California Gold Rush
- Began when John Marshall, a carpenter working on one of John Sutter's sawmills's found traces of gold in the foothills of the Serra Nevada's
- Almost immediately, hundreds of thousands of people from around the world began flocking to California in a frantic search for gold
- Most migrants to the Far West prepared carefully before making the journey
- California migrants (known as "Forty-niners) abandoned farms, jobs, homes, families, and piled onto ships and flooded the overland trails
- Gold rush also attracted the first Chines migrants to the western United States
- Gold rush created a serious labor shortage in California as many male workers left their jobs and flocked to the gold fields
- Gold rush put pressure on the United States to resolve the status of the territories and of slavery within them