Introduction
The term gold rush not only refers to gold minerals but also to any economic activity in which participants expect lucrative benefits within a short period. A gold rush is characterized by the general feeling of lots of instant wealth within a short period. A period of gold rush involves a feverish movement of people into the area of commercial gold discovery. Major gold rushes are known to have taken place in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, and the United States. This is perhaps because gold, a soft yellow precious metal is highly valued and is even used as money in some instances. Gold rushes spur settlements and can even redefine the culture of the region in question. How does a gold rush happen?
The first stage
An individual first tracks a placer gold. At this stage, the placer miners use gold pans or rockers/sluice boxes to extract the bigger gold sediments. Little or no cash investment is needed for this purpose. Placer mining advances to a large scale after the sluice box stage. Here, more sophisticated means are required to continue with the process, and larger organizations willing to spend more money are the major role players. Techniques like hydraulic mining and dredging are used to access placer deposits that are hard to reach. When the free gold supply gets depleted, veins of the original gold are then sought after. The first job for the miners often involves washing and crushing. Later, gold mining will require smelting where gold is separated from other minerals such as sulfide. A placer gold rush involving the above process often takes a few years (Magagnini par.1).
Risks and sorrow
In many cases, people end up selling property and migrating to the ‘gold region’ to acquire a fortune. The majority of people sell their homes or land and exhaust their savings during the process. As it turns out to be, such risks are usually not worth taking, especially where the placer is meager against many hands (fool’s gold). The result is financial impoverishment in cases of failure (Magagnini par.2).
A gold rush may be profitable to some people and yet become detrimental to others. The majority of gold rush stories end up in sorrow. Some people’s lives may be positively transformed while the immigrants who do not make it may not be in a position to even go home. For instance, in the case of the California gold rush, Americans came to resent the fact that only foreigners benefited from the gold rush at the expense of the residents. Violent attacks on foreigners then ensued, after which native Indians were humiliated. ‘Diggers,’ as they were called, were arrested for vagrancy in their land while others were sold as slaves. Women working within the mine areas even managed to earn much more than the miners by baking pies, sewing, washing, and running hotels. Similarly, prostitution was rampant and was even a sort of goldmine for others (Magagnini par. 3).
Sedimentation
Goldrush leaves derelict land which leads to sedimentation on shores. Sedimentation forms an abrasive surface that prevents burrowing animals from penetrating the subsurface. In 1862, the new state capitol in Sacramento was drowned by the rivers which were already filled with sediments from the gold rush as they could hardly absorb the heavy rainstorms.
Conclusion
In conclusion, when a gold rush is involved, it is advisable to put one’s priorities right before participating. This is because; only the strong seem to survive a gold rush. The negative consequences attributed to a gold rush are sometimes much more than its gains.
Works cited
Magagnini, Stephen. “Indians misfortune was stamped in gold”. 1998.