gold rush began with James Marshall's find at Sutter's mill on 24 January 1848. Rumours reached San Francisco in March. By the end of 1849, California held nearly 100,000 people, against about 14,000 non-Indian residents when gold was found.^3,5

News of the Klondike took almost a year to spread. Gold was found on 16 August 1896, but the outside world only heard in July 1897, when the SS Portland reached Seattle with over a ton of gold. More than 100,000 people then set out, and no more than 40,000 reached Dawson City.^13,14

Dawson City grew from nothing. Parks Canada estimates that 20,000 to 30,000 people lived there at the height of the rush in 1898 and 1899. By 1918 fewer than 1,000 remained.¹⁹

The lithium boom had no single day of discovery. It shows up instead in prices. USGS put the US average lithium carbonate price at 8,650 dollars a tonne in 2016 and 15,000 dollars in 2017. The peak came in 2022 at 68,100 dollars. The news travelled instantly, but the boom still took six years to peak.^1,15

The gold rushes moved people on a vast scale. California's population reached some 250,000 by 1852. Fifty years after the find, the 1900 census counted 1,485,053 people.^4,5

In Australia, over 40,000 people a year reached Victoria between 1851 and 1861. The population of the whole continent rose from 437,665 at the end of 1851 to 1,168,149 ten years later.⁶

Victoria's fields held their people for longer. Gold was found at Ballarat in July and August 1851, and the field gave about 9.3 million ounces by 1870. About 50,000 people still lived there in 1871. Bendigo, found in October 1851, gave about 400,000 ounces a year through the 1850s, with a peak of 447,212 ounces in 1858. Around 1900 it still gave about 200,000 ounces a year.^22,23

Western Australia's rush was smaller but intense. Within about a week of Hannan's find at Kalgoorlie in June 1893, more than 1,400 men were working the field. Coolgardie, nearby, had about 25,000 people by 1897.^20,24

The lithium boom moved money rather than crowds. Western Australia's lithium sales rose from 8.0 billion Australian dollars in 2021-22 to 20.9 billion in 2022-23. One company, Leo Lithium, raised just over 100 million Australian dollars in a single share sale in June 2022.^2,18

In the early gold rushes, almost anyone could join. Alluvial gold could be won with a pan. The Welcome Stranger, the largest nugget ever found, was found just under the soil at the base of a tree.^6,26

Lithium cannot be panned. Hard-rock lithium comes from pegmatites that must be blasted, crushed and concentrated. Greenbushes had produced 37.1 Mt of concentrate by mid-2025. Pilgangoora produced 224.8 kt in a single quarter of 2025.^25,27

The lithium rush often went back to old mining ground. Edward Hardman reported tin at Greenbushes in 1886, and David Stinton found a tin field there in 1888, which brought alluvial miners. Exploration in the 1970s found a pegmatite 5 km long with tin, tantalum and spodumene. Lithium production began in 1983, more than thirty years before the boom. In 2023 Greenbushes gave 51 per cent of the state's lithium output.^2,28,29

Brine has a long history too. The first lithium from brine came in 1938, as a by-product at Searles Lake in California. Clayton Valley in Nevada followed in 1966. Albemarle still runs it as Silver Peak, the only commercial lithium brine operation in the United States.^30,31

Brine lithium needs pumps, ponds and chemical plants. SQM's Chilean lithium carbonate capacity reached 180,000 t a year after expansions in 2022.^32,33

So the lithium rush was a rush of companies and investors, not of individual diggers. The number of Australian operations that made most of the world's output was four to six in the years from 2019 to 2022.²

California produced an estimated 750,000 pounds of gold from 1848 to 1855, about 340 t.⁵

Victoria led Australian gold production for 47 years, until Western Australia passed it in 1898. Its highest output came in 1856, five years after the rush began. Western Australia's output peaked at 2,064,803 fine ounces in 1903, ten years after Kalgoorlie.⁶

Australia gold production, 1851 to 1910

Lithium grew faster. World lithium supply rose from about 35,000 t of lithium content in 2013 to about 180,000 t in 2023. Australia's mine output rose from 58,800 t in 2018 to an estimated 86,000 t in 2023.^2,15

Australia lithium production, 1985 to 2021

The Witwatersrand shows how a rush can become a permanent industry. The Transvaal's gold yield was valued at 11.65 million pounds in 1897 and 30.99 million in 1909, about a third of the world's gold.⁶

The lithium bust came quickly. The average lithium carbonate price fell to 46,000 dollars in 2023. Western Australia's lithium royalty receipts fell by 64.89 per cent in 2024-25. Mt Cattlin was placed on care and maintenance by the end of March 2025.^15,38,39

The gold rush busts were slower but deeper for the towns. Coolgardie's 25,000 people of 1897 had become 773 by 2021.^20,21

The gold rushes also left lasting works. To supply water to the Western Australian goldfields, the state built a 566 km pipeline between 1898 and 1903. In the Assembly debate of 1898 its cost was put at two and a half million pounds.^11,12

They left political marks too. Ballarat miners opposed the gold licence system, which made every digger pay for the right to dig. On 30 November 1854 about 500 of them gathered under the Eureka flag and elected Peter Lalor as their leader. On 3 December police and troops attacked the stockade. Six police and troopers and at least 22 diggers died, and 125 miners were taken prisoner. The dispute over licence fees and policing is still a landmark of the Victorian goldfields. The lithium boom produced no event like it.⁷

Some projects kept going through the bust. In Nevada, Lithium Americas targets mechanical completion of the first phase at Thacker Pass in late 2027. It is backed by a 2.26 billion dollar loan from the US Department of Energy.⁴⁰

What the lithium boom will leave is not yet clear. It has left mines that restarted, like Wodgina in 2022, and others put on hold.²

In 1900 the world's gold yield was valued at 52.1 million pounds.⁶

Lithium went almost entirely to one country for processing. China took 99 per cent of Western Australia's lithium exports by value in 2023. Australia exported 2.7 Mt of spodumene ores and concentrates in 2022.^67,68

Batteries now take about 88 per cent of lithium use. Our guide to the battery shows where it ends up.³⁷

So, is lithium the new gold rush?

In some ways, yes. Both brought a sudden flood of interest, high prices, new companies and new towns, followed by a fall. In other ways, no. The gold rushes moved hundreds of thousands of people who could dig for themselves. The lithium boom moved capital, ran through a small number of large operations, and sold mainly to one buyer. The records suggest the comparison works best for the money, and least well for the people. For the full story of both, read chapter 5, the gold rushes, and chapter 12, the new rush, and our story gold rush, then and now.^2,5

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