Queen Charlottes Gold Rush Queen Charlottes Gold Rush The Queen Charlottes Gold Rush was a gold rush in the southern Queen Charlotte Islands (Haida Gwaii) of what is now the North Coast of British Columbia, Canada, in 1851. The rush was touched off in March 1851 when a Haida man sold a 27-ounce nugget in Fort Victoria for 1,500 blankets. The crew of the Hudson's Bay Company vessel "Una" were the first to mine, discovering a vein 6.5" wide, 80' long at 25% gold content. As the crew began blasting, Haida would rush into the blast site to gather gold, competing with the crew.
California Gold Rush sleepy, little-known backwater to a center of the global imagination and the destination of hundreds of thousands of people. The new immigrants often showed remarkable inventiveness and civic-mindedness. For example, in the midst of the Gold Rush, towns and cities were chartered, a state constitutional convention was convened, a state constitution written, elections held, and representatives sent to Washington, D.C. to negotiate the admission of California as a state. Large-scale agriculture (California's second "Gold Rush") began during this time. Roads, schools, churches, and civic organizations quickly came into existence. The vast majority of the immigrants were Americans. Pressure grew for