USA HISTORY

Detailed explanation-1: -The California gold rush caused a huge increase in California’s population. That year about 80, 000 gold-seekers came to California, hoping to strike it rich. These migrants were known as “forty-niners.” Nearly eighty percent of these were Americans from the east. The others came from all over the world.

Detailed explanation-2: -The forty-niners definition encompasses anyone who left their lives, property, and homes to travel to California in 1848-1849 in search of gold. Gold prospectors, most of them men, had the plan to go to California, find gold, become rich from selling the gold, then return home.

Detailed explanation-3: -"Forty-niners” flocked to California during the Gold Rush. Pioneers came to California by land and by sea from other parts of America and the world. The result was new wealth and a dramatically increased and diverse population. Small settlements grew into cities, business boomed, and California became a state in 1850.

Detailed explanation-4: -Forty-niners came from Latin America, particularly from the Mexican mining districts near Sonora and Chile. Gold-seekers and merchants from Asia, primarily from China, began arriving in 1849, at first in modest numbers to Gum San ("Gold Mountain"), the name given to California in Chinese.

Detailed explanation-5: -At the peak of gold rush immigration in 1852, 20, 000 Chinese immigrated to California, out of a total of 67, 000 people, thus, Chinese immigrants accounted for nearly 30% of all immigrants. In response to the influx of Chinese immigrants, the California legislature passed a new foreign miners’ tax of $4 per month.