WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2014 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
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CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH
Profile America — Friday, January 24th. An accidental discovery at a construction site on this date in 1848 changed the course of U.S. history. James Marshall was building a sawmill for his boss, John Sutter, near Coloma, California, when he found gold. The pair tried to keep the discovery secret, but word got out, and by the following year, the famous Gold Rush was on, drawing some 100,000 fortune seekers to the California territory. About $2 billion of gold was mined during the rush, which spurred construction of railroads and hastened statehood for California. While the 49er image is long gone, about 11,500 workers at 118 establishments in the U.S. still make their living mining gold, extracting some 230 metric tons of the precious metal from the Earth's entrails every year. Profile America is in its 17th year as a Public Service of the U.S. Census Bureau.
Sources:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jan24.html http://thedataweb.rm.census.gov/TheDataWeb_HotReport2/econsnapshot/snapshot.hrml?NAICS=212221
http://www.history.com/topics/gold-rush-of-1849 http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/cats/forestry_fishing_and_mining.html t. 904
Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button).
SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
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