Page 30 - Curriculum Visions Dynamic Book

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The pressure was now on to build a city and to formalize the shambles of shacks that were being put up to provide goods and service to the miners.
Quite soon there were churches, and even a newspaper (The Placer Times) among the shops of the new Sacremento City (the ‘city’ part was later dropped). These were quickly followed by saloons and gambling houses where prospectors were relieved of any gold they might have made. By 1850 there were thousands of people in the city, yet it was very vulnerable to flooding, and what was then largely a tent city was flooded out in 1850. Nevertheless, organisation had developed and there were many farm houses by 1852. At this time the population was already 20,000.
This is why levees and dams were given a high priority, and work on them began immediately.
By 1852, Sutter’s Fort had been abandoned. The first flush of the Gold Rush was over, but the people who made money from goods and services supplied to the miners during the wild early years were now wealthy, and so they stayed on, as the city tried to develop more normally.
Now people in the city looked to make money in other ways, such as by shipping out the wheat growing in the surrounding farms. Then, in 1852 the city caught fire and most of it was destroyed. This is why the city changed from one made of timber to one built of brick.
Throughout the early 1840s and 1850s, China was at war with Great Britain and France in the First and Second Opium Wars. The
wars, along with poverty in China, drove many