Gold Rush Paper :: essays research papers

One moment the California creek beds glimmered with cash the next, the same creeks ran red with the blood ofmen and women defending their claims or cession their bagsof gold dust to bandits. The " air jacket" was a ruthless territoryduring the 19th century. With more than enough golddust to go around early in the Gold Rush, crime was rare,but as the stakes move and the easily panned gold d goled,robbery and murder became a part of sustenance on the frontier.The "West" consisted of outlaws, gunfighters, lawmen,whores, and vigilantes. There are many stories on how the"West" begun and what persuaded people to come andexplore the new frontier, but here, today, we are spillage toinvestigate those stories and seek to find what is fact orwhat is fiction. These stories will intrust you galloping throughthe tumultuous California territory of the mid-nineteenthcentury, where disputes were settled with six shooters andthe lines of legal expert were in a continuou s chaos. Wheres the WestHow and where did the West begin? This is the doubtfulnessthat 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 Californiain truth being considered the "West?" With all honesty, as yet into the twentieth century, California is non thought ofas being the "West," or the "West" in the elan 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 sparkling dust floating onthe creek bed (Erdoes 116). Assuming it was gold, he toldhis fellow workers what he had lay down and they begansearching for the mysterious metallic dust as well. Fourold age later Marshall rode down to Sutters Fort, in what isnow Sacramento, and showed John Sutter what he hadfound. They weighed and tested the metal and becameconvinced that it was indeed gold. John Sutter wanted to conceal 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