The Pikes Peak Gold Rush (OCR GCSE History B (Schools History Project)): Revision Note

Summary

The California Gold Rush of 1849 is well-known. However, ten years later, an even bigger gold rush was triggered when gold was discovered in the Rocky Mountains.

This meant that, for the first time, US citizens began to view the plains as a destination rather than somewhere to pass through. This caused great anger and alarm for the Indigenous peoples who lived on the plains.

The Pikes Peak gold rush, 1858-1859

• In July 1858, gold was discovered in the Rocky Mountains

• Today, this is in Colorado, but in 1858, it was the Kansas Territory

  • The discovery sparked another gold rush

  • This was named after the nearby mountain, Pikes Peak

• The Pikes Peak gold rush was different from the California gold rush in several ways:

  • The location of the discovery was not as far west

  • Pike's Peak was much closer to the cities in the East than California

  • By 1858, the railroads had been built

    • This meant prospectors could travel by train until they were just 600 miles away from the Rockies

• Nearly twice as many people left the East for the Pikes Peak Gold Rush as had left for the California Gold Rush

  • By 1859, more than 100,000 people had arrived in the Rockies in search of gold

The consequences of the Pikes Peak gold rush, 1858-1859

• The arrival of so many prospectors led to the Kansas Territory becoming a state in 1861

  • The western half was renamed Colorado Territory

• People began to settle in the state

• As well as mining for gold, people also farmed so they could sell their produce to the miners

  • Towns such as Denver began to grow and flourish

  • More and more US citizens began to see the Plains as somewhere to move to, rather than just pass through

• For the Indigenous peoples who lived on the plains, this was a negative development

• The Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851 meant that tribes such as the Arapaho, Lakota Sioux and Crow had agreed to allow safe passage for Euro-American colonists

  • In 1853, other tribes that lived on the southern plains, such as the Comanche and the Cheyenne, had made similar agreements with the US government

• The arrival of so many Euro-American miners, farmers and traders on the plains caused tensions with the Indigenous peoples to rise enormously