Geology & Environment
Two other names for hard-rock mining.
What is quartz mining or lode mining?
Two diseases miners contracted in mining camps.
What are scurvy and cholera?
Explain what an alcalde is.
What is the elected mayor of a mining district?
The route that was the most traveled.
What is the overland route?
The name for the California gold fields.
What is the Mother Lode?
Explain the Foreign Miner's Tax.
What is a monthly tax each miner that had immigrated from another country had to pay.
The part of Earth where minerals like gold, silver, and quartz are contained.
What is magma in the outer mantle?
The reason miners didn't build homes and chose to stay in shacks or tents instead.
What is "they only came for gold and planned on leaving when gold ran out to return home?"
The most important laws to the miners.
What are the laws governing the staking of a mining claim?
The length of time the overland route typically took.
What is 4-5 months?
How a miner staked a claim. (Explain the steps)
What is marked the land, drove a stake into the land, and filed the claim with the camp recorder?
Two groups that were in the minority that did not immigrate from another country.
What are women, Native Americans/Indigenous Peoples, or African Americans?
What miners used mercury for.
What is extracting gold from ore deposits?
Four items that could be found in a general store.
What are clothes, medicine, groceries, mining tools, liquor?
The two purposes of democratic camp meetings.
What are making laws and enforcing these laws?
This happened in 1855 to improve travel along the Panama route.
What is 47 miles of railroad through Panama was built?
When gold cups and jewelry in ancient tombs and ruins have been found since.
What is 3500 B.C.?
Three kinds of businesses that groups who were in the minority had in mining camps.
What were restaurants, laundries, stores, or boarding houses?
The estimated amount of mercury that was released into Northern California rivers and lakes during the gold rush.
What is 7,600 tons?
Six basic foods eaten by miners
What are salt pork, beef jerky, bacon, some form of cooked flour, beans, and coffee?
Two reasons why things were so disordered in early boom towns and mining camps.
What are miners just set up tents and started digging, some areas had no government and others were new to U.S. territory, and mining camps were far away from Washington D.C.?
The two trails gold seekers took heading west to the gold fields when heading by land.
What are the Oregon and Santa Fe trails?
Explain what bedrock is.
What is solid rock that lies underneath soil and loose pieces of rock?
Three ways that women made as much or more money during the gold rush than in the gold fields.
What are baking, cooking, and performing on stage?
Explain what hard-rock mining is.
What is mining gold from veins of gold in the hard rock of the mountainside?
Explain the difference between a mining camp and a boom town.
What is boom towns were large business centers and mining camps were tiny settlements with shacks and rickety buildings that were more isolated?
These eventually replaced the miners' version of camp justice. Give the answer and at least one example.
What are legal systems, sheriffs and judges being hired and jails being built?
The experienced miners who first arrived at the California gold fields.
Who are miners from Mexico, Chile, Ireland, and England?
Explain what a sluice box is.
What is several long toms attached end to end that were sometimes placed in a stream and used water currents for washing gravel?
Three examples of how the legal system served white male miners from the United States during the gold rush.
What were Native Americans/Indigenous Peoples had no legal rights, miners who were immigrants, African Americans, and Native Americans could not testify in court against a white man, many white miners took advantage of these laws to steal claims and/or rob miners that were in the minority, groups that were in the minority were sometimes pitted against one another.