Agold rush orgold fever is a discovery ofgold—sometimes accompanied by otherprecious metals andrare-earth minerals—that brings an onrush of miners seeking their fortune. Major gold rushes took place in the 19th century inAustralia,Greece,Venezuela,New Zealand,Brazil,Chile,South Africa, theUnited States, andCanada while smaller gold rushes took place elsewhere.
In the 19th century, the wealth that resulted was distributed widely because of reducedmigration costs and low barriers to entry. Whilegold mining itself proved unprofitable for most diggers and mine owners, some people made large fortunes, andmerchants and transportation facilities made large profits. The resulting increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. Historians have written extensively about the mass migration, trade, colonization, and environmental history associated with gold rushes.[2]
Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free-for-all" inincome mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly, as expressed in theCalifornia Dream.
Gold rushes helped spur waves of immigration that often led to the permanent settlement of new regions. Activities propelled by gold rushes define significant aspects of the culture of the Australian and North American frontiers. At a time when the world's money supply was based ongold, the newly-mined gold provided economic stimulus far beyond the goldfields, feeding into local and widereconomic booms.
The Gold Rush was a topic that inspired many TV shows and books considering it was a very important topic at the time. During various gold rushes, many books were published includingThe Call of the Wild, which had much success during the period.
Gold rushes occurred as early as the times ofancient Greece, whose gold mining was described by Diodarus Sicules andPliny the Elder.
Within each mining rush there is typically a transition through progressively higher capital expenditures, larger organizations, and more specialized knowledge.
A rush typically begins with the discovery ofplacer gold made by an individual. At first the gold may be washed from the sand and gravel by individual miners with little training, using a gold pan or similar simple instrument. Once it is clear that the volume of gold-bearing sediment is larger than a few cubic metres, theplacer miners will build rockers or sluice boxes, with which a small group can wash gold from the sediment many times faster than using gold pans. Winning the gold in this manner requires almost no capital investment, only a simple pan or equipment that may be built on the spot, and only simple organisation. The low investment, the high value per unit weight of gold, and the ability of gold dust and gold nuggets to serve as a medium of exchange, allow placer gold rushes to occur even in remote locations.
After the sluice-box stage, placer mining may become increasingly large scale, requiring larger organisations and higher capital expenditures. Small claims owned and mined by individuals may need to be merged into larger tracts. Difficult-to-reach placer deposits may be mined by tunnels. Water may be diverted by dams and canals to placer mine active river beds or to deliver water needed to wash dry placers. The more advanced techniques ofground sluicing,hydraulic mining anddredging may be used.
Typically the heyday of a placer gold rush would last only a few years. The free gold supply in stream beds would become depleted somewhat quickly, and the initial phase would be followed by prospecting for veins oflode gold that were the original source of the placer gold. Hard rock mining, like placer mining, may evolve from low capital investment and simple technology to progressively higher capital and technology. The surface outcrop of a gold-bearing vein may be oxidized, so that the gold occurs as native gold, and the ore needs only to be crushed and washed (free milling ore). The first miners may at first build a simplearrastra to crush their ore; later, they may buildstamp mills to crush ore at greater speed. As the miners venture downwards, they may find that the deeper part of vein contains gold locked insulfide ortelluride minerals, which will requiresmelting. If the ore is still sufficiently rich, it may be worth shipping to a distant smelter (direct shipping ore). Lower-grade ore may require on-site treatment to either recover the gold or to produce a concentrate sufficiently rich for transport to the smelter. As the district turns to lower-grade ore, the mining may change from underground mining to largeopen-pit mining.
Manysilver rushes followed upon gold rushes. As transportation and infrastructure improve, the focus may change progressively from gold to silver to base metals. In this way,Leadville, Colorado started as a placer gold discovery, achieved fame as a silver-mining district, then relied on lead and zinc in its later days.Butte, Montana began mining placer gold, then became a silver-mining district, then became for a time the world's largest copper producer.
Various gold rushes occurred in Australia over the second half of the 19th century. The most significant of these, although not the only ones, were theNew South Wales gold rush andVictorian gold rush in 1851,[3] and theWestern Australian gold rushes of the 1890s. They were highly significant to their respective colonies' political and economic development as they brought many immigrants, and promoted massive government spending on infrastructure to support the new arrivals who came looking for gold. While some found their fortune, those who did not often remained in the colonies and took advantage of extremely liberal land laws to take up farming.
Gold rushes happened at or around:
In New Zealand theOtago gold rush from 1861 attracted prospectors from theCalifornia gold rush and theVictorian gold rush and many moved on to theWest Coast gold rush from 1864.
The first significant gold rush in the United States was inCabarrus County, North Carolina (east of Charlotte), in 1799 at today'sReed's Gold Mine.[4] Thirty years later, in 1829, theGeorgia Gold Rush in the southernAppalachians occurred. It was followed by theCalifornia Gold Rush of 1848–55 in theSierra Nevada, which captured the popular imagination. The California Gold Rush led to an influx of gold miners and newfound gold wealth, which led to California's rapid industrialization, as businesses sprung up to serve the increased population and financial and political institutions to handle the increased wealth.[5] One of these political institutions was statehood; the need for new laws in a sparsely-governed land led to the state's rapid entry into the Union in 1850.[6]
The gold rush in 1849 also stimulated worldwide interest in prospecting for gold, leading to further rushes in Australia, South Africa, Wales and Scotland. Successive gold rushes occurred in western North America:Fraser Canyon, theCariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, inNevada, in theRocky Mountains inColorado,Idaho,Montana, easternOregon, and westernNew Mexico Territory and along the lowerColorado River. There was a gold rush in Nova Scotia (1861–1876) which produced nearly 210,000 ounces of gold.[7]Resurrection Creek, nearHope, Alaska was the site of Alaska's first gold rush in the mid–1890s.[8] Other notable Alaska Gold Rushes wereNome,Fairbanks, and theFortymile River.
One of the last "great gold rushes" was theKlondike Gold Rush in theYukon Territory (1896–99). This gold rush is featured in the novels ofJack London, andCharlie Chaplin's filmThe Gold Rush.Robert William Service depicted in his poetries the Gold Rush, especially in the bookThe Trail of '98.[9] The main goldfield was along the south flank of theKlondike River near its confluence with theYukon River near what was to becomeDawson City in Yukon Territory, but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession ofAlaska to exploration and settlement, and promoted the discovery of other gold finds.
The most successful of the North American gold rushes was thePorcupine Gold Rush inTimmins, Ontario area. This gold rush was unique compared to others by the method of extraction of the gold. Placer mining techniques were not able to be used to access the gold in the area due to it being embedded into theCanadian Shield, so larger mining operations involving significantly more expensive equipment was required. While this gold rush peaked in the 1940s and 1950s, it is still active today with over 200 million[10] ounces of gold having been produced from the region. The gold deposits in this area are identified as one of the largest in the world.[11]
In South Africa, theWitwatersrand Gold Rush in theTransvaal was important to that country's history, leading to the founding ofJohannesburg and tensions between theBoers and British settlers as well as the Chinese miners.[12]
South African gold production went from zero in 1886 to 23% of the total world output in 1896. At the time of the South African rush, gold production benefited from the newly discovered techniques by Scottish chemists,the MacArthur-Forrest process, of usingpotassium cyanide to extract gold from low-grade ore.[13]
With the arrival ofNicolás de Ovando's settlement expedition in 1502, the construction of the first colonial society in the Hispaniola island began, focused on the search for and exploitation of gold ofCibao valley. The influx of immigrants was massive until 1510, when the island's gold production reached its peak. The mining industry rested on the forced work of the Taíno indigenous, who quickly became extinct. With the decline of the Taíno labor force and the depletion of deposits, gold production also declined, surpassing that of Puerto Rico and Cuba by the second decade of the century.[14]
The gold mine at El Callao (Venezuela), started in 1871, was for a time one of the richest in the world, and the goldfields as a whole saw over a million ounces exported between 1860 and 1883. The gold mining was dominated by immigrants from the British Isles and the British West Indies, giving an appearance of almost creating an English colony on Venezuelan territory.
Between 1883 and 1906Tierra del Fuego experienced a gold rush attracting many Chileans, Argentines and Europeans to the archipelago. The gold rush began in 1884 following discovery of gold during the rescue of the French steamshipArctique nearCape Virgenes.[15]
There are about 10 to 30 million small-scale miners around the world, according to Communities and Small-Scale Mining (CASM). Approximately 100 million people are directly or indirectly dependent on small-scale mining. For example, there are 800,000 to 1.5 millionartisanal miners inDemocratic Republic of Congo, 350,000 to 650,000 inSierra Leone, and 150,000 to 250,000 inGhana, with millions more across Africa.[16]
In an exclusive report,Reuters accounted the smuggling of billions of dollars' worth of gold out ofAfrica through theUnited Arab Emirates in theMiddle East, which further acts as a gateway to the markets in theUnited States,Europe and more. The news agency evaluated the worth and magnitude of illegal gold trade occurring in African nations likeGhana,Tanzania, andZambia, by comparing the total gold imports recorded into the UAE with the exports affirmed by the African states. According to Africa's industrial mining firms, they have not exported any amount of gold to the UAE – confirming that the imports come from other, illegal sources. As per customs data, the UAE imported gold worth $15.1 billion from Africa in 2016, with a total weight of 446 tons, in variable degrees of purity. Much of the exports were not recorded in the African states, which means a huge volume of gold imports were carried out with no taxes paid to the states producing it.[17]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)The early 1930s were marked by the decision of the Communist Party Politburo to reinstate the institution of prospectors who had been banned as antisocialist elements in the second half of the 1920s.Littlepage described in his book (1938) that by 1933 all plans to put prospectors back to work in the field had been worked out and implemented as rapidly as possible. Regulations to govern relations between prospectors and Gold Thrust were drawn up, setting in motion a Soviet gold rush.
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