Original photo by Phawat/ Shutterstock
Although the 1848 California Gold Rush was the largest in American history, it wasn’t the first. That distinction belongs in the state of North Carolina, where in 1799, Conrad Reed, the 12-year-old son of a Hessian Revolutionary War deserter named John Reed, found a 17-pound gold nugget in Little Meadow Creek outside Charlotte. At first — not knowing what his son had stumbled across — the elder Reed used the rock as a doorstop for his home’s front door. It wasn’t until 1802, when he took the rock to a local jeweler, that he began to grasp the enormity of his son’s discovery (although he sold the nugget for far less than it was actually worth).
Oops, incorrect!
It's a fibThe Carolinas are named after two kings, the English monarchs Charles I and II. “Carolus” is the Latin word for Charles.
By 1803, Reed had established the first gold mining operation in the U.S. As local papers reported on his business, nearby farmers began hunting for gold on their own properties by searching shallow riverbeds, a practice known as “placer mining.” When these shallow-lying deposits dried up in the 1820s, companies ditched the gold pans and began excavating lode mines, which required many more workers. Until 1828, North Carolina was the only gold-producing state in the Union, and its gold rush reached its peak in the 1830s and 1840s, when the industry employed nearly 30,000 people. The state’s gold-hued fortunes changed once the first reports of wealth out West arrived in the Carolinas, but Reed never saw the end of his state’s gold-rush boom time, dying a rich man in 1845 with his mine raking in millions.
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The most massive gold rush in history took place in ______ in 1886.
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The most massive gold rush in history took place in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1886.
The California Gold Rush began only one week before the U.S. gained control of the territory.
When James Marshall, a worker on John Sutter’s sawmill, discovered gold there on January 24, 1848, the California territory was technically still a possession of Mexico. But at the conclusion of the Mexican-American War, Mexico officially ceded the land to the U.S. — one week after Marshall’s discovery, on February 2, 1848. Mexican officials had no knowledge of the momentous discovery made in California when they signed the Treaty of Guadalupe Hildago, which brought the war to an end. California papers didn’t even report on the discovery until mid-March, and the East Coast of the U.S. remained unaware until months later. The discovery brought a tidal wave of migration to the territory — so much so that it went from Mexican control to a U.S. state in just two years. While good news for the U.S. government and a handful of rags-to-riches prospectors, the discovery of gold in the West was devastating for Native Americans as well as the majority of miners hoping to strike it big, only to be subjected to back-breaking work with little to show for it.
Darren Orf lives in Portland, has a cat, and writes about all things science and climate. You can find his previous work at Popular Mechanics, Inverse, Gizmodo, and Paste, among others.
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