WASHINGTON, Jan. 24, 2015 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau:
CALIFORNIA GOLD RUSH
Profile America — Saturday, 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 12,000 workers at 126 establishments in the U.S. still make their living mining gold and silver ore, extracting more than $16 billion worth of the precious metals from the ground every year. You can find more facts about America from the U.S. Census Bureau online at www.census.gov.
Sources:
Anniversary: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/today/jan24.html
History: http://www.history.com/topics/gold-rush-of-1849
Mining firms & employment/NAICS 2122: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ECN_2007_US_00A1&prodType=table
Value of shipments: http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ECN_2007_US_00A1&prodType=table
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).
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SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau
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