Part 1 of 5 · freeIntroduction
On January 24, 1848, James Marshall, a carpenter from New Jersey, was inspecting the sawmill he was building at Coloma, on the American River, for a landowner named John Sutter. In the tailrace, he spotted bright yellow flecks. He pounded them with a rock, and the cook, Jennie Wimmer, boiled them in lye: they flattened and did not tarnish.
After further tests, the two men concluded that Marshall really had "found a gold mine." That day opened the California Gold Rush: years of mass migration, cultures from all over the world thrown together, the foundations of one of the largest economies on the planet. But who, exactly, came out of it rich?
The rest is in the Sophia app.The remaining parts, the open-book quiz and the full glossary. Free to start; Premium unlocks everything.
- 2Gold fever spreads around the world
- 3The Forty-Niners hit the road
- 4The miners' backbreaking work
- 5The people who "mined the miners"
Open-book quiz8 questions whose answers are in the text.
Glossary6 terms explained in a tap.
30 languagesThe same course, from French to Japanese.
