Sea Routes
The worldwide rush to the California goldfields began in earnest during the winter and early spring of 1849. Gold seekers from the eastern United States followed three main routes to California: by way of the Isthmus of Panama, around Cape Horn, or via the overland trail.
Sea routes were the most popular at first. Sailing to Central America and crossing the Panamanian isthmus was the quickest way to get to California. The average time from New York to San Francisco was three to five months in 1850, but later the travel time was reduced to six to eight weeks. Travelers on this route risked contracting malaria, yellow fever, and other tropical diseases.
Sailing around Cape Horn was a voyage of 18,000 nautical miles and took five to eight months. Accommodations on the ships were crowded and uncomfortable. Violent storms off the Cape posed a constant danger to even the most experienced mariners. As one seaborne argonaut recalled, the gales at the Cape "produce long, loud, fierce blasts, bearing down on the sea and ship for hours and hours together. Their effect...is to produce long, huge swells, over which the ship mounts with a roll, then plunges into the abyss again as if never to rise."
Although the sea routes drew the heavy traffic in the early months of the gold rush, ultimately most California-bound Argonauts from the eastern United States traveled by various overland routes through the American heartland. This journey of 2,000 miles took at least three or four months and meant crossing incredibly difficult terrain.
Young Sallie Hester, traveling overland with her parents in 1849, recorded in her diary the rigors of making it across the unbroken deserts of the southwest: "The weary, weary tramp of men and beasts, worn out with heat and famished for water, will never be erased from my memory."
The biggest killer on the overland trail was disease, responsible for nine out of every ten deaths. Cholera was by far the greatest scourge, but scurvy, typhoid fever, and dysentery also took their toll. Drownings while fording swollen rivers contributed to the mortality rate, as did fatal accidents caused by the careless or reckless use of firearms. Following the accidental death of a ten-year-old boy, overlander Lucia Williams wrote to her mother that "for many days we could not forget this agonizing experience. It hung over us like a black shadow. It took all the joy out of our lives."
Jim Beckwourth of Beckwourth Pass
Jim Beckwourth was an African-American mountain man and frontier scout. He dressed in fringed buckskins and beaded moccasins; around his neck hung a pendant of a rifle bullet and two brightly colored oblong beads. Today, Jim Beckwourth is recognized as one of the great African-American pioneers in California history.
Born in Virginia in 1798, Beckwourth escaped from the slaveholding south at his earliest opportunity and headed for the freedom of the west. He was adopted by the Crow Indians and lived with them for a while along the Yellowstone and Bighorn rivers. Among the Snake Indians, he was known as "Bloody Arm" because of his prowess in battle.
Beckwourth came to California during the gold rush and prospected around Murderer's Bar and Rich Bar on the Feather River. He was well aware that one of the greatest challenges facing his fellow forty-niners was making it through the Sierra Nevada. The high passes, or narrow openings through the mountains, were difficult to cross.
In 1851, Beckwourth discovered a pass through the northern Sierra that now bears his name. Because the route had excellent commercial possibilities, the citizens of Marysville agreed to pay him to build a toll road over the pass. He spent some of his own money completing the road and succeeded in safely guiding across the first party of immigrants.
Hundreds of towns sprang to life in California during the gold rush. Wherever gold was discovered, mining camps appeared almost overnight. Some disappeared just as quickly, once the easily available gold was gone. Often located near rutted wagon roads or free-flowing streams, the towns and camps served as supply centers as well as places where miners could gather for entertainment.
The largest towns in the interior were Sacramento and Stockton. Sacramento served as the gateway to the central and northern mines, while Stockton was the supply center for settlements in the southern mining regions.
The greatest boom town of all was San Francisco. Its population swelled from just 600 in 1848 to 25,000 in 1849. San Francisco was the port of entry for all seaborne Argonauts and for supplies arriving from around the world. It also served as the center for California banking, manufacturing, and other economic activities.
New Yorker Bayard Taylor arrived in San Francisco in September 1849. This is what he saw and heard: "Hundreds of tents and houses...scattered all over the heights, and along the shore for over a mile. A furious wind was blowing through a gap in the hills, filling the streets with clouds of dust. On every side stood buildings of all kinds, begun or half-finished, and the greater part of them mere canvas sheds, open in front and covered with all kinds of signs in all languages. Great quantities of goods were piled in the open air, for want of a place to store them. The streets were full of people, hurrying to and fro, and of divers and bizarre a character as the houses... One knows not whether he is awake or in some wonderful dream."