Gold Rush Paper :: essays research papers

One moment the California creek beds glimmered with meretricious 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 " westerly" was a ruthless territoryduring the ordinal century. With more than enough golddust to go around earlier in the Gold Rush, crime was rare,but as the stakes locomote and the easily panned gold d baksheeshled,robbery and murder became a part of feeling 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 issue toinvestigate those stories and seek to find what is fact orwhat is fiction. These stories will delegate you galloping throughthe tumultuous California territory of the mid-nineteenthcentury, where disputes were settled with six shooters andthe lines of nicety were in a continuous chaos. Wheres the WestHow and where did the West begin? This is the challengethat is asked most often and there is never a straight-forward answer. Everyone has their witness 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 California genuinely being considered the "West?" With all honesty, even out into the twentieth century, California is not thought ofas being the "West," or the "West" in the mood 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 ensnare and they begansearching for the mysterious metallic dust as well. Four eld 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 go on 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