Westward expansion was fueled by the prospect of fortune. Mining was a new frontier that everyone was interested in. Freedmen, ranchers, and farmers toiled alongside prospectors and commercial miners in search of a mother lode that would make them instantaneously rich.

The mining boom got underway with the 1848 discovery of gold in California, which sparked the 1849 California gold rush. The resulting population boom led to California statehood through the Compromise of 1850. This surge west at the hint of gold or other precious metals would repeat itself time and again over the next several decades. In 1858, gold was discovered near Pike’s Peak in Colorado territory, along the South Platte River. The excitement spread and would-be miners came from near and far over the next year with hopes of becoming wealthy. Of course, very few of the approximately 100,000 emigrants were successful at mining, but many of these “Fifty-niners” settled in the area as farmers and ranchers.

Some of those who were successful in Colorado were the prospectors at Central City in 1859 and at Leadville in the 1870s. As in California, this influx of residents and a healthy mining industry led to Colorado’s statehood in 1876, making it the “Centennial State.” The final major strike of gold and silver in Colorado happened in the early 1890s at Cripple Creek.

Colorado was not the only territory that built its statehood on the mining industry. Prospectors targeted the mountains of Nevada as another potential site for precious metals. H.T.P. Comstock, a fur-trader turned gold prospector, had drifted south from Canada in 1856. Eventually landing in Gold Hill, Nevada, Comstock aligned himself with two prospectors who had made an amazing discovery of gold and “blue earth,” which would later be determined to contain silver. Comstock named the discovered site after himself, and the Comstock Lode would come to be known as one of the most famous strikes in history.

Around the same time, a prospector named James Finney discovered a vein of his own. Finney’s nickname, “Old Virginia,” became the namesake of Virginia City, Nevada. Both Finney and Comstock had the opportunity to develop their discoveries into great personal wealth, but both sold their rights to mining companies shortly after their discoveries, missing out on hundreds of millions of dollars in gold and silver. However, their legacies live on in the state that their finds helped develop, as Nevada (“The Silver State”) was awarded statehood in 1864.

Although gold and silver brought high prices, it would be lead, tin, quartz, zinc, and especially copper that brought more consistent prices and would be more profitable in the long run. Advancing technology required copper for telegraph, telephone, and electrical wires. Montana and Arizona would prove to be fertile lands for the highly demanded copper, even though these regions were not otherwise sought-after as settlements.

During the height of the mining boom, towns sprang up near veins of ore. Miners needed homes, food, and mining supplies, and smart businessmen stepped forth to supply those needs. Storefronts went up and settlers moved in. However, when the vein was exhausted, the boom towns became ghost towns as the miners moved on to the next prospect.

In traditional business fashion, the individual miners who were successful were usually bought out by commercial miners. These conglomerates increased their wealth by buying miners’ rights to veins and harvesting the ore themselves. The commercialization of the mining industry also contributed to the ghost town effect, since there was no profit in leaving their laborers in tapped-out areas.

The surge of the mining industry in the western frontier affected the entire nation. The encroachment on Indian lands intensified the conflict between whites and Indians and would eventually lead to bloody battles. Financially, the mining industry helped fund the Civil War. The mining industry led to great American folklore, as writers such as Bret Harte and Mark Twain glorified the gold rush. And perhaps most importantly, the mining industry strengthened the case for a transcontinental railroad.

Copyright 2006 The Regents of the University of California and Monterey Institute for Technology and Education