While the California Gold Rush began as early as January of 1848, news of the discovery, while massively popular, was not officially announced until December 5th 1848, when then US President James Polk acknowledged the discovery during a US Congress meeting. By December 5th though, the California Gold Rush was already well underway, with over 300,000 men, women and children travelling across United States and the around the world from countries such as China, Europe and South America, all with hopes of striking gold, quite literally.

The California Gold Rush all began in early January 1848 when an employee at a Lumber Mill in Sacramento, California found tiny shiny pieces along the American River while he was working. Upon testing, the shiny pieces were identified as gold. News travelled quickly and within two months, after a newspaper scoop, many locals in California started making their way to the American River. Local families made up a bulk of the prospectors, since there was not much technology during that era, prospectors had to use primitive techniques to find their gold, such as panning and soil digging around the river. On August 1848, after a news report by national newspaper New York Herald, families from throughout the United States made their way to the small settlement of San Francisco, eager to make a living.

On December 5 1848, however, President James Polk announced the discovery of gold in California in congress, effectively informing the whole world of a gold discovery, causing hundreds of thousands of foreigners from throughout the world scrambling to reach San Francisco on the earliest sailing boat, most of them arriving from China. These early gold miners were known as forty-niners (due to the year 1849, the year most of them arrived), and were ready to start a life in California. Due to the large number of foreigners seeking gold, animosity and xenophobia started forming amongst the locals, particularly towards the Chinese; they came in the tens of thousands and in their unique traditional dressing, the locals felt as though their land and gold was being stolen from these foreigners.

The California Gold Rush had its negative impacts on the community but to a large extent, from December 5 onwards, when it was publicly announced to the world that California had a substantial amount of gold, it brought in several positive effects. When people from Asia, South America and Europe came to California with their sailing ships, they were not only carrying immigrants seeking gold but they brought cargoes that were usually exclusive to their continent’s trading route.

This effectively turned California into a trade port and San Francisco, which was previously a quiet settlement, turned into a bustling center of trade and economic opportunities, a boomtown that quickly grew and expanded. While a significant number of the locals and immigrants spent their days as gold-seekers, others like Samuel Brannan, the man who reported the news of the discovery of gold to the Californian locals, became the wealthiest man to profit from the Gold Rush. Brannan purchased mining equipment supplies when news of the Gold Rush broke and by stockpiling supplies, he managed to sell his supplies at a much higher profit.

Other towns in California also benefited from the Gold Rush. Proper roads, houses, schools, churches and other monuments were quickly erected to sustain the number of immigrants and out-of-towners who came to California and turned it into their homes. While early gold-seekers of the California were called forty-niners, it all actually broke out on December 5, the day the president announced to the Congress, and to the world, the discovery of gold in California.