Women
Not
all of the gold miners were men. Women
and children often worked in the mines side by side with the men. Sometimes the women would open up boarding
houses to help with a steady flow of income for their husbands that were out
mining. Women impacted the Gold Rush in
many ways; they were business owners, prostitutes, and miners. These women all had a different impact, and
they also varied in ethnicity including American, Hispanic, Native, European,
Chinese, and Jewish (Riley,1999). Some
women followed their husbands to the mines refusing to be left out of the
chance at fortune. Some traveled to California in hopes of finding their
husbands that had been gone for months. Several singles and widows came to
share the adventure of finding the gold themselves (Levy, 1990). Because of the hardships on the journey to
California, many women became widows before even seeing a flake of gold. The chance at finding the gold gave women
opportunities outside of their traditional work that was known in that day and
time.