American history

San Francisco

The focus of change -- and growth -- in Gold Rush California was the once-tiny hamlet of San Francisco. Only a few hundred people lived there in the 1840s, but the discovery of gold brought unimaginable growth. The city soon averaged 30 new houses and two murders each day.A plot of San Francisco real estate that cost $16 in 1847, sold for $45,000 just 18 months later.

In less than two years the city burned to the ground six times. But there was always money to rebuild it bigger and better. Nearly a half-billion dollars worth of gold passed through the city in the 1850s -- and everyone wanted their share.

JoAnn Levy, author "They Saw the Elephant"

"You either charged a lot of money to work -- or to heck with it, you just went to the mines. You couldn't find a house boy; you couldn't find a teacher; you couldn't find anybody to do anything because they were all going to the mines. And it was very appealing wasn't it?"

Newly-rich miners regularly came down from the hills to the new metropolis of San Francisco. They were hungry for fun -- any kind of fun.

Samuel Clemens

"They were rough in those times! They fairly reveled in gold, whiskey, fights, and fandangoes, and were unspeakably happy. The honest miner raked in from a hundred to a thousand dollars out of his claim a day, and what with the gambling dens and other entertainments, he hadn't a cent the next morning if he had any type of luck."

Thousands of merchant profiteers were more than willing to help separate a miner from his gold -- merchants like Sam Brannan. By the mid 1850s, the man who started it all owned much of downtown San Francisco. By 1856, his income was nearly a half-million dollars. Brannan was the richest man in California, he even issued his own currency.

Sam Brannan represented the new California -- bold, opportunistic, entrepreneurial.

JoAnn Levy, author "They Saw the Elephant"

"The timid stayed home. So we are working with a populace of people who have in them at least that sense of adventure. And what they called "go ahead". There was a lot of that expression used. It's a "go ahead country;" we are "go ahead people" and those that had it came."

J.S. Holliday, author of "The World Rushed In":

"Editors and preachers and doctors and lawyers and scientists would never have gone west, never of put themselves out on the frontier. But because of gold, they went to California."

Gold was a magnet that brought people -- dynamic, energetic people -- from all over the world. This vibrant mix quickly turned San Francisco into a cultural mecca, with theater, opera, and more newspapers than any city but London. The city became the envy of the world -- thanks to a collision of cultures that became its greatest strength.