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

Notable gold rushes

• the southern Appalachian Mountains of the U.S., north of Atlanta and west of Charlotte; in Georgia in the late 1830s and North Carolina around 1848;
• California (1848), the California Gold Rush;
• Colorado (1859), the Colorado Gold Rush;
• Australia (1851), the Victorian gold rush;
• Western Australia (1890s), the Coolgardie and Kalgoolie gold rushes;
• Northern Nevada from the 1850s;
• Fraser Canyon to Cariboo (including Barkerville) of British Columbia in 1858-1860, the British Columbia Gold Rush;
• Otago, New Zealand after 1861, the Central Otago goldrush;
• Eastern Oregon in the 1860s and 1870s;
• the Black Hills and other areas in Montana after 1863;
• Transvaal, South Africa (1886), the Witwatersrand Gold Rush; the resulting influx of miners was one of the triggers for the Second Boer War
• the Klondike in Yukon, Canada (1896), the Klondike Gold Rush.
• Alaska (1898)