Written by Crystal Howard

Mining has been an important part of California’s economy and history for generations. The California Gold Rush propelled San Francisco from a 200-resident settlement in 1846 to a boomtown of about 36,000 by 1852. As a result, California became the center of global imagination and a desirable destination for hundreds of thousands of people. From an economy that was too small to measure before the Gold Rush, California is now the eighth ranking economy in the world and mining has been there to support its growth from the beginning.