❖ Before The Civil War, prospectors started searching for gold in the Sierra Nevada area. ❖ 1859, two average prospectors found gold. But Henry Comstock said the claim they found their gold was his property. ❖ Silver at the time was far more valuable than gold. ❖ Next twenty years the Comstock Lode produced 300 million worth of silver and made Nevada a center of mining. ❖ A tent city near the mines grew into the boomtown of Virginia city, Nevada. Virginia City, Nevada in !931

❖ Soon after the Civil War, prospectors found valuable ore in Montana, Idaho, and Colorado. ❖ Afterward, prospectors made a gold strike in the Black Hills of South Dakota. ❖ 1890’s gold find in Alaska drew people from all over the world. ❖ Each find caused great excitement, but few prospectors got rich. ❖ The ore was found deep underground, so it was very costly to the prospectors. ❖ Henry Comstock soon gave up and sold his mining rights for two mules and $11,000. ❖ More prospectors gave up also and sold their claims to big mining companies. ❖ By the early 1880’s mining was a very large business. A photo of Henry Comstock

❖ Many tent cities started to grow just like Virginia city. ❖ Hotels, stores, and many other wood-framed buildings started popping up. ❖ The populace followed the prospectors wherever they went. ❖ Merchants sold many items and became quite wealthy. ❖ The women who joined boomtowns started a living just by washing clothes, opened restaurants, and even baking pies. ❖ More than half the miners were from a foreign country. ❖ Some of the languages that the people spoke were Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, and many other languages ❖ The foreign miners were often shown discriminatory manner A portriat of a boomtown

❖ Mining towns grew very fast and so law officers were hard to find. ❖ The miners formed vigilante group to self-appoint their own laws. ❖ The groups hunted bandits and established laws within the towns. ❖ The populace sought for better government such as sheriffs, marshals, and judges. ❖ Colorado, Dakota, and Nevada developed territories in 1861, and then Arizona and Idaho in 1863 and Montana in ❖ Once, all the ores were dug up the mines shut down and all of the miners left. ❖ The boomtowns soon became ghost towns A Sheriffs badge from the 1880’s

❖ Before 1860, railroad lines ended at the Mississippi River. ❖ Then the the federal government began to offer subsidies (grants of lands or money) ❖ For every mile of track the government gave 10 square miles of land next to the track. ❖ Railroads received more than 180 million acres of land, an area the size of Texas. Leland Stanford the beginner of the project The two parts of the railroad meeting for the first time in Promontory, Utah

❖ Many westerners dreamed of a transcontinental railroad (railroad line that spanned the continent). ❖ 1862, Leland Stanford and his partners won the right to build a line eastward from Sacramento. ❖ Another railroad, The Union Pacific, would build west from Omaha. ❖ The railroad hired thousands of workers to help build the railroad. ❖ Work was very hazardous and the pay was low. ❖ Chinese manual laborers were lashed by snow and winds, and avalanches buried weeks of work, and killed many workers. ❖ At last on May 10, 1869, the two lines met at Promontory, Utah ❖ Stanford drove the final spike with a silver mallet.

❖ New towns sprang up in the West. ❖ People and supplies poured in with gold and silver. ❖ There was rapid population growth brought political changes. ❖ Nevada became a state in Colorado in North and South Dakota and Montana in Henry Comstocks property where the West Coast gold rush all started