USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -A forty-niner is a term used to describe a person who migrated to California in the year 1849 to search for gold.

Detailed explanation-2: -Definitions of forty-niner. a miner who took part in the California gold rush in 1849. type of: gold digger, gold miner, gold panner. a miner who digs or pans for gold in a gold field.

Detailed explanation-3: -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-4: -Miners were called ‘forty-niners’ because they moved to California en masse in 1849 as a result of the California Gold Rush.

Detailed explanation-5: -Forty-niners rushed to California with visions of gilded promise, but they discovered a harsh reality. Life in the gold fields exposed the miner to loneliness and homesickness, isolation and physical danger, bad food and illness, and even death. More than anything, mining was hard work.