California Gold Rush Images

Handbill advertising steamship travel to California, 1849.

Effects of hydraulic mining in Nevada County, California.

Deposits from Gold Rush-era hydraulic mining—"the slickens"—remain visible today in NASA satellite images taken of the Yuba River goldfields.

Forty-Niner with gold pan.

A Chinese miner in California.

Masts of abandoned ships line San Francisco harbor, 1849. Ships could not leave the port because all sailors rushed to the gold fields.