USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The three main routes used by American gold seekers were the Oregon-California Trail, the Cape Horn route, and the Panama shortcut.

Detailed explanation-2: -Most forty-niners from the Midwest and many from the East traveled West on the Oregon-California Trail. Travel by ship was costly. Maps and books promised a quick and easy overland voyage. But for many gold seekers who traveled overland, the journey would be the hardest they had ever experienced.

Detailed explanation-3: -Overland Route The journey took emigrants across the northern Plains, over the Rocky Mountains, through the Great Basin, and finally over the Sierra Nevada Mountains into California. Miners risked sickness and accidents over their 2, 000 mile journey to reach the gold fields.

Detailed explanation-4: -Arriving in covered wagons, clipper ships, and on horseback, some 300, 000 migrants, known as “forty-niners” (named for the year they began to arrive in California, 1849), staked claims to spots of land around the river, where they used pans to extract gold from silt deposits.

Detailed explanation-5: -The quickest route was to travel by ship to Central America and then cross the Isthmus of Panama, where travelers were exposed to diseases like malaria, yellow fever, and cholera. From Panama City on the Pacific coast, travelers would have to find a ship to take them north to California.