In an 1848 message to Congress, President Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in California.

The accounts of abundance of gold are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service.

—President James Knox Polk, 1848

Based on reports from Richard Barnes Mason, the Governor of California, President Polk made this historic announcement, giving official stamp to one of the most important formative periods in American history. Just a few weeks after the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo ended the Mexican War (granting California and much of the rest of what is today the American West to the U.S.), gold was discovered in central California near a sawmill owned by Capt. John A. Sutter.

The news of the discovery spread, and shortly thereafter, the Gold Rush began. Newspapers at the time reported that coastal areas were nearly abandoned as men rushed to the foothills of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in search of the precious metal. “The whole country from San Francisco to Los Angeles, and from the sea shore to the base of the Sierra Nevadas, resounds with the sordid cry of gold, GOLD, GOLD! while the field is left half-planted, the house half-built and everything neglected but the manufacture of shovels and pickaxes,” said an editorial in The Californian.

The Gold Rush brought people from the East in droves. They came in wagons and they came in ships, their migrations fueled by dreams of striking it rich. Some did make a fortune in gold, but most did not. Nevertheless, the Gold Rush helped populate the entirety of America much faster than likely would have happened without such an incentive. In fact, the non-Native population of San Francisco was reported to be fewer than 1,000 people in March of 1848. Less than two years later, the population had grown to over 100,000.

EconEdLink
Economic Spotter: Supply and Demand at the Gold Rush (3–8) helps students examine the concepts of supply and demand as they relate to the Gold Rush. Students learn about the merchants who managed to get rich without ever looking for gold because they were wise enough to build up their supplies of items the gold miners needed.

In The Productive Blues (Jeans) (3–8), students learn about when and why blue jeans were invented, about resources needed to produce them and about the entrepreneur behind their history. They identify examples of productive resources and categorize them as human resources, capital resources or natural resources.

Xpeditions
What Would You Work Hard For? (K–2) helps young students learn about the concept of value and why some things are considered more valuable than others. Students go through a simulation to learn about value, abundance and scarcity. Then they are asked to consider the things that they'd be willing to work very hard for.

From Boomtown to Ghost Town (3–5) helps students understand the geographic concept of natural resource use. Using examples from the California Gold Rush, students learn about the ways that resource extraction affects the physical and human landscape. They discuss how specific economic activity in a region can facilitate the creation of towns, which often turn into ghost towns if the economic activity ends.

Students examine the ways in which towns turn into ghost towns in Reviving Bodie (6–8). They research the ghost town of Bodie and imagine that the state of California has decided to make it a town again. The groups write guides for the town's new potential citizens, explaining the things they need to know about the town's climate, landscape, location, natural resources and history.

ReadWriteThink
The Gold Rush had a huge impact on the population of California in the mid-19th century. In QARs + Tables = Successful Comprehension of Math Word Problems (3–5), students examine online census information comparing data collected in 1902 and 2002. Students apply the question-answer relationship (QAR) strategy to word problems that refer to data displayed in a table. By following the QAR framework, students can determine whether mathematical calculations are required to formulate a correct response. Students also work together to answer questions about changes in population, workforce and life expectancy.