Did people actually get rich?
Did individuals just turn in gold from gold panning and were rich or were a select few rich because they found gold in a mine they owned?
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Panning was just one method of getting gold or getting rich during the gold rush. And panning typically wasn’t the way people got rich. However, there were many other ways people made a lot of money.
One way was mining into the mountains. If you were lucky, and hit a good vein, you could mine a lot of gold. But it was dangerous, and sometimes deadly.
Another way was to do strip mining. Where they would take large water hoses and blast the side of a mountain, causing all dirt to come down and then they’d go through that dirt looking for gold. Similar to how they do it in like the Gold Rush TV program.
Another way was to sell supplies to people coming in to “make it rich”. If you were a shop owner you could sell supplies for gold mining and a very large mark up, and make a lot of money at it.
Open a bar. People who find gold would come in and pay for drinks with the gold. You could make a killing on serving booze.
You could also buy claim to a bunch of river area. Then split it up into smaller claims, and “seed” it with some gold. Then, bring naive people up there looking to get rich, and they’d find a little gold, and pay you for the claim, and never find any other gold, but you had your money and you could make a lot doing that. If you weren’t killed as a swindler first.
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