Gold rush: Meaning (information, definition, explanation, facts)

For the Neil Young album evoking this phrase, see After the 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.

Gold rushes became a feature of 19^th-century culture. Factors that led thousands at a time to abandon daily Industrial Revolution drudgery and travel to gold fields (diggings) included

• relative improvements in transport networks;
• improvements in the means of communication that supported rumour-distribution chains,
• some social discontent, and
• an international gold-based monetary system.

Anecdotally, a few miners made fortunes, several suppliers (such as Levi Strauss) and traders made good money, and numerous unfortunates endured hardship and privation in exotic frontiers of civilization for little ultimate reward.

Demographically, several gold rushes shook up the patterns of settlement, resulting in the opening up of previously sparsely-settled areas and a Cantonese diaspora around the Pacific Rim. Gold-rush culture, often reflected in popular song, tended to promote self-images of robust masculinity.

These areas included

• California (1849 onwards), the California Gold Rush;
• Colorado in the late 1850s, the Colorado Gold Rush;
• Australia from the 1850s, the Victorian gold rush;
• Northern Nevada from the 1850s;
• Otago, New Zealand after about 1861;
• the Black Hills and other areas in Montana after 1863; and
• the Klondike in Yukon, Canada around the end of the 19th century, the Klondike Gold Rush.

There was also a gold rush in the southern Appalachian Mountains of the U.S., north of Atlanta and west of Charlotte.