Lesson 2: Communities Started by Resources (The Mining Example)

Sometimes a community starts quickly because people find something valuable, like gold. When gold was discovered in California, thousands of people rushed here to get rich. Small camps of tents turned into towns almost overnight. These were called boomtowns.

Life in a boomtown was very different from a city today. The streets were often made of mud, and people slept in simple canvas tents or rough cabins. There were few rules and everything was very expensive. Stores opened up just to sell food and tools to the miners who crowded into the town.

Finding gold was not easy. Miners worked from sunrise to sunset in cold rivers and hot sun. They used special tools to try to find the tiny specks of gold hidden in the dirt. One common tool was a flat metal pan. Miners would scoop up river dirt and water, swirling it around to separate the gold.

Others used a machine called a rocker to wash more dirt at once. It was backbreaking work, and very few people actually became rich. Most of the people who stayed helped build the farming and business communities that came after the gold ran out.