As the American Dream spread across the country, California and the Gold Rush breathed new life into this dream. Dreams of getting rich, running successful businesses, and the prospect of new jobs have brought thousands of people to California. The American dream became unattainable and boring in the rest of the country, but California offered the opportunity to make it exciting once again. And for a while the dream had new meaning and momentum. However, California lost some of its excitement when it became part of the United States. Yet, California changed the nation permanently. California brought hope and encouraged citizens to try, try again despite failure. California pushed America to a state of hope, success, trials, and the pursuit of happiness. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay To better understand the effect the Gold Rush had on California, you need to take a look at the state's background. When the Gold Rush occurred, California was a new territory that the country won in the war against Mexico. To put that into perspective, the first piece of gold was discovered on January 24, 1848, right before the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo was completed on February 2. The new state was sparsely populated with only 150,000 Native Americans (reduced from the original 300,000) and 6-12,000 “Californians,” children and relatives of the colonizers. The settlements were concentrated along the coast and the main sources of supply came from livestock farming, agriculture and partly from fishing. The political effects of the gold rush include large areas of lawless settlement. These places lacked structure and no property rights existed. To compensate for the absence of property rights, the staking system stipulated that an individual could claim a plot of land for himself. As the amount of gold decreased throughout the state, competition for land increased dramatically. To maintain some sort of peace and maintain land holdings, a person would be elected to enforce the law of the area. The usual forms of punishment included flogging and lynching, and the laws established proved discriminatory against Hispanics and Natives. There were no banks and vigilante justice prevailed as a method to compensate for the non-existence of law and order in the country. To put it in simpler terms, citizens were taking responsibility for doing justice. Further political effects of the Gold Rush extended to heavy discrimination as African Americans and Native peoples were not allowed to vote. New jobs were the main effect the gold rush had on the economy. In addition to finding gold, you could get rich working in the general goods and dry goods industry and selling mining supplies: shovels, picks, explosives, protective clothing, and hats all benefited miners. Native Americans also found work working at the Sutter plant and working off the land. An estimated $600,000 million (tens of billions in today's money) came out of the gold rush and an infusion of wealth and capital was born that boosted the economy. Since most people had physical gold in their pockets, prices skyrocketed in areas like San Francisco. With this in mind, California quickly became the richest agricultural area in the world. The Germans, 14% of the population, led this movement and the agricultural movement continued to grow the economy. Socially, women took control while.