Population Stats in Mining Camps

The discovery of gold and silver created major cities of San Francisco and Denver.  Both cities were ruled by chaos in the early days.  Buildings were two story hotels or gambling halls.  Residents lived in tents.  Since few planned to stay, long range plans for buildings was not the issue.  The size of this temporary population, like the buildings that housed them offered no stability.

For every 1000 residents in California gainfully employed in 1850, only 9 lived in hotels or boardinghouses.  In 10 years San Francisco went from a 1000 population town to a 56,000 population city.  In contrast, it had taken Boston 250 years to attract a population of 1/3 of a million - San Francisco did it in 25 years.

In that population of 50,000, 9800 were women.  The social hierarchy was based on fortune and was thus fragile and irresponsible.  Bars outnumbered hotels and restaurants.  Drunken conduct and venereal disease were major concerns.

A Denver woman wrote, "we witnessed 2 murders on arrival.  Terrible experience for us and we wondered what kind of place we had come to".

Many argued to ban women from the mining town all together - but by 1849 the way to attract a woman was to give married women property rights, unheard of elsewhere.  Men knew the type of life offered in mining camps.  Says Robert Effinger, "I would much prefer that a wife of mine should board in a respectable bawd house in New York City than to live anywhere in the city of San Francisco."

But women came...next time.