Describe the diverse groups of people who came to California during the Gold Rush and the dramatic population growth that resulted.
The Gold Rush pulled people from every direction, not just from the eastern United States. Experienced miners from Sonora, Mexico, brought valuable mining techniques, including a rocking pan called a batea and a simple ore-crushing device called an arrastra. Miners from Chile and Peru, also experienced from their own countries' mining, often arrived early by sea. Immigrants came from Europe, including Ireland, Germany, and France, and from Australia. Starting especially in the 1850s, thousands of immigrants arrived from Guangdong province in China, seeking the opportunity that so many others were chasing too.
The population explosion was staggering: California's non-Native population grew from roughly 14,000 in 1848 to more than 250,000 by 1852 -- in just four years. This sudden rush of newcomers from around the world reshaped California overnight, but it came at a severe cost to the region's original inhabitants, since this flood of miners moved directly onto land that Native Californians depended on, a cost the next few weeks will examine closely.
Mastery looks like: They can name at least three different origins of Gold Rush newcomers and state the approximate population growth from 1848 to 1852.
Common stumbles: Assuming Gold Rush migrants were only Americans from the East; underestimating how fast and how large the population growth was.