Gold rush

A gold rush is a period of feverish migration of workers into the area of a dramatic discovery of commercial quantities of gold. In the history of the United States and Canada, several gold rushes took place throughout the 19th century, first in the Appalachians, and later in the Sierra Nevada, the Fraser Canyon, the Cariboo district and other parts of British Columbia, and the Rocky Mountains. Gold rushes helped spur permanent population of new regions and define a significant part of the culture of the North American frontier. Similar gold rushes took place during the 19th century in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa

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The most famous gold rush of all was the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898-99; the main goldfield was in Canada's Yukon Territory but it also helped open up the relatively new US possession of Alaska to exploration and settlement. This gold rush involved one of the largest mobilizations of goldseekers in history, involving millions who started on the journey although ultimately only a few hundred thousand reached the "Yukon Ports" or other disembarkation points such as Edmonton, Alberta, and only 35,000 finally reached what was to become Dawson City, at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers, only to be faced by famine, fire and some of the world's bitterest and darkest winters.

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Gold rushes were typically marked by a general buoyant feeling of a "free for all" in income mobility, in which any single individual might become abundantly wealthy almost instantly. The significance of gold rushes in history have given a longer life to the term, and it is now applied generally to capitalism to denote any economic activity in the participants aspire to race each other in common pursuit of a new and apparently highly lucrative market, often precipitated by an advance in technology.

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Gold: Gold is a chemical element in the periodic table that has the symbol Au (L. aurum) and atomic number 79. A soft, shiny, yellow, heavy, malleable, ductile (trivalent and univalent) transition metal, gold does not react with most chemicals but is attacked by chlorine, fluorine and aqua regia. The meta...

United States: :For other uses, see US (disambiguation), USA (disambiguation), and United States (disambiguation)....

19th century: :Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical)...

Gold rush related Images and Photos (experimental)

Gold Rush	Alaska License Plate, Gold Rush AK-102	The Klondike Gold Rush The Stream of Prospectors Making Their Way Across the Chilcot Pass	Scenes from the Australian Gold Rush
Miners' Ball during the California Gold Rush	Prospectors Nearing Summit of the Chilkoot Pass during the Alaska Gold Rush c.1897	Prospectors Finding Gold in a Stream during the California Gold Rush	James Wilson Marshall Finds Gold Near Sutter's Fort Leading to the California Gold Rush
Prospectors Risking the White Horse Rapids of the Yukon River Going to the Klondike Gold Rush 1898	Sluicing on Number Two Claim at Anvil Creek Nome Alaska During the Gold Rush	Rush 2112 Framed Gold Record	Rush Moving Pictures Framed Gold Record