Читать книгу Trinity Alps & Vicinity: Including Whiskeytown, Russian Wilderness, and Castle Crags Areas. A Hiking and Backpacking Guide онлайн

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Going for the Gold

There is some conjecture that Major Reading discovered gold at the same time he discovered the Trinity River. However, that would have been three years prior to John Marshall’s discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill. If Reading discovered gold on his first trip to the Trinity River, he was really good at keeping a secret. The big gold rush to the Trinity River didn’t begin until late 1849 or early 1850.

By the end of 1850, the gold rush on the Trinity River and its tributaries was in full swing. Weaverville had almost as many people living there as it does now. In contrast, Trinity Centre (original spelling) had many more people than it does today. Even in 1850, many of those people were Chinese immigrants. By 1853, close to 2,000 Chinese immigrants lived and worked in the Weaverville area alone. Their labor was a boon to the local economy: They worked cheaply, and if they mined their own claims, renegade whites promptly robbed them. Most important, they paid $4 a head per month to the government for the privilege of digging, which went a long way toward supporting the public sector during the 1850s. Contrastingly, the whites paid nothing, despite the fact that they too were immigrants.