Please help me evaluate my son's 1st attempt at a research paper

[Momto6inIN]

He is 13 and in 8th grade.  This is his first rough draft.  He enjoys writing and I think he is doing well at developing his own voice, but at times he tends to get a little bit too folksy/casual.  I'm not sure how to help him know where to draw that line.  He doesn't have a title yet and although he did keep track of his sources, they are not cited in the paper.  I know I need to give him some more explicit instruction on MLA format before he hands in the final draft.  Besides those issues, please tell me what he's done well and what I can work with him on to be ready for high school work next year.  Thanks so much!

 

 

 

The California Gold Rush helped California to become a state and made for some great innovations and inventions, but it proved devastating to the miners involved. Statistically, there were some great effects of the Gold Rush, especially to California itself. The most obvious of these was that it was able to apply for statehood quickly, without going through the usual long wait as a territory before its population was large enough to apply for statehood. However, the Gold Rush had terrible effects on the miners and gold seekers themselves who came to California, as well as people who were simply caught up in the Gold Rush. A great example of this is John Sutter, who owned the land on which gold was first discovered. He knew what gold could do to people and he was afraid of it. He had a right to be. The gold seekers trampled his property, killed his livestock, and left him penniless.

                Gold was first discovered in California in January of 1848. A carpenter named John Marshall was working on a sawmill for John Sutter, a rich Californian landowner known for his generosity. As he was working on it, he noticed something glinting in a nearby stream. He picked it up and exultantly showed it to his work crew, proclaiming, “Boys, I believe we have found gold!†It took some time to find that the gold was not just “fool’s gold,†some more time for word to reach people back East, and yet a little longer for them to believe that it was not a hoax, but once all that had happened, the gold rush had begun, and the miners were pouring in. About 300,000 people came to look for gold between 1848 and 1855, the duration of the gold rush. Since most of the miners came in 1849, when the gold rush had just started, the miners were called the 49’ers, a name which can still be seen in San Francisco’s football team.

                There were several routes to California from the East. One could take a ship, sail south under South America’s tip, and then travel back up the other side to California. While this was probably the easiest way, it was expensive, and on the open sea everyone ran the risk of scurvy or starvation. Another route incorporated both land and sea. One could simply sail south to the Gulf of Mexico and disembark at Panama. From there, they would travel across Panama overland to the Western side (the Panama Canal had not yet been built) and take a different ship north to California. If everything went right (which it rarely did), this route was easily the fastest way. However, the jungles of Panama were filled with malaria-carrying mosquitoes, poisonous animals, and hostile predators. Only the bravest 49’ers took this route. The most commonly traveled way was also the most obvious way, especially to most 49’ers. They would simply cross America and go west overland. This was the cheapest way. However, there were several problems with this route. It was definitely the most difficult. Also, the Sierra Nevadas, a mountain range in California, became literally impassable in winter. Miners had to time their trips carefully and hurry to reach California before the snows set in and the route became impossible to travel. All these complications hardly mattered to the miners, though. After all, according to the newspapers, after reaching California, they could simply pick up gold nuggets off the ground as if they were stones. After a year at most, they supposed, they could simply go back home and live in comfort and ease for the rest of their lives.

The gold rush had many positive effects, both on California and the world as a whole. Some of its most obvious effects are seen on California specifically. For one, the exploding population of gold miners allowed it to meet the requirements for statehood very quickly, skipping past the slow progression from territory to state. This exploding population had another positive effect on America. On the land route to California, miners explored routes, cleared passes, and set up communities and trading posts along the way. These developments made travel much easier for later pioneers, who traveled in search for a new home, rather than gold. They proved especially helpful to pioneers traveling along the Oregon or Santa Fe trails around the same time.

The gold rush also mixed cultures. Americans from the East weren’t the only ones who were fooled by the extravagant claims of gold. Chinese, Chileans, Irish, and many other immigrants had the same philosophy as the Americans. They would simply sail there, mine for a year or so, and return home. They were, of course, sorely disappointed when the exaggerations they had heard failed to hold true. After this, many did not return home. They mingled with other Americans living in California and mixed together to form a most interesting cultural blend. An obvious example of this is that of Chinatown in San Francisco. For a while after the Chinese came, miners segregated them and confined them to their own portion of San Francisco. This neighborhood eventually became Chinatown. Also, the gold rush had economic benefits on America. Any time a country is extracting huge amounts of precious material, the government will benefit economically. This is another benefit on America as a whole.

The gold rush also made for the development of some amazing innovations and technologies. One of the most famous of these is that of Levi Strauss. This entrepreneur noticed that miner’s trousers weren’t up to the heavy-duty mining work. He made durable pants out of canvas and sold them to the miners. They developed into blue jeans, hence the Brand name ‘Levi’s.’ Another invention, made by Samuel Morse, was one of the most innovative designs made in the history of America. The issue was isolation. California’s expanding had led to a huge gap between California and the Eastern United States. Samuel Morse had the idea of communicating messages over wires using a code of dots and dashes. He developed the world’s first telegraph, which opened a whole new doorway to instant communication – both national and international. The concept of the telegraph fathered telephones and, indirectly, cell phones. It has shaped the world we live in today, and it may not have happened without the gold rush.

Domencio Ghirardelli was another entrepreneur that was involved in the California Gold Rush. Domencio, an Italian, came to California and opened a chocolate shop. This shop eventually evolved into the world-famous Ghirardelli’s Chocolate. Another famous food industry started in the gold rush. The founder was a 49’er named Philip Danforth Armour. After mining in the gold rush, he moved back to Chicago and started a company named Armour and Co., one of the largest meat packers in the nation. John Studebaker also profited from the gold rush by moving to California in the hope of finding gold. Failing that, he started selling wagons. After relocating back East, his business evolved into the Studebaker Automobile Company.

Of course, the gold rush had a good amount of drawbacks, as many events in history often do. First, the Native Americans living in California were nearly wiped out. As in many accounts of America’s settlement, a large part of this was due to diseases brought over from the miners, to which the Indians had no immunity. However, the miners were often greedy, hostile people. They weren’t used to living with Native Americans, and the Indians were treated like slaves or worse. Many were murdered simply because of prejudice, with no good reason. Previously, Americans had pushed Indians west when they expanded. The inevitable day finally arrived, though, when there was nothing left to the west but a vast ocean. Since the miners didn’t even try to live in close proximity with the Indians, thousands of Native Americans died during the Gold Rush.

The gold rush also had adverse environmental effects. Hydraulic mining was a relatively productive mining technique involving hosing the ground with copious amounts of water. It uprooted plants, killed animals, and overall devastated the environment. Eventually, it was regulated. However, though it kept the environment from deteriorating further, the damage was done.

It is quite obvious that the gold rush affected more than just the Native Americans and the environment. Some of the most dramatic affects were experienced by the 49’ers themselves. Most of them had an extremely difficult life. The average miner generally had to get up well before the sun. They had a cold breakfast of pickles, bread, beans, or some combination thereof. They stuck to these products because they kept very well and could be bought in large amounts without fear of it all spoiling. Then, they would go out to look for gold. If they were lucky, they got to pan for gold. This involved scooping sand and dirt from the river bottom into a pan with very tiny holes in it to drain the water out. The gold particles, being heavier than most other particles at the bottom of a river, sank to the bottom and could be collected after brushing away the top layers. While this was the most productive mining method and probably the easiest, it involved miners standing in freezing snow-fed mountain streams for up to ten hours a day. Once that surface gold was gone, though, the miners had to mine deeper. This was much more rigorous, time-consuming, and dangerous. Work was definitely not an easy time for the 49’ers.

An average gold miner’s work, though it was the aspect of their lives on which they spent the most time, was not the only aspect of their lives. When the work was done, miners went ‘home’ to their camp. This was not always a good thing. Camps were rough at best and deadly at worst. Most miners didn’t spend long at camp, though. Most went to nearby gambling houses and effectively blew their money away gambling and drinking late into the night. After staggering home late at night, they went immediately to bed and tried to get in a few hours’ sleep before they had to get up and do it all over again.

A miner’s life was made difficult by several problems. These issues were common in various towns and generally resulted in death, corruption, and/or lifelong misery. One of the biggest of these issues was crime. Many of the inhabitants of the town were greedy – having come thousands of miles for gold – and they were positioned around the largest amounts of gold ever found in America in generations. They were accustomed to a wild life. They were often drunk, and most of them owned at least one firearm. What’s more, the towns were not well organized enough to have an organized police force. Rarely have such hostile circumstances been arranged together in the history of America. Crime, coupled with sickness, mining accidents, and a hostile landscape, accounted for a death rate of about 40% among 49’ers.

Some problems were also economical. In California, supply and demand ruled. Food and equipment often cost at least ten times what the same product would cost in the East. While the miners may have been making a larger gross salary than they had been back home, they often spent it all just to eat. Another big problem was pride. After promising their families innumerable riches after just a few months in California, these people were sorely disappointed by what they found. However, they thought even worse about what their family would think of them. They would be returning in shame, wondering how they could face their families and friends. For many, the concept was too terrible to bear, and they stuck with their miserable life as a gold miner.

Of course, not all miners lived terrible years eking a living out of the California mountainsides. Some actually obtained unbelievable wealth. One of these miners was Bennager Raspberry. While yanking his rifle’s ramrod out of the ground, Raspberry loosed a gold-rich chunk of quartz. After three days of digging in the area, Raspberry made $7,000, or about the equivalent of $210,000 today. John Charles Fremont was another lucky person to profit immensely during the gold rush. He, however, was not a prospector, but an explorer. He bought some land in California at about the time of the gold rush for $3,000. During the gold rush, gold was discovered on his land. He sold it for $6,000,000, or about $170,000,000 in today’s currency – 20,000 times what he initially paid for it.

Ironically, these success stories were quite unfortunate. They filled the newspapers back in the East, as well as people’s imaginations. Where were the articles about the average life of the 49’er – the ones that acknowledged that the chances of finding gold were about the same as winning the lottery with a single ticket? All people back east heard about was the fantastical stories of immense gold reserves that were open to all who could get it. They did not stop to wonder how much of this could really be true. They simply ran off to California in hopes that would soon be destroyed, leaving them homesick and very nearly penniless. All in all, the few success stories only served to invigorate more people to participate in the gold craze that was sweeping the nation.

In conclusion, the gold rush was essential for some great technological developments, and it had some huge benefits on California itself, it turned out to be devastating to the miners who participated. Their desire for some easy money led them to extremes that left them miserable, penniless, and sometimes even dead. However, the world would not be the same without this momentous event in American history. It made California what it is. It played a part in some inventions that forever changed the world. It even led to some small yet meaningful inventions, such as blue jeans. While we may hope that none in the world today will face what those 49’ers did over a hundred years ago, we may also be glad that the gold rush occurred, for the world would not be the same without it.

[Jean in Newcastle]

The California Gold Rush helped California to become a state and made for some great innovations and inventions, but it proved devastating to the miners involved. Statistically, there were some great effects of the Gold Rush, especially to (for) California itself. The most obvious of these was that it was able to apply for statehood quickly, without going through the usual long wait as a territory before its population was large enough to apply for statehood. However, the Gold Rush had terrible effects on the miners and gold seekers themselves who came to California, as well as people who were simply caught up in the Gold Rush. A great example of this is John Sutter, who owned the land on which gold was first discovered. He knew what gold could do to people and he was afraid of it. He had a right to be. The gold seekers trampled his property, killed his livestock, and left him penniless.

                Gold was first discovered in California in January of 1848. A carpenter named John Marshall was working on a sawmill for John Sutter, a rich Californian landowner known for his generosity. As he was working on it, he noticed something glinting in a nearby stream. He picked it up and exultantly showed it to his work crew, proclaiming, “Boys, I believe we have found gold!†It took some time to find that the gold was not just “fool’s gold,†some more time for word to reach people back East, and yet a little longer for them to believe that it was not a hoax, but once all that had happened, the gold rush had begun, and the miners were pouring in. About 300,000 people came to look for gold between 1848 and 1855, the duration of the gold rush. Since most of the miners came in 1849, when the gold rush had just started, the miners were called the 49’ers, a name which can still be seen in  (still used as) San Francisco’s football team.

                There were several routes to California from the East. One could take a ship, sail south under South America’s tip, and then travel back up the other side to California. While this was probably the easiest way, it was expensive, and on the open sea everyone ran the risk of scurvy or starvation. Another route incorporated both land and sea. One could simply sail south to the Gulf of Mexico and disembark at Panama. From there, they would travel across Panama overland to the Western side (the Panama Canal had not yet been built) and take a different ship north to California. If everything went right (which it rarely did), this route was easily the fastest way. However, the jungles of Panama were filled with malaria-carrying mosquitoes, poisonous animals, and hostile predators. Only the bravest 49’ers took this route. The most commonly traveled way was also the most obvious way, especially to most 49’ers. They would simply cross America and go west overland. This was the cheapest way. However, there were several problems with this route. It was definitely the most difficult. Also, the Sierra Nevadas, a mountain range in California, became literally impassable in winter. Miners had to time their trips carefully and hurry to reach California before the snows set in and the route became impossible to travel. All these complications hardly mattered to the miners, though. After all, according to the newspapers, after reaching California, they could simply pick up gold nuggets off the ground as if they were stones. After a year at most, they supposed, they could simply go back home and live in comfort and ease for the rest of their lives.

The gold rush had many positive effects, both on California and the world as a whole. Some of its most obvious effects are seen on California specifically. For one, the exploding population of gold miners allowed it to meet the requirements for statehood very quickly, skipping past the slow progression from territory to state. This exploding population had another positive effect on America. On the land route to California, miners explored routes, cleared passes, and set up communities and trading posts along the way. These developments made travel much easier for later pioneers, who traveled in search for a new home, rather than gold. They proved especially helpful to pioneers traveling along the Oregon or Santa Fe trails around the same time.

The gold rush also mixed cultures. Americans from the East weren’t the only ones who were fooled by the extravagant claims of gold. Chinese, Chileans, Irish, and many other immigrants had the same philosophy as the Americans. They would simply sail there, mine for a year or so, and return home. They were, of course, sorely disappointed when the exaggerations they had heard failed to hold true. After this, many did not return home. They mingled with other Americans living in California and mixed together to form a most interesting cultural blend. An obvious example of this is that of Chinatown in San Francisco. For a while after the Chinese came, miners segregated them and confined them to their own portion of San Francisco. This neighborhood eventually became Chinatown. Also, the gold rush had economic benefits on America. Any time a country is extracting huge amounts of precious material, the government will benefit economically. This is another benefit on America as a whole.

The gold rush also made for the development of some amazing innovations and technologies. One of the most famous of these is that of Levi Strauss. This entrepreneur noticed that miner’s trousers weren’t up to the heavy-duty mining work. He made durable pants out of canvas and sold them to the miners. They developed into blue jeans, hence the Brand name ‘Levi’s.’ Another invention, made by Samuel Morse, was one of the most innovative designs made in the history of America. The issue was isolation. California’s expanding had led to a huge gap between California and the Eastern United States. Samuel Morse had the idea of communicating messages over wires using a code of dots and dashes. He developed the world’s first telegraph, which opened a whole new doorway to instant communication – both national and international. The concept of the telegraph fathered telephones and, indirectly, cell phones. It has shaped the world we live in today, and it may not have happened without the gold rush.

Domencio Ghirardelli was another entrepreneur that was involved in the California Gold Rush. Domencio, an Italian, came to California and opened a chocolate shop. This shop eventually evolved into the world-famous Ghirardelli’s Chocolate. Another famous food industry started in the gold rush. The founder was a 49’er named Philip Danforth Armour. After mining in the gold rush, he moved back to Chicago and started a company named Armour and Co., one of the largest meat packers in the nation. John Studebaker also profited from the gold rush by moving to California in the hope of finding gold. Failing that, he started selling wagons. After relocating back East, his business evolved into the Studebaker Automobile Company.

Of course, the gold rush had a good amount of drawbacks, as many events in history often do. First, the Native Americans living in California were nearly wiped out. As in many accounts of America’s settlement, a large part of this was due to diseases brought over from the miners, to which the Indians had no immunity. However, the miners were often greedy, hostile people. They weren’t used to living with Native Americans, and the Indians were treated like slaves or worse. Many were murdered simply because of prejudice, with no good reason. (As opposed to other good reasons to murder someone? ;) )  Previously, Americans had pushed Indians west when they expanded. The inevitable day finally arrived, though, when there was nothing left to the west but a vast ocean. Since the miners didn’t even try to live in close proximity with the Indians, thousands of Native Americans died during the Gold Rush.

The gold rush also had adverse environmental effects. Hydraulic mining was a relatively productive mining technique involving hosing the ground with copious amounts of water. It uprooted plants, killed animals, and overall devastated the environment. Eventually, it was regulated. However, though it kept the environment from deteriorating further, the damage was done.

It is quite obvious that the gold rush affected more than just the Native Americans and the environment. Some of the most dramatic affects were experienced by the 49’ers themselves. Most of them had an extremely difficult life. The average miner generally had to get up well before the sun. They had a cold breakfast of pickles, bread, beans, or some combination thereof. They stuck to these products because they kept very well and could be bought in large amounts without fear of it all spoiling. Then, they would go out to look for gold. If they were lucky, they got to pan for gold. This involved scooping sand and dirt from the river bottom into a pan with very tiny holes in it to drain the water out. The gold particles, being heavier than most other particles at the bottom of a river, sank to the bottom and could be collected after brushing away the top layers. While this was the most productive mining method and probably the easiest, it involved miners standing in freezing snow-fed mountain streams for up to ten hours a day. Once that surface gold was gone, though, the miners had to mine deeper. This was much more rigorous, time-consuming, and dangerous. Work was definitely not an easy time for the 49’ers.

An average gold miner’s work, though it was the aspect of their lives on which they spent the most time, was not the only aspect of their lives. When the work was done, miners went ‘home’ to their camp. This was not always a good thing. Camps were rough at best and deadly at worst. Most miners didn’t spend long at camp, though. Most went to nearby gambling houses and effectively blew their money away gambling and drinking late into the night. After staggering home late at night, they went immediately to bed and tried to get in a few hours’ sleep before they had to get up and do it all over again.

A miner’s life was made difficult by several problems. These issues were common in various towns and generally resulted in death, corruption, and/or lifelong misery. One of the biggest of these issues was crime. Many of the inhabitants of the town were greedy – having come thousands of miles for gold – and they were positioned around the largest amounts of gold ever found in America in generations. They were accustomed to a wild life. They were often drunk, and most of them owned at least one firearm. What’s more, the towns were not well organized enough to have an organized police force. Rarely have such hostile circumstances been arranged together in the history of America. Crime, coupled with sickness, mining accidents, and a hostile landscape, accounted for a death rate of about 40% among 49’ers.

Some problems were also economical. In California, supply and demand ruled. Food and equipment often cost at least ten times what the same product would cost in the East. While the miners may have been making a larger gross salary than they had been back home, they often spent it all just to eat. Another big problem was pride. After promising their families innumerable riches after just a few months in California, these people were sorely disappointed by what they found. However, they thought even worse about what their family would think of them. They would be returning in shame, wondering how they could face their families and friends. For many, the concept was too terrible to bear, and they stuck with their miserable life as a gold miner.

Of course, not all miners lived terrible years eking a living out of the California mountainsides. Some actually obtained unbelievable wealth. One of these miners was Bennager Raspberry. While yanking his rifle’s ramrod out of the ground, Raspberry loosed a gold-rich chunk of quartz. After three days of digging in the area, Raspberry made $7,000, or about the equivalent of $210,000 today. John Charles Fremont was another lucky person to profit immensely during the gold rush. He, however, was not a prospector, but an explorer. He bought some land in California at about the time of the gold rush for $3,000. During the gold rush, gold was discovered on his land. He sold it for $6,000,000, or about $170,000,000 in today’s currency – 20,000 times what he initially paid for it.

Ironically, these success stories were quite unfortunate. They filled the newspapers back in the East, as well as people’s imaginations. Where were the articles about the average life of the 49’er – the ones that acknowledged that the chances of finding gold were about the same as winning the lottery with a single ticket? All people back east heard about was the fantastical stories of immense gold reserves that were open to all who could get it. They did not stop to wonder how much of this could really be true. They simply ran off to California in hopes that would soon be destroyed, leaving them homesick and very nearly penniless. All in all, the few success stories only served to invigorate more people to participate in the gold craze that was sweeping the nation.

In conclusion, the gold rush was essential for some great technological developments, and it had some huge benefits on California itself, it turned out to be devastating to the miners who participated. Their desire for some easy money led them to extremes that left them miserable, penniless, and sometimes even dead. However, the world would not be the same without this momentous event in American history. It made California what it is. It played a part in some inventions that forever changed the world. It even led to some small yet meaningful inventions, such as blue jeans. While we may hope that none in the world today will face what those 49’ers did over a hundred years ago, we may also be glad that the gold rush occurred, for the world would not be the same without it.

[Jean in Newcastle]

The California Gold Rush helped California to become a state and made for some great innovations and inventions, but it proved devastating to the miners involved. Statistically, there were some great effects of the Gold Rush, especially to (for) California itself. The most obvious of these was that it was able to apply for statehood quickly, without going through the usual long wait as a territory before its population was large enough to apply for statehood. However, the Gold Rush had terrible effects on the miners and gold seekers themselves who came to California, as well as people who were simply caught up in the Gold Rush. A great example of this is John Sutter, who owned the land on which gold was first discovered. He knew what gold could do to people and he was afraid of it. He had a right to be. The gold seekers trampled his property, killed his livestock, and left him penniless.

                Gold was first discovered in California in January of 1848. A carpenter named John Marshall was working on a sawmill for John Sutter, a rich Californian landowner known for his generosity. As he was working on it, he noticed something glinting in a nearby stream. He picked it up and exultantly showed it to his work crew, proclaiming, “Boys, I believe we have found gold!†It took some time to find that the gold was not just “fool’s gold,†some more time for word to reach people back East, and yet a little longer for them to believe that it was not a hoax, but once all that had happened, the gold rush had begun, and the miners were pouring in. About 300,000 people came to look for gold between 1848 and 1855, the duration of the gold rush. Since most of the miners came in 1849, when the gold rush had just started, the miners were called the 49’ers, a name which can still be seen in  (still used as) San Francisco’s football team.

                There were several routes to California from the East. One could take a ship, sail south under South America’s tip, and then travel back up the other side to California. While this was probably the easiest way, it was expensive, and on the open sea everyone ran the risk of scurvy or starvation. Another route incorporated both land and sea. One could simply sail south to the Gulf of Mexico and disembark at Panama. From there, they would travel across Panama overland to the Western side (the Panama Canal had not yet been built) and take a different ship north to California. If everything went right (which it rarely did), this route was easily the fastest way. However, the jungles of Panama were filled with malaria-carrying mosquitoes, poisonous animals, and hostile predators. Only the bravest 49’ers took this route. The most commonly traveled way was also the most obvious way, especially to most 49’ers. They would simply cross America and go west overland. This was the cheapest way. However, there were several problems with this route. It was definitely the most difficult. Also, the Sierra Nevadas, a mountain range in California, became literally impassable in winter. Miners had to time their trips carefully and hurry to reach California before the snows set in and the route became impossible to travel. All these complications hardly mattered to the miners, though. After all, according to the newspapers, after reaching California, they could simply pick up gold nuggets off the ground as if they were stones. After a year at most, they supposed, they could simply go back home and live in comfort and ease for the rest of their lives.

The gold rush had many positive effects, both on California and the world as a whole. Some of its most obvious effects are seen on California specifically. For one, the exploding population of gold miners allowed it to meet the requirements for statehood very quickly, skipping past the slow progression from territory to state. This exploding population had another positive effect on America. On the land route to California, miners explored routes, cleared passes, and set up communities and trading posts along the way. These developments made travel much easier for later pioneers, who traveled in search for a new home, rather than gold. They proved especially helpful to pioneers traveling along the Oregon or Santa Fe trails around the same time.

The gold rush also mixed cultures. Americans from the East weren’t the only ones who were fooled by the extravagant claims of gold. Chinese, Chileans, Irish, and many other immigrants had the same philosophy as the Americans. They would simply sail there, mine for a year or so, and return home. They were, of course, sorely disappointed when the exaggerations they had heard failed to hold true. After this, many did not return home. They mingled with other Americans living in California and mixed together to form a most interesting cultural blend. An obvious example of this is that of Chinatown in San Francisco. For a while after the Chinese came, miners segregated them and confined them to their own portion of San Francisco. This neighborhood eventually became Chinatown. Also, the gold rush had economic benefits on America. Any time a country is extracting huge amounts of precious material, the government will benefit economically. This is another benefit on America as a whole.

The gold rush also made for the development of some amazing innovations and technologies. One of the most famous of these is that of Levi Strauss. This entrepreneur noticed that miner’s trousers weren’t up to the heavy-duty mining work. He made durable pants out of canvas and sold them to the miners. They developed into blue jeans, hence the Brand name ‘Levi’s.’ Another invention, made by Samuel Morse, was one of the most innovative designs made in the history of America. The issue was isolation. California’s expanding had led to a huge gap between California and the Eastern United States. Samuel Morse had the idea of communicating messages over wires using a code of dots and dashes. He developed the world’s first telegraph, which opened a whole new doorway to instant communication – both national and international. The concept of the telegraph fathered telephones and, indirectly, cell phones. It has shaped the world we live in today, and it may not have happened without the gold rush.

Domencio Ghirardelli was another entrepreneur that was involved in the California Gold Rush. Domencio, an Italian, came to California and opened a chocolate shop. This shop eventually evolved into the world-famous Ghirardelli’s Chocolate. Another famous food industry started in the gold rush. The founder was a 49’er named Philip Danforth Armour. After mining in the gold rush, he moved back to Chicago and started a company named Armour and Co., one of the largest meat packers in the nation. John Studebaker also profited from the gold rush by moving to California in the hope of finding gold. Failing that, he started selling wagons. After relocating back East, his business evolved into the Studebaker Automobile Company.

Of course, the gold rush had a good amount of drawbacks, as many events in history often do. First, the Native Americans living in California were nearly wiped out. As in many accounts of America’s settlement, a large part of this was due to diseases brought over from the miners, to which the Indians had no immunity. However, the miners were often greedy, hostile people. They weren’t used to living with Native Americans, and the Indians were treated like slaves or worse. Many were murdered simply because of prejudice, with no good reason. (As opposed to other good reasons to murder someone? ;) )  Previously, Americans had pushed Indians west when they expanded. The inevitable day finally arrived, though, when there was nothing left to the west but a vast ocean. Since the miners didn’t even try to live in close proximity with the Indians, thousands of Native Americans died during the Gold Rush.

The gold rush also had adverse environmental effects. Hydraulic mining was a relatively productive mining technique involving hosing the ground with copious amounts of water. It uprooted plants, killed animals, and overall devastated the environment. Eventually, it was regulated. However, though it kept the environment from deteriorating further, the damage was done.

It is quite obvious that the gold rush affected more than just the Native Americans and the environment. Some of the most dramatic affects were experienced by the 49’ers themselves. Most of them had an extremely difficult life. The average miner generally had to get up well before the sun. They had a cold breakfast of pickles, bread, beans, or some combination thereof. They stuck to these products because they kept very well and could be bought in large amounts without fear of it all spoiling. Then, they would go out to look for gold. If they were lucky, they got to pan for gold. This involved scooping sand and dirt from the river bottom into a pan with very tiny holes in it to drain the water out. The gold particles, being heavier than most other particles at the bottom of a river, sank to the bottom and could be collected after brushing away the top layers. While this was the most productive mining method and probably the easiest, it involved miners standing in freezing snow-fed mountain streams for up to ten hours a day. Once that surface gold was gone, though, the miners had to mine deeper. This was much more rigorous, time-consuming, and dangerous. Work was definitely not an easy time for the 49’ers.

An average gold miner’s work, though it was the aspect of their lives on which they spent the most time, was not the only aspect of their lives. When the work was done, miners went ‘home’ to their camp. This was not always a good thing. Camps were rough at best and deadly at worst. Most miners didn’t spend long at camp, though. Most went to nearby gambling houses and effectively blew their money away gambling and drinking late into the night. After staggering home late at night, they went immediately to bed and tried to get in a few hours’ sleep before they had to get up and do it all over again.

A miner’s life was made difficult by several problems. These issues were common in various towns and generally resulted in death, corruption, and/or lifelong misery. One of the biggest of these issues was crime. Many of the inhabitants of the town were greedy – having come thousands of miles for gold – and they were positioned around the largest amounts of gold ever found in America in generations. They were accustomed to a wild life. They were often drunk, and most of them owned at least one firearm. What’s more, the towns were not well organized enough to have an organized police force. Rarely have such hostile circumstances been arranged together in the history of America. Crime, coupled with sickness, mining accidents, and a hostile landscape, accounted for a death rate of about 40% among 49’ers.

Some problems were also economical. In California, supply and demand ruled. Food and equipment often cost at least ten times what the same product would cost in the East. While the miners may have been making a larger gross salary than they had been back home, they often spent it all just to eat. Another big problem was pride. After promising their families innumerable riches after just a few months in California, these people were sorely disappointed by what they found. However, they thought even worse about what their family would think of them. They would be returning in shame, wondering how they could face their families and friends. For many, the concept was too terrible to bear, and they stuck with their miserable life as a gold miner.

Of course, not all miners lived terrible years eking a living out of the California mountainsides. Some actually obtained unbelievable wealth. One of these miners was Bennager Raspberry. While yanking his rifle’s ramrod out of the ground, Raspberry loosed a gold-rich chunk of quartz. After three days of digging in the area, Raspberry made $7,000, or about the equivalent of $210,000 today. John Charles Fremont was another lucky person to profit immensely during the gold rush. He, however, was not a prospector, but an explorer. He bought some land in California at about the time of the gold rush for $3,000. During the gold rush, gold was discovered on his land. He sold it for $6,000,000, or about $170,000,000 in today’s currency – 20,000 times what he initially paid for it.

Ironically, these success stories were quite unfortunate. They filled the newspapers back in the East, as well as people’s imaginations. Where were the articles about the average life of the 49’er – the ones that acknowledged that the chances of finding gold were about the same as winning the lottery with a single ticket? All people back east heard about was the fantastical stories of immense gold reserves that were open to all who could get it. They did not stop to wonder how much of this could really be true. They simply ran off to California in hopes that would soon be destroyed, leaving them homesick and very nearly penniless. All in all, the few success stories only served to invigorate more people to participate in the gold craze that was sweeping the nation.

In conclusion, the gold rush was essential for some great technological developments, and it had some huge benefits on California itself, it turned out to be devastating to the miners who participated. Their desire for some easy money led them to extremes that left them miserable, penniless, and sometimes even dead. However, the world would not be the same without this momentous event in American history. It made California what it is. It played a part in some inventions that forever changed the world. It even led to some small yet meaningful inventions, such as blue jeans. While we may hope that none in the world today will face what those 49’ers did over a hundred years ago, we may also be glad that the gold rush occurred, for the world would not be the same without it.

[Jean in Newcastle]

I don't have time to do this, but he (or you) needs to outline this paper.  If  you do, you will see that he jumps back and forth a bit in his progression.  

 

May I suggest that he rewrite it to show his thesis - "The California Gold Rush helped California to become a state and made for some great innovations and inventions, but it proved devastating to the miners involved." with some general (not specific) positive examples and general negative examples in the first paragraph.

 

Then:  Take each of the general positive examples and give specific examples to back them up in a paragraph or two.

Then:  Take each of the general negative examples and give specific examples to back them up in a paragraph or two.

Then:  Conclusion (which he has).  

 

 

[Momto6inIN]

He did make an outline before he started writing ... but somehow the written paper came back a bit more all over the place than what he started from.  :)  Thanks for your feedback!  I appreciate your time.

 

Anyone else have any thoughts???