Rapid influx of fortune seekers to the site of newly discovered gold deposits.
The first major gold strike occurred in California in 1848, when John Marshall, a carpenter building a sawmill for John Sutter , found gold. Within a year about 80,000 "forty-niners" had flocked to the California gold fields, and 250,000 had arrived by 1853. Some mining camps grew into permanent settlements, and the demand for food, housing, and supplies propelled the new state's economy. As gold became more difficult to extract, companies and mechanical mining methods replaced individuals. Smaller gold rushes occurred in Colorado (1859, 1892), Nevada (1859), Idaho (1861), Montana (1863), South Dakota (1876), Arizona (1877), and Alaska (1898) and resulted in settlement of many areas; where gold veins proved small, the settlements became ghost towns. Major gold rushes also occurred in Australia (1851), South Africa (1886), and Canada (1896). See also Klondike gold rush .