The first gold rush in North America started back in
1848 in California, but by the late 1850s the California gold rush was pretty
much over.
Stories of where the first British Columbia gold came
from vary; some claim gold dust was traded from the First Nations peoples
as early as 1852, others say that Hudson's Bay Company Chief Trader Donald McLean sent two pint-sized
pickle bottles full of gold back to James Douglas, the Company's Chief Factor, in 1856.
It was impossible to keep it a secret. Soon the news broke out and everyone wanted a part of it.
British Columbia had two big gold rushes, one in 1858
on the Fraser River and the other in 1862 in the Cariboo district. In each, tens of thousands of men (and a few women) sailed north from San
Francisco to land in Esquimalt Harbour on Vancouver Island, not far from Fort Victoria.
The miners
came first to Victoria to obtain a valid "mining license" which permitted them to prospect for gold. It must have been a chaotic situation, not unlike this scene 36 years later when
licenses were being issued in Victoria for the Klondike gold rush of the
Yukon.
But just imagine. In 1858 Fort Victoria was tiny. No more than 500 immigrants lived on southern Vancouver Island, and these were mainly Hudson's Bay Company employees, farmers and their families.
Within two months the population grew to over 20,000. Almost overnight, Victoria became a tent city as miners camped while they purchased their mining licenses, and all the supplies - equipment, food, clothing, they would need for their journey to the gold-fields.
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