Tony Talks History
Who Really Got Rich In The GoldRush?
Around 300,000 people rushed to California dreaming of gold. Most went home with less than they came with. The people who really got rich never dug a hole: a man who bought pans for 20 cents and sold them for $15, a woman who sold one biscuit for $10, a wheelbarrow maker, a chocolate maker, a bank, two hardware shops that became a railroad, and a pair of trousers invented 25 years after the rush began.
The numbers in this video
300,000Around how many people rushed to California.Source: Wikipedia, California gold rush
$15What Sam Brannan sold a gold pan for. He had bought them for about 20 cents each.Source: Wikipedia, Samuel Brannan
$36,000What Brannan made in nine weeks.Source: Wikipedia, Samuel Brannan
$20About what an average miner found in gold per day in 1848. By 1851 it was less than $8 a day.Source: National Geographic, "Who were the original 49ers?"
$3The price of a single egg in the gold country, on one price list from 1851.Source: California State Parks, Gold Rush Prices worksheet (1851)
$10What a hungry miner offered Luzena Wilson for one biscuit, after first offering $5.Source: Wikipedia, Luzena Wilson
Every number has a source
Chapters
- 0:00The Gold Rush Myth
- 1:36The Flakes in the Ditch
- 3:32Sell the Shovels
- 5:11The Whole World Comes
- 6:49Ghost Ships
- 8:20The Price of an Egg
- 10:08The Dark Side
- 11:18The $10 Biscuit
- 12:44Wheelbarrows and Chocolate
- 14:27Wells Fargo
- 15:16The Big Four
- 16:44The Truth About Jeans
- 18:31What Happened to Them
What we left out
Claims we found and could not stand behind, so they are not in the video.
Any conversion into today's money. Sources disagree wildly on it, so every figure is given in the dollars of the time.
The popular claim that Levi Strauss sold canvas trousers to gold miners. The video says the opposite.
The story that Collis Huntington dug for half a day and quit, and his Panama trading story. Neither was found in a source that was checked.
