Quiz Answer Key and Fun Facts
1. The California gold rush began when the first traces of gold were discovered on the American River near Coloma on January 24, 1848. Who found those first gold flakes?
2. As prospectors rushed in, they established camps around their claims. Which one was NOT a gold mining camp in the Mother Lode?
3. Gold was mined in many ways. Which of the following tools was NOT used in the gold mining process?
4. In the most productive year, 1852, the amount of gold brought out of the Mother Lode amounted to more than $81 million. Then yields dropped fairly regularly, as gold became more and more difficult to mine. By 1874, the gold rush was over. What was the most significant reason for its end?
5. Bandits preyed on gold miners from the very beginning. Legend has it that one of the most famous, an ex-gold miner, held up 28 stagecoaches from 1875 to 1883 with an unloaded gun and always said "Please" when taking people's belongings. Who was this famous bandit?
6. Several famous authors visited the gold rush country and wrote about it. This author of "The Outcasts of Poker Flat" has been described as too much of a dandy for the gold fields, with a fondness for canes and patent leather shoes. He described the mining camps as "ugly, unwashed, vulgar and lawless."
7. A miner who had just struck it rich, walked into a restaurant and ordered the most expensive meal the cook could make. He was served an omelette of eggs, bacon and oysters, all ingredients hard to get in the gold rush country. The dish came to be known as Hangtown Fry. Which town was called Hangtown?
8. Men with money to spend wanted to be entertained. Some of the best known entertainers from the United States and Europe traveled to California. Some say one mining town was named for a singer called the "Swedish Nightingale." What was her name?
9. The father of this early twentieth-century tycoon used money from the Sheep Ranch Gold Mine near Murphy's to set his son up in business.
10. Unfortunately, the mining camps of the Mother Lode all became ghost towns. Nothing is now left from the Gold Rush Days.
Source: Author
janshannon
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bloomsby before going online.
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