What Are the Prospects 4 Lure of Gold 6 Where in the West 8 Gold Fever in California 10 The Forty-Niners 12 Seeing the Elephant 14 Life in the Camps 16 Mineral Wealth 18 Life for the Miners 20 Boomtowns 22 Wealth of the Forests 24 Life with the Loggers 26 Shaping the West 28 Glossary Timeline 30 On the Web Books 31 Index 32
What Are the Prospects The North American West has many natural resources By the mid-1800s waves of settlers had moved there to seek their fortune in lumber and precious metals µ Wealth in West Coast forests µ Mining towns need building material In the early 1800s the lumber industry boomed in the forests around the Great Lakes So much wood was cut that the forests became thin Meanwhile demand for lumber in the West rose after the California Gold Rush of 1849 Settlers in the West needed to build homes and stores Oregon Washington and British Columbia had thick forests Soon logging camps and mill towns sprang up along the coast Right Giant redwood and Douglas fir trees grew widely along the Pacific Coast Heavy Metal µ Not all that glitters is gold Gold was not the only valuable metal in the West A silver rush began in the 1870s with discoveries in Arizona Colorado and Nevada In addition miners found metals used in construction and manufacturing such as iron zinc and copper These metals brought wealth to many states did you know A prospector is someone who looks for useful or valuable minerals A miner is someone who digs minerals out of the ground In the 1800s the two roles were closely related If a prospector found gold or silver he started digging 4
Prospectors mine and pan for gold in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in California µ Latecomers miss out µ Big business gets involved The first prospectors and miners arrived in California in the summer of 1848 Many of these Forty Eighters successfully found gold in streams or near the surface of the ground About 70,000 Forty-Niners arrived the following year They found that most of the easily accessible gold was gone Only a few of these latecomers made a fortune Instead most ended up working for large mining companies From the mid-1850s these corporations used hydraulic mining to extract gold µ California business booms µ Miners have money to spend 5
