10 Horrors of the Gold Rush They Never Taught You in School

In January 1848, James Marshall spotted gold in a California riverbed, and within a few years roughly 300,000 people had rushed in to chase it. History remembers the fortunes. It tends to forget what it cost: the diseases, the violence, the poisoned rivers, and the people who were driven out or wiped out so others could get rich. This video counts down ten horrors of the Gold Rush that rarely make it into the classroom. From the brutal voyages around Cape Horn and across the Isthmus of Panama, to the mining camps where cholera, scurvy, and lawlessness killed as many people as the work itself. From the mercury used to extract gold and the hydraulic mining that tore whole hillsides apart, to the discriminatory taxes aimed at Chinese and Latin American miners, and the catastrophic decline of California’s Native population. The Gold Rush built California. This is the part of the story that got left out.