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The article explores the link between gold rushes and the establishment of universities, focusing on the impact of the Victorian era's global gold rushes after 1848. It argues that the influx of wealth from gold booms stimulated the creation of a specific type of university, termed "goldfield foundations," as the financial gains from gold rushes invigorated university-financing mechanisms. These universities, often established in settler societies, benefited from government grants, land endowments, and increased funding due to the wealth generated by gold. The article highlights how settler universities strategically capitalized on the social upheaval and population growth associated with gold rushes to uphold Old World values. The article contends that a specific set of universities across California, Australasia, South Africa, and parts of Canada owed their rapid formation to the global gold and mineral rushes of the period. The newfound mineral wealth during the critical period of these universities' formation added liquidity to colonial and institutional finance. Moreover, the social effects of gold rushes, such as population growth and social upheaval, stimulated regionalism and a desire to re-establish Old World hierarchies, making university building an attractive endeavor. The article also acknowledges the environmental and cultural costs associated with gold rushes, including ecological destruction and the neglect of Indigenous knowledge. It emphasizes the importance of documenting Indigenous perspectives and challenges the gold rush mythology. The universities, acting as social anchors amid the frenzy for gold, held expertise in place before releasing it to contribute to further mineral booms in different regions.

Prominent economists have supposed that the private production of full‐bodied gold or silver coins is inefficient: due to information asymmetry, private coins will be chronically low‐quality or underweight. An examination of private mints during gold rushes in the US in the years 1830–63, drawing on contemporary accounts and numismatic literature, finds otherwise. While some private gold mints produced underweight coins, from incompetence or fraudulent intent, such mints did not last long. Informed by newspapers about the findings of assays, money‐users systematically abandoned substandard coins in favour of full‐weight coins. Only competent and honest mints survived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author's first maritime archaeological project, commenced in 1980, was a multi-year assessment of a near-shore shipwreck, SS Tennessee (1853) in a newly established unit of the National Park System. Reassessing a first maritime archaeological project is a valuable exercise for any archaeologist working in the field. It offers fresh insights as assumptions and conclusions made at the time are challenged and reinterpreted in the face of new theoretical perspectives, and new data. It also provides an ability to take a fresh look at early career approaches and decisions. This article summarizes and reinterprets the archaeology and contexts of the wreck of SS Tennessee. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report synthesizes and evaluates published scientific literature on the environmental occurrence and biomagnification of mercury with emphasis on the San Francisco Bay Area (SFBA), California. Mercury forms various compounds, well known for their toxicity in humans and environmental ecosystems. Elemental mercury is transported and distributed by air, water, and sediments. Through the metabolic processes of algae and bacteria, mercury is converted into organic compounds, such as methylmercury (MeHg), which then bioaccumulates up through trophic levels. In fish, it is found primarily in skeletal muscle, while in humans, the primary target organs are the brain and kidneys. Health concerns exist regarding bioaccumulation of mercury in humans. This paper reviews the known anthropogenic sources of mercury contamination, including atmospheric deposition through aerial transport from coal burning power plants, cement production, and residual contaminants of mercury from gold mining, as well as mercury-containing waste from silver amalgams emitted from dental offices into waterways. Although tools exist for measuring mercury levels in hair, breast milk, urine, blood, and feces in humans, current diagnostic tools are inadequate in measuring total mercury load, including deposited mercury in tissues. Additionally, insufficient attention is being paid to potential synergistic impacts of mercury interaction with multipliers such as lead, cadmium, and aluminum. We provide specific data on methylmercury concentrations at different trophic levels, followed by recommendations for reducing the level of mercury in the SFBA in order to protect the health of humans and other species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The California gold rush era is most often remembered for the thousands of immigrants who traversed oceans and continents for a chance at quick wealth. Often lost in these narratives are the rich and diverse histories of Indigenous people who actively participated in, and were deeply affected by, the events of the gold rush. California's tribal peoples adapted and endured as thousands of non-Native prospectors travelled over and occupied their ancestral territories, devastating their traditional sources of subsistence. As these settlers targeted their communities with genocidal violence, Native people in California actively responded with organised armed resistance, peaceful negotiation and other adaptations. Meanwhile, California Indians were not the only Indigenous peoples to navigate the violent fabric of California's gold country. Cherokees and Wyandots from the American Midwest, Yaquis from northern Mexico, and Aboriginal Australians – to name only a few – all converged on California Indian lands in the gold rush era from a wide variety of historical contexts. The California gold country thus represented a site of Indigenous diaspora and confluence, where a highly diverse population of Native people laboured and mined the placers, often straddling the spheres of the settler and Indigenous in complex ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Compares the Australian and Californian gold rushes in the 1859s. Social and national consequences of the discovery of gold; Impact of gold mining on the indigenous population; Southern view of gold rush society in California; Liberal faith in the self-governing capacities of the populace in California.

Presents historical accounts about the involvement of Cherokee Indians in both gold discoveries in Georgia and California in the 19th century. Suggestion that gold discovered in Georgia in 1828 legally belonged to Cherokee Indians, but were forbidden to prospect; Cherokee Indians' staking of claims in the California gold; New era for both the Cherokee Nation and the United States.

The article focuses on the gold specimens produced by the Colorado Quartz gold mine located in California owned by the Dragon Gold Mining Company. It talks about the owners David Varabioff and Anthony Fraser being known for their interest in gems and minerals. It tells about the company using laser-based instruments to identify subtle geological changes in the earth inorder to extract the minerals.

This paper draws comparison between three photographers who documented the North Bloomfield Mining Co.’s (1866–1899) hydraulic gold mine, in California. The history of the North Bloomfield Mining Co. is of interest because of the role that photography played in promoting the interests of corporate capitalism, and conversely acting as an evidential tool for farmers whose lands were flooded by polluted tailings emanating from the mine. The company twice commissioned Carleton Watkins to document their undertakings; however, this paper argues that the aesthetic of the “industrial sublime” originating in Watkins’ photographs obfuscates an understanding of the ecological realities of mining. Alternatively, this paper presents two lesser-known photographers, J.A. Todd and “Clinch”, who adopt a counter-aesthetic approach to Watkins. Todd’s photographs from the Woodruff vs. North Bloomfield (1884) trial were presented as evidence in the first collective civil action in US legal history, which pitched the interests of farmers against the corporate mining industry. The resulting Sawyer verdict (1884) represents the USA’s earliest environmental legislation, which heralded the end of the Gold Rush. The photographs of “Clinch” were utilised in the subsequent US vs. North Bloomfield Mining Company (1899) trial, which finally put the company out of business for persistent illegalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philip Thomas Tyson (1799-1877) toured privately through central California, from San Francisco through the Sierra Nevada foothills gold prospects in 1849, to assess their potential and the general geology of the region. He produced the first regional map with geologic notations and several rough topographic/geologic cross-sections. He described Coast Range basement rocks, now described as Franciscan Complex melange and broken formation, the stratigraphic configuration of the Great Valley, and general geology of the Sierra Nevada foothills. He recognized that the older Coast Range and Sierran basement were deformed prior to recent volcanism and extensive terrestrial fluvial sedimentation, likely Neogene in age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contributes to a growing body of literature on the historical geographies of extraction. It develops a critique of industrial heritage through an account of North Bloomfield California, a settlement within the boundaries of Malakoff Diggins State Historic Park, and home to what was, in the years leading up to 1884, the largest and richest hydraulic gold mine in the world. I use archived fragments from two people who lived and worked in North Bloomfield to undercut the grand narratives of environmental conquest that still tend to undergird industrial heritage rubrics. The places given over to commemorate key moments in the development of our industrial society provide crucial orientation for contemporary environmental decision making. I demonstrate how a more intimate and nuanced approach to the industrial past through ancillary stories that foreground everyday encounters with nature can be used to challenge the soothing plotlines of technological genius, dignified suffering, social progress and enlightened restraint that so often frame public histories of extraction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Grass Valley orogenic gold district in the Sierra Nevada foothills province, central California, the largest historic gold producer ol the North American Cordillera, comprises both steeply dipping E-W veins located along lithologic contacts in accreted ca. 300 and 200 Ma oceanic rocks and shallowly dipping N-S veins hosted by the Grass Valley granodiorite; the latter have yielded about 70% of the 13 million ounces of historic lode gold production in the district. The oceanic host rocks were accreted to the western margin of North America between 200 and 170 Ma, metamorphosed to greenschist and amphibolite facies, and uplifted between 175 and 160 Ma. Large-scale magmatism in the Sierra Nevada occurred between 170 to 140 Ma and 120 to 80 Ma, with the Grass Valley granodiorite being emplaced during the older episode of magmatism. Uranium-lead isotope dating of hydrothermal xenotime yielded the first absolute age of 162 ± 5 Ma for the economically more significant N-S veins. The vein-hosted xenotime, as well as associated monazite, are unequivocally of hydrothermal origin as indicated by textural and chemical characteristics, including grain shape, lack of truncated growth banding, lack of an Eu anomaly, and low U and Th concentrations. Furthermore, the crack-seal texture of the veins, with abundant wall-rock slivers, suggests their formation as a result of episodic fluid flow possibly related to reoccurring seismic events, rather than a period of fluid exsolution from an evolving magma. The N-S veins are temporally distinct from a younger 153 to 151 Ma gold event that was previously reported for the E-W veins. Overlapping U-Pb zircon (159.9 ± 2.2 Ma) and 40Ar/39Ar biotite and hornblende (159.7 ± 0.6-161.9 ±1.4 Ma) ages and geothermobarometric calculations indicate that the Grass Valley granodiorite was emplaced at ca. 160 Ma at elevated temperatures (~800°C) within approximately 3 km of the paleosurface and rapidly cooled to the ambient temperature of the surrounding country rocks (<300°C). The age of the granodiorite is indistinguishable from that of the N-S veins, as recorded by the U-Pb age of xenotime in those veins. Consequently, the N-S veins must have formed between 162 and 157 Ma, the maximum permissive age of magma emplacement and the youngest permissive xenotime U-Pb age, respectively, during an E- to ENE-directed compressional regime. The geochemistry of die Grass Valley granodiorite is consistent with it being the product of arc magmatism. It served as a receptive host for mineralization, but it is has no direct genetic relationship to gold mineralization. Initial uplift of the intrusive mass correlates with the initial voluminous fluid flow event and vein formation at depths of no greater than 3 km. The E-W gold-bearing veins hosted within greenschist-facies country rocks adjacent to the intrusion formed during a second hydrothermal event 5 to 10 million years later than the magmatism and were contemporaneous with a shift to transtensional deformation denoted by sinistral strike-slip faulting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction to the journal presented along with miscellaneous topics about the time spent by Benjamin Davidson of investment banking company N. M. Rothschild & Sons and businessman Henreich Schlieman in California in the nineteenth century. It mentions the Davidson's letters about gold mining in California and gold business with Henreich.

A subject index for the August 2015 issue of the journal is presented.

Several letters are presented including one from Benjamin Davidson, agent of investment banking firm N. M. Rothschild & Sons to Messrs de Rothschild Freres, regarding gold mining in California and from John Luck of San Francisco, California to N. M. Rothschild & Sons regarding mining and Davidson.

An excerpt from correspondence letters depicting relations between Benjamin Davidson, agent of investment banking firm N. M. Rothschild & Sons and businessman Henreich Schliemann, during gold mining in California in 19th century.

The article discusses the time spent by Benjamin Davidson, agent of investment banking firm N.M. Rothschild & Sons in San Francisco, California from 1849-1852. It mentions the letters written by him for a pair of Gold Scales along with high prices of gold in San Francisco, purchase of a house by him and production of gold that led to the development of San Francisco. It adds growing prejudice against Indians, Mexicans, and South Americans.

The article focuses on the business partnership of Benjamin Davidson, agent of investment banking firm N M Rothschild & Sons and the German merchant Heinrich Schliemann for mining in California. It mentions their partnership for a few months in 1851-1852 and their letters which reveals their business activities and history of California. It adds that their letters are present in the Rothschild Archive in London, England and in archives of the California Historical Society.

The interrelationships between hydrologically driven evolution of legacy landscapes downstream of major mining districts and the contamination of lowland ecosystems are poorly understood over centennial time scales. Here, we demonstrate within piedmont valleys of California's Sierra Nevada, through new and historical data supported by modeling, that anthropogenic fans produced by 19th century gold mining comprise an episodically persistent source of sediment-adsorbed Hg to lowlands. Within the enormous, iconic Yuba Fan, we highlight (i) an apparent shift in the relative processes of fan evolution from gradual vertical channel entrenchment to punctuated lateral erosion of fan terraces, thus enabling entrainment of large volumes of Hg-laden sediment during individual floods, and (ii) systematic intrafan redistribution and downstream progradation of fan sediment into the Central Valley, triggered by terrace erosion during increasingly long, 10-y flood events. Each major flood apparently erodes stored sediment and delivers to sensitive lowlands the equivalent of ∼10-30% of the entire postmining Sierran Hg mass so far conveyed to the San Francisco Bay-Delta (SFBD). This process of protracted but episodic erosion of legacy sediment and associated Hg is likely to persist for >104 y. It creates, within an immense swath of river corridor well upstream of the SFBD, new contaminated floodplain surfaces primed for Hg methylation and augments/replenishes potential Hg sources to the SFBD. Anticipation, prediction, and management of toxic sediment delivery, and corresponding risks to lowland ecology and human society globally, depend on the morphodynamic stage of anthropogenic fan evolution, synergistically coupled to changing frequency of and duration extreme floods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the history of finding water for gold in California and Australia. It state that gold was discovered at Sutter's sawmill in Coloma, California in January 1848 while English born Edward Hargraves, who arrived in Australia in 1832, was the first to promote gold business in Australia. It adds that Coliban water scheme is already being operated by the Coliban Water, which is a government-owned utility which continuously extend and upgrade water supply infrastructure.

The article offers information regarding the U.S. chipper ships, that was used at the time of California Gold rush period to carry food and freight for California people. It mentions that the ships gained fame for their speed, beauty, and ability to temporarily preparing the market in accordance to the prospector's needs.

The author discusses his assertion that the discovery of gold in California in 1849 resulted in the widespread use of allusions to the novel "Arabian Nights," also known as "One Thousand and One Nights," to attempt to describe the placer deposits and potential riches in California. The author particularly singles out the story of "Aladdin and the Magic Lamp" within "Arabian Nights" as a common metaphor for the discovery of gold in the U.S. and elsewhere. The article also discusses the cultural influence of "Arabian Nights" in the mid-19th century and the association of mineral treasure with Middle Eastern culture and fantasy.

The article discusses the significant changes in social structures and perceptions of risk, reward, and manliness of white men as a result of the gold rush in California in the mid-19th century. The author explores the sociological perception of gold mining as a form of gambling and the possibility of a blurring of the lines between respectable business ventures and illicit behavior, despite the physical nature of mining, as well as between white men and minorities. The author discusses the risk-reward relationship and its relation to a vision of middle-class stability and argues that the idea of a classless convergence on California for gold in the late 1840s was mythologized when, in truth, the gold rush was class-based and formed a racial hierarchy in California.

The article discusses the environmental impact of hydraulic mining during the California Gold Rush of 1848 and the promotion of environmental regulation by the Southern Pacific Transportation Company. According to the article, hydraulic mining made a significantly negative impact on California's rivers after its ascension to the predominant mining technique in California in 1853. The author describes the erosion process of digging into bedrock used in hydraulic mining and the resultant flooding and impact on farming, as well as the use of timber in the hydraulic mining process. The role of Southern Pacific Transportation is analyzed, particularly the railroad company's attack on hydraulic mining in California and promotion of agricultural development and an end to gold mining.

This article is concerned with the Chinese immigrants who migrated from the Guangdong province of China around the middle of the nineteenth century to the state of California. I have elaborated upon the contribution which the Chinese had made to this frontier region at a time when its population was not even half a million, of how these men performed labour in fields where the white worker refused to work, created conditions for the establishment of several of California’s nascent industries, and provided cheap, steady and sober labour to their white employers. This was the period when intense racism was the norm rather than an exception, and Asians were considered an inferior species, incapable and unworthy of enjoying any civil or political rights. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Hydraulic gold mining in the Sierra Nevada, California (1853-1884) displaced ∼1.1 billion m3 of sediment from upland placer gravels that were deposited along piedmont rivers below dams where floods can remobilize them. This study uses topographic and planimetric data from detailed 1906 topographic maps, 1999 photogrammetric data, and pre- and post-flood aerial photographs to document historic sediment erosion and deposition along the lower Yuba River due to individual floods at the reach scale. Differencing of 3 x 3-m topographic data indicates substantial changes in channel morphology and documents 12.6 x 106 m3 of erosion and 5.8 x 106 m3 of deposition in these reaches since 1906. Planimetric and volumetric measurements document spatial and temporal variations of channel enlargement and lateral migration. Over the last century, channels incised up to ∼13 m into mining sediments, which dramatically decreased local flood frequencies and increased flood conveyance. These adjustments were punctuated by event-scale geomorphic changes that redistributed sediment and associated contaminants to downstream lowlands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the century preceding World War I, the world experienced a series of gold rushes. The wealth derived from these was distributed widely because of reduced migration costs and low barriers to entry. While gold mining itself was generally unprofitable for diggers and mine owners, the increase in the world's gold supply stimulated global trade and investment. In this introductory article we integrate the histories of migration, trade, colonisation, and environmental history to identify endogenous factors that increased the world's gold supply and generated sustained economic growth in the regions that were affected by gold rushes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the gateway to the Californian goldfields, San Francisco experienced a demographic shock that had a lasting impact on its economy. Some writers see San Francisco's growth as having a parasitic influence on the city's hinterland through the anti-competitive behaviour of some corporations and the destruction of natural resources. I argue that San Francisco generated more productive external effects through the formation of human and social capital in the city itself, and by investment in further resource development elsewhere in California. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The Harvard orebody at the Jamestown gold mine, located along the Melones fault zone in the southern Mother Lode gold district, California, was mined in an open-pit operation from 1987 to 1994. Dewatering during mining produced a hydrologic cone of depression; recovery toward the premining ground-water configuration produced a monomictic pit lake with alkaline Ca-Mg-HCO3-SO4-type pit water, concentrations of As up to 1,200 µg/L, and total dissolved solids (TDS) up to 2,000 mg/L. In this study, pit-wall rocks were mapped and chemically analyzed to provide a context for evaluating observed variability in the composition of the pit-lake waters in relationship to seasonal weather patterns. An integrated hydrogeochemical model of pit-lake evolution based on observations of pit-lake volume, water composition (samples collected between 1998-2000, 2004), and processes occurring on pit walls was developed in three stages using the computer code PHREEQC. Stage 1 takes account of seasonally variable water fluxes from precipitation, evaporation, springs, and ground water, as well as lake stratification and mixing processes. Stage 2 adds CO2 fluxes and wall-rock interactions, and stage 3 assesses the predictive capability of the model. Two major geologic units in fault contact comprise the pit walls. The hanging wall is composed of interlay-ered slate, metavolcanic and metavolcaniclastic rocks, and schists; the footwall rocks are chlorite-actinolite and talc-tremolite schists generated by metasomatism of greenschist-facies mafic and ultramafic igneous rocks. Alteration in the ore zone provides evidence for mineralizing fluids that introduced CO2, S, and K2O, and redistributed SiO2. Arsenian pyrite associated with the alteration weathers to produce goethite and jarosite on pit walls and in joints, as well as copiapite and hexahydrite efflorescences that accumulate on wall-rock faces during dry California summers. All of these pyrite weathering products incorporate arsenic at concentrations from <100 up to 1,200 ppm. In the pit lake, pH and TDS reach seasonal highs in the summer epilimnion; pH is lowest in the summer hypolimnion. Arsenic and bicarbonate covary in the hypolimnion, rising as stratification proceeds and declining during winter rains. The computational model suggests that water fluxes alone do not account for this seasonal variability. Loss of CO2 to the atmosphere, interaction with pit walls including washoff of efflorescent salts during the first flush and seasonal rainfall, and arsenic sorption appear to contribute to the observed pit-lake characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to estimate total mercury (HgT) loads entering San Francisco Bay, USA, via the Sacramento-San Joaquin River system, unfiltered water samples were collected between January 2002 and January 2006 during high flow events and analyzed for HgT. Unfiltered HgT concentrations ranged from 3.2 to 75 ng/L and showed a strong correlation (r² = 0.8, p < 0.001, n = 78) to suspended sediment concentrations (SSC). During infrequent large floods, HgT concentrations relative to SSC were approximately twice as high as observed during smaller floods. This difference indicates the transport of more Hg-contaminated particles during high discharge events. Daily HgT loads in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River at Mallard Island ranged from below the limit of detection to 35 kg. Annual HgT loads varied from 61 ± 22 kg (n = 5) in water year (WY) 2002 to 470 ± 170 kg (n = 25) in WY 2006. The data collected will assist in understanding the long-term recovery of San Francisco Bay from Hg contamination and in implementing the Hg total maximum daily load, the long-term cleanup plan for Hg in the Bay. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For one week during September 2007, we deployed a temporary network of field recorders and accelerometers at four sites within two deep, seismically active mines. The ground-motion data, recorded at 200 samples/sec, are well suited to determining source and ground-motion parameters for the mining-induced earthquakes within and adjacent to our network. Four earthquakes with magnitudes close to 2 were recorded with high signal/noise at all four sites. Analysis of seismic moments and peak velocities, in conjunction with the results of laboratory stick-slip friction experiments, were used to estimate source processes that are key to understanding source physics and to assessing underground seismic hazard. The maximum displacements on the rupture surfaces can be estimated from the parameter Rv̱, where v̱ is the peak ground velocity at a given recording site, and R is the hypocentral distance. For each earthquake, the maximum slip and seismic moment can be combined with results from laboratory friction experiments to estimate the maximum slip rate within the rupture zone. Analysis of the four M 2 earthquakes recorded during our deployment and one of special interest recorded by the in-mine seismic network in 2004 revealed maximum slips ranging from 4 to 27 mm and maximum slip rates from 1.1 to 6.3 m/sec. Applying the same analyses to an M 2.1 earthquake within a cluster of repeating earthquakes near the San Andreas Fault Observatory at Depth site, California, yielded similar results for maximum slip and slip rate, 14 mm and 4.0 m/sec. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]