Audio Transcript Auto-generated
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Hello everyone and thanks for joining me today as we go
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through our lesson for the California gold rush a history.
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Alright, so onward.
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So
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We start at the beginning of course,
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very humble beginnings in 1848 at Sutter's mill in Coloma, California.
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A man called James W. Marshall was working for John Sutter
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as the name Sutter's Mill
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and he finds the first gold nugget to be found ever in California
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in the stream there
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and
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you know, it's hard to keep things like that. A secret word gets out rather quickly.
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This leads to a massive migration of thousands of covered
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wagons heading from all over the contiguous United States.
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I mean we were already trying to head westward anyways as you guys know, but
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this really pushed things over the edge because it was maybe the first in
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our nation rags to riches like get rich quick scheme type of story.
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Um these people who came over by the thousands in their covered wagons were known as
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the 40 Niners and that's fun back where we get the football team name from.
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Okay, so
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how do you get the goal,
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methods of procurement?
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Procurement means like how to get something that you want,
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how to procure this item that you want or need.
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So the most popular way that people would do was panning panning is easy.
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It's not that strenuous, most widely used process.
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A little circular pan, maybe you've seen it, you,
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it has ridges along the inside of it.
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You take some sand or um gravel or whatever is on the edge of a river bed
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and you just shake it out
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and gold is heavier than the other
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stones that were in the river, so it would be left at the bottom of the pan.
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Now granted, you would only get usually plates this way.
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It's very rare to get a nugget like that, but
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again, you weren't, you weren't mining, which is the next thing,
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which is more strenuous but
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yielded much greater results or at least have the potential to,
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for instance, you could find a vein down there, you could
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find big rocks or even just small rocks with golden,
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anything is better than like parsing out tiny flakes, you know?
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Um, and then there's the third method, my personal favorite because it seems
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it's silly to me.
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Um, but I don't know, I wasn't there, I've never used a divining rod,
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but divining rods are literally like two sticks that some guy,
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usually the leader of the gang or the crew or whatever would hold
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and he would like
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literally go like this, trying to divine
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where he felt the rods move its total pseudoscience, it's not real science. Um,
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but you know, when you're on a get rich quick scheme, you're, it's,
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you do what you
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can do, I guess. Anyway, so that's uh,
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that was dividing.
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Um,
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okay, so
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what does all this lead to this mass migration and things like that.
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So they lead to boom towns and surrounding areas just flourishing going off.
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Um,
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boom towns were towns that sprung up quickly and then they were abandoned.
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Uh the biggest city that get rich off of this,
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off of the 40 Niner mass migration was San Francisco
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if you can believe that um in San Francisco,
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a lot of storefronts opened up.
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Um
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people,
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you know, prospectors needed supplies, they need food, they need picks,
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they need access, they need, you know, shelter.
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Um So storefront owners in my opinion where some of the,
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the smartest people of the time because they're not breaking their backs
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in a dark, dank mine where they could potentially die, but instead
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I got the items you need in order to get rich quick, it's a way safer,
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less chancy and just all around less labor intensive by a nautical mile.
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Um Okay, so men work in storefronts as prospectors and miners and
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they, as I said, the story from people saw the greatest profits and women had a, had a,
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had a, had a much harder time.
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Everybody had a really hard time during that time,
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but it's just during that time women didn't have a lot of opportunity to get out.
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There was seen as not socially
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okay to go and work in a mine and things like that.
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So they instead turned to things like entertainment,
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gambling halls and maybe less,
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well some things you would like to do less if you could avoid it.
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Um And so like I said,
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everybody during that time had to endure harsh and rugged conditions.
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It was the early days of the american west,
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Like you gotta think like you're going out to a place that's got zero running water.
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No, a C.
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It wasn't even on the map anywhere,
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but the point is it's like if you wanted a house over there, you have to build it
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and the way you built it was,
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you would cut down a million trees in order to create your house
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and then you hope that it stood.
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Um anyway, so some 40 niners became wealthy, but obviously this is very rare.
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Most returned home completely empty handed.
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That's what you get with a get rich quick scheme, you know, although it was, you know,
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the mass migration of 49 years is a huge way that
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California and
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the entire west coast of this nation
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became settled
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and uh and it's a huge reason why we have what we have today here.
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Alright guys, well, thanks for coming. So some questions to ponder,
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given what, you know,
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would you have rather been a miner or storefront owner and why
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you guys can
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Answing that for me?
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What do you think are some of the daily struggles of life is a 49 er
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and how do these things likely affect the actions of people living in that era?
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And uh
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finally, would you have liked to live during this period of time,
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Why or why not?
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And last but not least
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we're not going to be doing this yet, but I just wanted to go over quickly.
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This group project or at least introduces the wagon train, basically.
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The gist of it is you're going to be in small groups,
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you're gonna have several items you've got to get across to,
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You've got to become a 40 Niner essentially,
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so you gotta plan strategize and think how you're going to get there,
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but we'll go over that later.
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It's not due for a while
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and as always, thank you guys for tuning in.
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If you have any questions, feel free to ask me. You know, I'm always around,
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I appreciate you and yeah, I'm here. Thanks so much. Talk to you later.