December 5, 1848 – President Polk Sparks the California Gold Rush

On December 5, 1848, American President James K. Polk confirmed that large amounts of gold had been discovered in California. He is quoted as saying, “The accounts of the abundance of gold in that territory are of such an extraordinary character as would scarcely command belief were they not corroborated by the authentic reports of officers in the public service.” This statement is widely regarded as the “spark” for the ’49 gold rush.

While it was nearly a year earlier on January 24, 1848 that James Wilson Marshall found flakes of gold in the American River, the hype that characterized the era did extend to the east until after President Polk’s address.

For American engineering, this day marks not only the “start” of the gold rush from the east, but also the beginning of American engineering being recognized on the global stage. According to Ronald H. Limbaugh, “Engineering as a profession was still in infancy at the mid-nineteenth century; those [Americans] who called themselves engineers were usually pragmatic, seat-of-the-pants technicians and mechanics with little former education.” This was in contrast to the engineers of Europe who looked down on the American “practical engineers” because their brand of engineering was not as “grounded in theoretical science and mathematics.”

All of this changed thanks to the “ingenuity and innovation” of American mining technology. In 1869, Rossiter Raymond, the nation’s second commissioner of mining statistics, noted “with pride that European metallurgists were now coming to the United States to learn from Americans, rather than the other way around.”

Many of the innovations attributed to the gold rush were not original; instead they were adaptation of “existing machines and methods to local conditions.” The process of hydraulic mining is one notable example of a process reinvented and altered into a “distinctly American process.”

Hydraulic mining, which uses “a powerful jet of water to dislodge minerals present in unconsolidated material,” was developed in bits and pieces across the mines of the west. The first successful nozzle is credited to Edward E. Matteson; however, his design was later improved on. This same fast-moving innovation characterized the period.