Gold Rush Paper :: essays research papers

One moment the California creek beds glimmered with capital the next, the same creeks ran red with the blood ofmen and women defending their claims or ceding their bagsof gold junk to bandits. The " westward" was a ruthless territoryduring the ordinal century. With more than enough golddust to go around early in the sumptuous Rush, crime was rare,but as the stakes rose and the easily panned gold dwindled,robbery and murder became a part of life on the frontier.The " westernmost" consisted of outlaws, gunfighters, lawmen,whores, and vigilantes. in that location are many stories on how the"West" begun and what persuaded people to come andexplore the new frontier, but here, today, we are going toinvestigate those stories and seek to find what is position orwhat is fiction. These stories will send you galloping throughthe tumultuous California territory of the mid-nineteenthcentury, where disputes were settled with six shooters andthe lines of justice were i n a continuous chaos. Wheres the WestHow and where did the West begin? This is the questionthat is asked most often and there is never a straight-forward answer. Everyone has their own opinion on thesubject "Oh, it started sometime in the nineteenth century,"or "The west is really just considered to be Oklahoma,Texas, and Kansas." Whatever happened to Californiaactually being considered the "West?" With all honesty,even into the twentieth century, California is not thought ofas being the "West," or the "West" in the manner in whichOklahoma, Kansas and Texas are thought of. Cowboys,horses, and cattle are only considered to be in the centralstates, but what about California? To give a straight-forward answer on where and how the "Real West" oreven the "Wild West" began it began by a millhouseworker named James Marshall. On the morning of January24, 1848, Marshall was working on his mill and lookeddown in the water and saw a spark ling dust floating alongthe creek bed (Erdoes 116). Assuming it was gold, he toldhis fellow workers what he had found and they begansearching for the mysterious metallic dust as well. Fourdays later Marshall rode down to Sutters Fort, in what isnow Sacramento, and showed flush toilet Sutter what he hadfound. They weighed and tested the metal and becameconvinced that it was indeed gold. John Sutter wanted tokeep the discovery secret, but that was going to beimpossible. The rumor flew and Sutters mill workers,which were Mormon, caught wind of it and begansearching for their own fortune. Shortly after they fled, they