The Story of America’s Education System and the New Gold Rush
Challenging the value of a system that’s seldom challenged
On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall found gold at Sutter’s Mill in Coloma, California. The Gold Rush started shortly after.
About 300,000 people moved to California either from the east or by sea.
San Francisco exploded overnight. It went from a population of 200 in 1846 to 36,000 in 1852. Everybody was after gold. Everybody wanted their ticket into the good life.
The influx of all these people rendered demand for a new economy; steamships, trains, roads, churches, places to stay.
The kicker: Information traveled very slowly 170 years ago. The first to hear about the gold were those relatively close to the scene. These were the lesser-known “forty-eighters”. They amounted to no more than about 500 people, the earliest gold-seekers, collecting the most easily accessible gold. Inflation-adjusted, some of these early miners were probably gathering tens of millions of dollars worth of gold each day.
By 1849, most people had heard, and the influx began. The word had permeated the world: There was gold in California.
Outside the early miners, merchants were making far more money than those…
