document_title: Being Human (North American season 4)

question_text: who does josh end up with in being human

text: Being Human (North American season 4)

text: Cast[edit]

text: Main cast[edit]

text:
Sam Witwer as Aidan Waite (13 episodes)
Meaghan Rath as Sally Malik (13 episodes)
Sam Huntington as Josh Levison (13 episodes)
Kristen Hager as Nora Sargeant (13 episodes)

text: Recurring cast[edit]

text:
Connor Price as Kenny (8 Episodes)
Deanna Russo as Kat Neely
Susanna Fournier as Zoe Gonzalez
Amy Aquino as Donna Gilchrist
Mark Pellegrino as James Bishop
Kyle Schmid as Henry Durham
Alison Louder as Emily Levison
Erica Deutshman as Beth
Imogen Haworth as Holly
Jesse Rath as Robbie Malik
Katharine Isabelle as Susanna Waite
Janine Theriault as Blake
Mylène Dinh-Robic as Caroline
Tim Rozon as Andrew
James A. Woods as Mark
Stephanie Lemelin as Wendy

text: Episodes[edit]

text: This article's plot summaries may be too long or excessively detailed. Please help improve them by removing unnecessary details and making them more concise. (February 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)

text:
No.overallNo. inseasonTitleDirected byWritten byOriginal air dateProd.codeUS viewers(millions)401"Old Dogs, New Tricks"Stefan PleszczynskiAnna FrickeJanuary 13, 2014 (2014-01-13)137959-591.26[3]
Three months have passed. Nora and Aidan are at a disused farmhouse, caring for Josh, who is a wolf all the time except during the full moon. When Josh returns to his human self and Nora is out as the wolf, he contemplates suicide due to the strain he is placing on his wife and best friend. With Josh's blessing, Aidan meets Kat at a faculty party. When Aidan goes to get drinks, a woman resembling Aidan's long dead wife Suzanna approaches Kat, but disappears before Aidan returns. The next day at the hospital, Aidan's suspicions are raised when Blake, who now works at the same funeral home that Bishop ran previously, tries to take a corpse. Elsewhere, Sally is with Donna in what appears to be a spa, but she soon wants to escape, though Donna warns that they are both a threat to reality. Sally escapes through Donna's death spot, experiencing Donna's death by hanging as a witch during the 17th century, and goes to meet her friends at the farm. Josh is not in his holding cell and, as the werewolf, he confronts the trio in an attempt to commit suicide at Aidan's hand. Sally conjures up a ring of fire to trap him, allowing Nora to tranquilize him. However, Sally disappears into what she thinks is another dimension, and sees a little girl being stabbed by a group of witches. Blake reports to the new head of Boston, who is revealed to be Kenny, looking completely normal. Aidan is at the house when his wife Suzanna comes to the door.
412"That Time of the Month"Stefan PleszczynskiLisa RandolphJanuary 20, 2014 (2014-01-20)137959-601.03[4]
Suzanna reveals that Bishop turned her into a vampire after the townsfolk drowned her, and warned her not to contact Aidan. Though they could be together again, Aidan feels he should remain with Kat, and Suzanna reluctantly agrees. She doesn’t reveal the true reason she avoided him for two hundred years, that in her first feast as a vampire she killed their only son, and has been wracked with guilt ever since. Sally believes that she can use magic to change Josh back to normal. She goes to where the soup kitchen once stood, and enters the alternate dimension where she and Donna last fought, discovering a book of spells. That night, on the new moon, Sally conjures up a magical knife that must be stabbed into Josh's heart. Nora volunteers to perform the act, but cannot due to Josh's viciousness. Aidan reluctantly stabs the wolf, and it collapses. Both Aidan and Nora believe Josh is dead due to a botched spell. Sally disappears, and finds herself in the house again, watching the guys move in while she watches them from afar. She realizes that she has traveled into the past each time she has performed a spell. Back at the farm, Aidan is grieving Josh’s death when a human hand thrusts out from the wolf's mouth. Aidan tears open the carcass to find the human Josh alive and well. When Sally returns from the past, she worries that the uncompleted spell will cause problems. Later that night, Josh cannot fall asleep, and when he looks in a mirror he sees wolf eyes staring back at him.
423"Lil' Smokie"Paolo BarzmanNancy WonJanuary 27, 2014 (2014-01-27)137959-611.12[5]
Sally, enthralled with the spell book, notices that the spells change from day to day, much to her frustration. While the boys are at the hospital, and Nora is out buying wallpaper, Sally finds a spell in the book that will bring back her door. She reads the incantation, but it summons Donna, come to take Sally back to purgatory. Sally burns the spell book and sends Donna back, but the spell book becomes a part of her, giving her knowledge of all its contents. At the hospital, Josh has trouble keeping his wolf at bay and is overwhelmed by his senses. He accidentally lashes out at his attending physician, and runs out. As Aidan prepares to start his shift, he is kidnapped by a group of vampires, and brought to Kenny. Kenny shows Aidan a luxurious new blood lounge, with donated blood and new women, but Aidan doesn’t want to be involved. Later that night, two vampires attack Josh while he is out running. He partially transforms into a werewolf and kills them, to his shock. Aidan confronts Kenny, who reveals he childishly thought that if Josh were dead, he and Aidan could run Boston together. Apologizing, he reveals that he is still deformed but has the ability to compel not only humans but also other vampires to see him as normal. Their talk is interrupted by an emergency at the blood lounge. There are piles of ash everywhere; someone has killed all the vampires. The security footage reveals Suzanna as the attacker. Sally offers to heal Nora’s burn scars using her new magic knowledge, but disappears after the spell is completed. She finds herself in the house during the 1970s, and spots the same little girl who was stabbed before. Hours later, when Sally returns to the present time, Nora's burns are healed, but as she's showing off the newly decorated room, the wallpaper peels away and reveals a message to Sally saying "Don't leave me", leading her to believe the little girl's spirit is trapped in the house. Josh returns to the hospital to apologize to the doctor he attacked, and quits his job.
434"Panic Womb"Paolo BarzmanMike OstrowskiFebruary 3, 2014 (2014-02-03)137959-621.15[6]
Kenny visits Aidan to talk about the woman who killed the vampires. Aidan doesn’t reveal that it is Suzanna, but asks Kenny to talk to Josh and Nora. Nora is ready to accept Kenny's apology, but Josh is upset. While out jogging, Josh’s wolf nearly causes him to attack another jogger, but his attention is drawn to a pregnant woman sitting on a park bench, whom he realizes is another werewolf. Caroline reveals that she, her husband Andrew, and their friends, were all attacked by a werewolf while camping three months ago. Since then, she has become pregnant, and is worried about the baby during the transformations. Josh asks her to come to the hospital later, so Nora can perform an ultrasound, which reveals that the baby is healthy, but clawed. Andrew is worried, and Josh's wolf arises, striking fear into Andrew, who leaves with Caroline. Aidan confronts Suzanna about the vampire slaying, and she says it is her job to kill any evil vampires. She asks Aidan to join her, but he is not willing to kill innocent vampires. Later that night, he tips Kenny off to her location, but at the last moment, warns her and tells her to leave Boston. Elsewhere, Sally approaches Zoe to ask for her help in finding the girl she has dubbed "Lil' Smokie". They track the family down to a house in another town in Massachusetts, and discover that the little girl, Beatrice Benson, is all grown up, and her daughter is the spitting image of her mother in her youth. Although all seems fine, Sally is suspicious, particularly when she sees the daughter staring at them from the window, but Zoe warns her to let it go. Beatrice is seen looking at a photo album with a photo of a second little girl resembling herself and her daughter staring from a second story window. That night, Caroline and Andrew pay an emergency visit to Josh and Nora, as Caroline's water has broken. As Andrew wonders exactly what Josh has become, Caroline goes into labor. Finally, she gives birth to a partially transformed werewolf who soon reverts into a healthy baby girl they name April. Elsewhere, Aidan speaks with Kat to reveal to her that he is a vampire, but she laughs in his face.
445"Pack It Up, Pack It In"Jeff RenfroeChris DingessFebruary 10, 2014 (2014-02-10)137959-631.21[7]
Aidan tries to convince Kat of the truth, but she believes he is delusional, until he reveals his vampire nature to her. Kat, shocked and hurt, asks him to leave. Beth and Holly are taunting the heartbroken Aidan when Sally banishes them from the house, and is sent back in time again. Josh and Nora visit Andrew, Caroline, and baby April, and meet another werewolf couple, Mark and Wendy. Josh thinks Mark is trying to exert dominance over him, but Nora disagrees. She decides to hold a baby shower that night. Kenny tries to help Aidan overcome being dumped with blood from the lounge. Josh's sister Emily arrives to spend the night while she waits for an apartment after leaving rehab for alcoholism. Josh and Nora promise her that they will take care of her, but Mark, Wendy, and a whole pack of werewolves arrive with beer. As the party rages on, Mark declares that they will form a pack together in case the peace with the vampires is broken, just as Kenny and Aidan come in drunk on blood. Emily manages to fight temptation and leave the party, and Sally wanting to console her, attempts to cast a spell to allow her to be seen, but it doesn’t work. Sally goes back to the 1920s, and watches Aidan and Henry mercilessly kill a pair of flapper girls and an old woman. Kenny approaches Emily, but the spell Sally cast on her allows her to see Kenny's mutations, horrifying her. A fight breaks out between the wolves and Kenny and Aidan, Kenny runs from the house, and Mark leads the werewolves off. The next morning Sally confronts Aidan about what she saw, and he apologizes, saying that he has changed, but she wonders if he really deserves what has happened to him. Kenny comes back with the werewolf Astrid, and offers to remove Aidan's memory of Kat, but he declines. That night during a full moon, Josh and Nora decide to join the other werewolves for their change.
456"Cheater of the Pack"Jeff RenfroeCraig LamarshFebruary 17, 2014 (2014-02-17)137959-641.16[8]
The morning after the full moon, Josh is shocked to wake up next to Wendy. She tells a horrified Josh that their wolves must have mated the night before. Josh insists that he and Nora go home, though the group are planning a pancake breakfast, and suggests that he and Nora should move out on their own. Sally's brother Robbie comes to the house to say he is selling it, and that a few prospective buyers are coming. Sally casts a spell to make a vile stench, driving the prospective buyers out, but sending Sally back to the day she and Danny first moved into the house. She watches for weeks as Robbie and Danny confront one another and realizes that Robbie always knew Danny was dangerous, and tried to protect her from him. Back in the present, Robbie shows the house to a family with a young son, who goes upstairs to the bathroom, is lured into a closet, and scratched by the spirit of a young girl. The family leaves in fear. That night, Josh and Nora return after house hunting to find Robbie trying to fix the sink, believing it to be the source of the smell, just as the food disposal turns on and nearly harms him. Josh answers the door and is attacked by Mark who reveals to Nora that Josh and Wendy's wolves mated during the full moon. When she tries to pull him away, Mark knocks her down, driving Josh to partially transform and turn on Mark. Nora calms him down, allowing Mark and Wendy to leave, but now she doesn’t trust him, and asks him to sleep on the sofa while she goes upstairs. That night, as Robbie works on the pipes, the water boiler springs a leak and forms a puddle at his feet. Meanwhile, an electric saw on a nearby workbench turns on and falls off the bench into the puddle, electrocuting him. Suzanna approaches Aidan to help him recover from the night before and his broken heart. She reveals that she works as a bartender, and that night at the bar their feelings for each other are rekindled and they consummate their love after more than 200 years apart. She offers to help him have greater self-control, but he turns her down, and after leaving the bar, he spots a young woman whose eye he catches. Sally finally returns to the present and wants to apologize to Robbie, who sees and speaks to her. Alarmed, Sally finds Robbie's corpse on the basement floor. Elsewhere, Aidan wakes up and calls Kenny's funeral home to have them take the young woman's body away.
467"Gallows Humor"Paolo BarzmanLisa RandolphFebruary 24, 2014 (2014-02-24)137959-651.17[9]
Sally tells Josh and Nora about Robbie's death, and Robbie is given a crash course in lycanthropy and vampirism. Sally believes she can bring him back to life, in a different way than Donna did, but will need Donna's help. Aidan goes to ask Suzanna for her help. She agrees, giving him some blood to bring him down, but it is poisoned. She chains him up and forces him to say the name of the woman he killed. He spends the next several hours recounting the names and circumstances of every person he ever drained. Sally returns to the big-box store that Donna's death spot has since become, forcing Donna to relive the events of her death as a way back onto the living plane as a ghost. Sally's actions send them back in time, and Donna warns that if she abuses magic like this the tether to the present era may snap, leaving her trapped in the past forever. The two watch as Donna is hung for being falsely accused as a witch, and then in her village's makeshift morgue as a real group of witches prepares to bring her back to life. They summon Donna's spirit and the spirit of another girl they sacrifice, using the girl to bring Donna back to life. These are the true consequences of bringing someone back to life. Sally is upset that she cannot simply find another ghost to sacrifice for Robbie's sake, and Donna offers herself, wishing to be finally free, however Robbie ultimately decides to stay dead, since he feels life no longer holds anything for him. Donna asks Sally to seal up her death spot so she can stay in purgatory. Sally agrees, and after doing the spell, travels back in time once more. That night, Josh tries to apologize to Nora, and the two of them begin to become intimate until Nora wants to stop. Josh is unusually insistent because the wolf is taking over. Not ready to handle him in his current state, Nora leaves him the next day. In the past, Sally sees herself taking her bathrobe off to reveal an all-too-familiar outfit. She has returned to the night of her death. She watches in horror as her past self drops her engagement ring down the bathroom sink, and Danny approaches.
478"Rewind, Rewind..."Stefan PleszczynskiCasey FisherMarch 3, 2014 (2014-03-03)137959-661.02[10]
As Danny accosts Sally for dropping her ring down the drain, Sally possesses her past self, saving herself from her own death and rewriting the future. With all knowledge of what happened to herself in the original timeline, Sally begins to use it to her, as well as Aidan, Josh, and Nora's advantage. Six months later, she plans on renting out the house, but she cannot stop Bridget from dating Danny, much to her regret. She watches the boys discuss moving into the house together, but is horrified when Aidan begins to talk up Rebecca. Sally intercepts them at the bar, turning Rebecca off of going back with Aidan, and reveals all she knows about himself and the vampires, proving that she is from the future. She offers them to rent the house from her, on the condition she is their third roommate, revealing all she knows about them and their vampirism and lycanthropy. She soon helps them decorate the house just the way she remembers, and even teaches Josh the rump roast trick he eventually learns from Ray. However, Ray discovers him in the forest, wondering exactly how he knows this fact. Josh and Aidan return to the house to find Sally talking to the police, as she called them to accuse Danny of murder when she discovers that Bridget is dead. Sally worries that she never does anything right, even though she means the best, but Aidan thanks her for helping him save Rebecca, and they kiss. Three months later, Sally tries to set Josh and Nora up during a dinner date, revealing to Aidan that the two get married in her timeline. They give the two of them time alone by going to a bar, but Marcus approaches them, trying to bring Aidan back into the fold, but Sally stops him by revealing that she knows about his work with the Amish. One month later, Josh is worried about how things are going with Nora, worried he may hurt her, when Sally tells him not to worry, and that he will marry her. As it is the night of the full moon, and when Nora takes him aside to speak with him, they begin to make love until Sally interrupts them, knowing that the full moon is almost risen. She whisks Josh away, keeping Nora at bay, but she is scratched by Josh, cursing her to become a werewolf now. The following month, Sally reveals to Josh that he and Nora got married because Josh turned her, and she tells him that things are fine. Josh apologizes to Sally for turning her, but Sally assuages his guilt. Three months later, Josh is upset about the turn of events, and Aidan reveals that Dr. Reid is going to propose to Nora. Josh is worried about Sally's prophecies, but Aidan has full trust in her, as nothing good has turned out for him. Later that night, Sally reveals to Aidan that they never got together in her timeline. On the next full moon, Josh is nowhere to be seen, and Sally gets ready to change. Before she leaves, they admit their love for each other. The next morning, they still do not know where Josh is, as Sally did not find him in the woods, but they find him with Ray in the house. When Ray leaves, Sally tells Josh that he tries to kill Nora, and that he is the werewolf who turned Josh, and by killing him Josh will be freed. Josh realizes things are not the way that they're supposed to be, and feels out of place in the house, and moves out, upsetting Sally. She is worried she has ruined everything by changing the past. Aidan tries to take her mind off of the way she wants things to be and not worry about Josh, but this just makes her realize they should not be together, as she has changed Aidan into someone who has given up on Josh. Upset, she breaks up with him. One month later, Aidan and Josh are not speaking to each other. Ray talks Josh into going to the blood den to attack vampires while they are strong due to the waxing moon. Aidan is at the blood den with Marcus, now back with the vampires. They meet Sally at the blood den, as she followed Aidan there, just as Aidan and Marcus step out, blood drunk. Sally tries to talk Josh out of attacking them, but Marcus and Josh fight, as Aidan takes on Ray. Sally tries to stop things, but Aidan strikes Ray with a pipe. Aidan and Josh begin arguing. As Sally tries to break up the fight, Ray beats Marcus with the pipe. Marcus ducks and Sally is bashed in the skull. Sally falls to the ground, and as other vampires step out of the blood den, Ray and Josh run away. Aidan watches in tears as Sally dies before him.
489"Too Far, Fast Forward!"Stefan PleszczynskiNancy WonMarch 10, 2014 (2014-03-10)137959-681.10[11]
In the aftermath of Sally's death at Ray's hands, Aidan gets Bishop to get revenge and he kills Ray, forever cursing Josh. Still feeling Josh is to blame, Aidan threatens him to never be in Boston, again, or else he will kill him. A year later, the flu virus is in full swing. Aidan is smuggling healthy blood out of the hospital as Nora turns a blind eye. Josh has opened a pie shop out of town, and despite Sally's urging that he settle with one of his regular customers, he denies it, as he does not want to make anyone else a werewolf. Aidan approaches Nora, who has begun stealing painkillers from the hospital pharmacy, for spying on him and Bishop, and reminds her of their agreement to not reveal anything to anyone else, while Aidan demands to know about the next shipment which has been mixed into the general supply by accident. The vampires begin rationing off blood, with Bishop having his own private stash. Josh calls Alana to speak to Sally in order to find Donna, but Alana reveals that Sally has possessed Josh to call her, driving a wedge between them. To cover for his lost supply, Aidan steals Bishops stock of blood to sell on the streets. Bishop attacks him later for violating their trust, but does not harm him any further. However, another vampire in Bishop's inner circle is not as lucky, and has his fangs pulled out for stealing from the supply. The following day, Josh is still upset with Sally over possessing him, but he now has some of her memories from the original timeline, one where he, Sally, and Nora are enjoying each other's company. A woman enters the bakery and after Josh disperses Sally with iron, he is attacked by a sickly vampire, which reminds Sally of the virus. She returns to Boston to speak to Aidan, and Josh comes as well, revealing that Josh's werewolf blood is the cure for the virus. The next day, Josh goes to the hospital to see Nora, who is divorcing from Dr. Reid after he cheated on her. Josh has another memory of Sally's in his head, the day of his and Nora's wedding. He leaves, but not before telling her to take care. Aidan replenishes Bishop's blood supply and drinks with him, knowingly giving him tainted blood that he is immune to. Aidan goes back to Sally and Josh to reveal he has poisoned Bishop, and Josh says that they are now even for saving each other's lives, but Aidan asks them to leave, upsetting Sally. Aidan speaks with Bishop who is heavily infected, and in Bishop's praising of Aidan for surpassing him, he mentions how he has gotten rid of his lover and his best friend. Later, he reminisces about his times with Josh and Sally and goes to the bakery to reconcile. However, Sally is suddenly transported to Donna's house where she demands to know what has been happening. Sally tries to reveal the truth to her, but Donna does not believe until she tries to use a butcher's knife to disperse Sally, only for her to be harmed. Sally manages to convince Donna to use her magic to set the timelines straight, but needs both Josh and Aidan's approval. Aidan is willing, but Sally believes Josh has some reservations, but Josh wants the life he has seen in Sally's memories and agrees. Before Donna performs the spell, she warns Sally that she will be flung into the future a bit before she is sent back to the right point in time. And Aidan asks Sally to make sure that his other self remembers the fond memories they shared in this timeline. As Donna chants the incantation, several instances of Sally's spirit fill the room. Sally is sent through time, but the timeline she sees first is one where Aidan, upset over Sally's disappearance, breaks Josh's neck, killing him. As Sally mourns Josh's death, she is flung through time again and watches Aidan oversee an ambulance take away a body. Sally demands to know what he did, when Josh steps next to her, as they both reveal they have called the police to take Robbie's body away in her absence. Aidan cannot remember the intimacy he and Sally shared, and Josh asks where she has been, and she tells them she has been to the past and the future, but the future seems to be much closer than she anticipated, not ready to reveal what she has seen to either of the boys.
4910"Oh Don't You Die For Me"Paolo BarzmanMike OstrowskiMarch 17, 2014 (2014-03-17)137959-671.13[12]
With Nora moving out, Josh reconciles with Andrew and Mark, revealing to them that he can transform into the wolf at will. Suzanna gives Aidan an ultimatum: he has to kill the head of the Boston vampires, unaware that she is asking him to kill his own son. Sally tries to get Josh and Nora to patch things up, by asking him to stay later, but during the argument when she spots Aidan coming out of the shower, she begins to remember the events of the alternate timeline. Josh visits Andrew and Caroline in their new house in the country, and Mark reveals that they are actually planning on having a party to form a new pack with Josh as the leader. Later, while Josh and Nora have some niceties before he leaves to go to the party, Suzanna gives Aidan the cross from their hometown's church that she has fashioned into a stake to kill Kenny. At the party, Mark tries to bring Josh's confidence up, until he brings a young woman who seems eager to meet him. When she hugs him, Josh notices that she is in fact a human. Mark reveals that most of the patrons at the party are humans who they wish to willingly turn into werewolves, which shocks him. Aidan approaches Kenny at the funeral home, ready to kill him for essentially filling Bishop's vacancy, until Astrid, the werewolf he met at the party, reveals Kenny has true affection for her. Aidan simply warns him to think about what he is doing, if it will be for her safety or his own ego. In the house, after Sally knocks aspirin out of Nora's hand, she reveals the events of the alternate timeline to her, admitting that she fell in love with Aidan during that time. Sally is still wary of revealing what happened to them to him, but Nora thinks otherwise, and Sally tells her all of the events of her other life. At the party, Josh confronts Caroline and Andrew about Mark's plans, as they knew all along. Josh is adamant that he will not turn them, knowing full well the truth of the condition, but when he leaves they stun him and cage him up in the basement so he can turn the people safely. Mark and Andrew reveal their plan to bolster the werewolves' numbers using him just in case the peace with the vampires ends, and they will follow him regardless. When he refuses to turn, they take a cattle prod to him to force him to change. As the other werewolves gather to see him, Astrid arrives, understanding the full gravity of the situation. Back at the house, Sally finally reveals that Josh owned a pie shop in the alternate timeline, and he was miserable. Nora is still wary about staying in the house because of all that has happened. Aidan goes to Suzanna to reveal that he is Kenny's sire and he asks her for time to rein him in rather than kill him. She gives him two months' time, otherwise she will take care of him herself, and Aidan as well. At the house, Aidan asks Sally's advice on what to do concerning Suzanna, and her advice is just to let her go, awkwardly, not telling him what she knows, but still trying to let him know Suzanna is not the right woman for him. Suddenly, Astrid rings their doorbell, revealing Josh is captured. At the funeral home, a new body comes in, but they are unaware that Suzanna is hiding within the bodybag. Aidan, Sally, and Nora go to save Josh, as the house is empty. Kenny goes back to the funeral home and is subdued by Suzanna using juniper, who has already staked all his workers. Aidan, Sally, and Nora find Josh locked up in the basement and they free him, but not before several of the werewolves come to stop them. Nora takes Josh to safety while Aidan fights the werewolves. Sally stays behind, despite Aidan's protests, and as he is overwhelmed and about to be staked by Mark, she possesses Andrew, giving Aidan a chance to fight back. With Sally's help, Aidan beats the werewolves, leaving everyone but "Shit Brickhouse" standing. Sally possesses him and makes out with Aidan as they did in her memories of the other timeline. As they leave, Aidan wants to know why Sally did what she did, but as he answers a text from Kenny, she dissipates before she can tell him anything. He arrives at the funeral home to see Suzanna standing over Kenny's body. Aidan realizes that everything Suzanna has been doing is because of her deep guilt over killing Isaac. She poisons him with juniper and tries to make him stake Kenny, but in his last bit of strength and clarity he stakes her. Back at the house, Nora reveals Josh is fine but Sally is unresponsive. Aidan wants to know why she has done what she did, and Nora reveals to him that Sally loves him. Sally soon comes to her senses, but she wakes up in the room in which she saw "Lil' Smokie" get sacrificed to the witches in her first trip back in time.
5011"Ramona the Pest"Jeff RenfroeChris DingessMarch 24, 2014 (2014-03-24)137959-700.99[13]
Sally wakes up in the bedroom in which she saw "Lil' Smokie" get sacrificed. As she wonders how she arrived, as she did not use magic, she soon realizes that she can hear Josh and Nora, who has stayed in the house waiting for Josh to convalesce, arguing nearby. She emerges from the closet, surprising all three of them. Downstairs, Aidan is asleep, when he feels Sally wake him. He is amazed that they can touch each other, and they begin to passionately kiss, until he is woken from his dream by Nora searching for a sledgehammer. Aidan breaks through the closet into the other room, and Sally tells them this is where she saw a girl get sacrificed. Aidan can smell that someone has died in the room, and spots a blood stain with fresh scratch marks in it. Before they can investigate further, Sally's father comes to the door to tell them that he has sold the house, and they have to move out by Monday. Aidan throws away several of his old belongings, and at Sally's urging, he reveals that he no longer has anything to tie him to his past, and dismisses attempting a relationship with Sally as both of them have bad histories with relationships, even though she reveals that they loved each other during her time traveling. He later goes to speak with Kenny, who has just ended an argument with Astrid about running away together, and he offers to help Kenny fake his death so he can run away, but he asks Aidan to ask Josh and Nora to talk Astrid into it. However, Josh is apprehensive about having Kenny and Astrid run away together, and they argue over what they really want out of everything, even though Sally tries to get them to stop, when all three are distracted by the ghost of a little girl. Sally realizes she is the girl she saw get sacrificed, and she introduces herself as Ramona, the twin sister to Beatrice. Ramona tells them that she has always been in the room, and has grown attached to them even though she could not speak with them. Sally convinces Aidan to talk to Beatrice, who works as a county clerk, but she and Aidan argue about their relationship and the future they may have, all while Aidan looks like he is talking to nobody. Back at the house, Ramona is worried about Josh and the others leaving, when she says Nora has arrived. Josh wants to turn with Nora that night, but Nora is still worried about him and his wolf and has only come so she can speak with Astrid. Josh goes back upstairs to pack, and Nora answers the door for Astrid, but Astrid pulls a gun on her, as the pack has decided to take Josh back by force. Josh tries to go downstairs to save her, but Ramona traps him in the room, as she knows it is not safe for anyone, until Josh changes. Mark and Andrew prepare to take Josh back by force, but the door swings open to reveal Josh has fully transformed. At the clerical office, Aidan's turn has come and he talks to Beatrice, but as soon as he reveals Ramona to her, she calls security to drag him out, horrified by the revelation. Aidan and Sally return home to see the bloodbath, Josh having killed all of the werewolves who came to take him back, including Astrid. Josh and Nora hurry out of the house to the woods, with Aidan promising to take care of things. Josh and Nora head to the campsite that they originally lived during the three-month period where Josh was trapped, because Sally has come up with an idea. While Nora locks herself up in the shed, she enters Josh's mind before he changes. She discovers Josh in his mind, as she knows the only way to solve things is to find the part of Josh that is missing, otherwise the wolf will take over, once more. Josh knows full well the other part of him that is missing, and it is his wolf, that he runs away from. At the house, Aidan has called on Kenny to have a clean up, lying to him that the pack killed Astrid on their own before coming to the house and Josh turning on them. In reality, he has hidden Astrid's corpse upstairs in Ramona's room. He tells Kenny that the only thing left for him is to leave Boston for good. In Josh's mind, Sally sees the futility of his plan of running away from the wolf and hiding during the change, but Sally makes him stand his ground, first by creating a happy place for himself to make the confrontation, the house. With Sally's encouragement, Josh confronts his wolf, telling him that he must live his life, and the wolf only gets the full moon to live. A peace is finally made between Josh and his wolf, who leaves on his own accord. The next morning, Nora finds Josh sitting by himself at the camper, and she realizes that he is finally back to being himself, as Sally watches them from afar. In the hidden room, Aidan puts Astrid's corpse into a body bag to dispose of her, and Ramona asks why he did not let the others take her, and he admits that she was special, but asks her to not bother him anymore, but she is gone. As he leaves the room, he does not notice that there are now fifteen scratch marks in the old bloodstain, when before there were only six. Josh, Nora, and Sally return to the house to find it spotless, and reveals the lie he told Kenny to them, so they can cover for each other. Josh thanks him for keeping him safe, and Sally informs him that he must always confront the wolf, or the wolf will win. In the funeral home, Kenny grieves, when he is visited by Astrid's ghost. She reveals to him that the pack turned on her and forced her to help them take Josh back, and Josh was the one who killed her.
5112"House Hunting"Jeff RenfroeLisa RandolphMarch 31, 2014 (2014-03-31)137959-711.05[14]
Aidan visits Kenny to help him prepare for his leaving Boston, but Kenny is not ready now that Astrid is dead, and is suspicious now that he knows Aidan lied to him. However, he gives Aidan the keys to the van so they may all pack. Aidan returns to the house to find Josh, Nora, and Sally with Ramona. As they all plan on leaving, Sally pledges to stay behind, for a bit, to ensure Ramona passes on, but before she can reveal this to her, Ramona disappears. Nora asks Josh why he no longer writes in his "werewolf" journal, with Josh saying because the curse was lifted the first time, he no longer needs to keep track of his symptoms. Nora believes he should keep it, and they plan on moving into her old apartment together. Downstairs, after Sally laments the fact that Nora may have sold her favorite pair of tights, Aidan proposes that she "haunt" him in the RV in the woods. However, Ramona expresses jealousy that the four are leaving without her. The four argue over belongings, such as the microwave as the popcorn setting is apparently perfect for blood, but they are actually arguing over who gets to keep the "Dog Man Cat Dude" statue, with the group ultimately deciding that Josh and Nora get it, but Aidan and Sally get "visitation rights". However, their happiness is disrupted by Beatrice's arrival. Beatrice attempts to warn the group about Ramona's true nature. She reveals her parents joined a cult shortly before herself and her twin were born, and they were granted an audience with Paimon, one of the Kings of Hell. Her parents doted upon her, but kept her sister locked up in a hidden room, and never actually named her, and on one night after they had turned ten, Ramona was sacrificed to the devil. The group realizes something more is up when Ramona makes herself known, and Beatrice can still see her. Ramona, however, is furious at Beatrice as she believes her sister let her die, and she kills Beatrice in front of them. All four attempt to escape the house, but each is thrown into a separate room. Aidan finds himself in the basement with the ghost of Henry, who attempts to get Aidan to kill himself so he can become a ghost with Sally. Josh is in the kitchen with the ghost of Julia, who tries to get him to commit suicide so he can save Nora from an inevitable death. Nora is in the bedroom with Emily, who has fallen off the wagon and tries to get Nora to leave Josh as he is hiding something from her. And Sally discovers herself in the bathroom with Kat, who can apparently see Sally perfectly fine, and taunts her over her relationship with Aidan. Sally sees through the ruse first and realizes Ramona is making everyone see things. Sally confronts her, and she simply rebuffs Sally's idea that she is a ghost as well, and simply states that no one has a chance of leaving the house alive, and reveals that she is not trapped in the house but is the house itself. "Henry" continues to try to get Aidan to kill himself, as does "Julia", but Josh refuses and is rushed at by "Julia". Nora reads from the journal, which allegedly has a new entry, as "Emily" says that she must leave Josh for the well being of their unborn child, a fact that Nora has not revealed to anyone yet. As Ramona reveals how she has done everything to keep the group in the house, Sally realizes that she had a hand in killing Robbie, and realizes that she is trying to kill the others. Sally manages to get into the bedroom and manages to dispel Ramona's illusion, freeing Nora to go downstairs to help Josh while Sally goes to Aidan. Sally manages to stop Aidan from staking himself, and gets rid of the illusion of Henry. Upstairs, Josh is horrified by the sight of Nora's body on the ground, her throat slashed by the silver knife "Julia" attempted to get him to kill himself with. He prepares to kill himself until the real Nora arrives and gets Josh to see through the illusion. Everyone regroups and tries to leave through the backdoor, but are only trapped in the room with Ramona. Sally reveals to them that Ramona is the personification of the house's evil, and that she wants them trapped forever, if not dead. She taunts Ramona, saying that neither of them have killed each other, but Ramona simply says she has time, as she lets Kenny into the house, and Aidan out of the room, but keeping the others trapped. Kenny reveals to Aidan that he knows he is protecting Josh, but Aidan does his best to try to convince Kenny that seeking revenge solves nothing. The two fight, but just as Kenny is to stake Aidan through the heart, Aidan manages to turn it on Kenny. He does his best to try to get Kenny out of the situation alive, but Kenny compels him to believe that Josh has made Sally disappear and dies. Ramona lets everyone else out of the hidden room, and Sally realizes that when the other timeline's Donna sent her back to the normal timeline, she saw these exact events unfold: Aidan killing Josh in mourning over her. Sally tries to get through to Aidan before her vision of the future comes to pass and Ramona gets her way.
5213"There Goes the Neighborhood (Part 3)"Stefan PleszczynskiAnna FrickeApril 7, 2014 (2014-04-07)137959-721.41[15]
As Sally watches the events of Josh's impending death unfold before her, she manages to freeze time, and gets herself, Josh, and Nora to safety in the basement with magic. She warns Josh that this will end with his death and it is because of Kenny unless she can do something, and she gets an idea. She opens the door to the basement but before Aidan can attack, she slams him into the wall with psychic powers. After she gets Nora and Josh to lift him into the bed, she performs one last spell. Aidan wakes up and can feel his heartbeat for the first time in centuries. Sally has sacrificed herself to bring him back to life, and she thanks all of them for all they have done before disappearing into nothingness. Ramona, however, is angry that Sally is gone, and attacks them, blowing out all the windows in the house, but the three manage to escape to Nora's apartment. Aidan is amazed that he is alive, but is sure that Sally is gone for good. After getting him his first real food in over 200 years, Aidan lets the two of them live together and he will stay in the RV as they had originally planned. However, after a night of drunkenness and sorrow, Aidan wakes up and realizes something is off. At the house, a construction worker enters and tries to get work done, but is distracted by Ramona. At the RV, Aidan looks in the mirror and sees that he has rapidly aged over night. The construction worker follows Ramona up to her hidden room, and she kills him with a shard of glass, planning on using him to get to the others. At the hospital, Nora presents Aidan with test results, showing that his organs are slowly failing as his age catches up with him. Both are hesitant to tell Josh of the truth, and when it does happen, Aidan accidentally reveals that Nora is pregnant with his child. Later, Aidan visits Sally's grave, leaving a rose behind, and goes to a bar in town, watching as he sees a new vampire try to get a date and meal. Aidan stops him, and demands that he turn him back into a vampire. At Nora's apartment, Josh tells her he plans on opening a diner to work in, but also is worried that he should get medication because of everything that has happened. Nora assures him she trusts in him, regardless of the wolf. Josh drives into town and finds Aidan getting attacked, but not fighting back, and the vampire leaves. Aidan finally admits that he is afraid of dying, because he feels that there is no good end for him with his centuries of monstrosities, but Josh just tells him that he is simply being human. The next morning, Josh drops off breakfast and the newspaper for Aidan, who is planning on seeing everything in Boston before he dies, but he instead happens upon the death of the construction worker in their old house. Aidan has an idea to end things for good, and demands that Josh not get involved, as he has a future with Nora and his child. Josh insists, and Aidan tells him to drop him off for now and meet him in the house in an hour. However, Aidan is planning on taking care of things by himself. He drops some bags off downstairs, and heads upstairs to try to find Ramona, finding his old leather jacket first, before finding her. She taunts him about how he will probably go to hell, and there is nothing that he can do to stop her because her creation was not one of Catholicism so any plans he may have to exorcise her are fruitless. Instead, he taunts her back that nothing she has planned for them will work, and she attacks him, planning on choking him with blood, before throwing him down the stairs, just as Sally died originally. He lands just as she did, but with his final breaths he ignites a cigarette lighter, throwing it onto a puddle of gasoline he had spilled earlier. As the house burns down, so does Ramona's evil spirit, destroying her, and the house, for good. Josh and Nora return to find the house burnt to cinders and Aidan's corpse taken away by paramedics. They enter to survey the damage, only to see Aidan's ghost greet them. They offer to let him haunt them, but he feels he should see the world first, until Josh and Nora tell him his Door has arrived. As he enters through it, he is greeted by Sally's soul, and the two embrace for the first time, as they both pass on to the other side.

Josh, Nora, Sally, and Aidan appear to celebrate their lives together, in laughter and love, just as Josh wakes up with Nora at his side in a field. When he tells Nora of his dream, she says she saw the same thing, and Josh believes that somewhere in the afterlife Aidan and Sally are making these dreams for them, of a life spent together. Both worry what time it is, with Nora worrying about the pies they have baking, and Josh "worries" about their children. Nora picks up their baby daughter playing nearby, calling her Sally, while Josh calls out for Aidan, suddenly being caught in a game of tag with their young son.


document_title: California Gold Rush

question_text: how many miners were in the california gold rush

root

text: California Gold Rush

text: History

text: The Mexican–American War ended on February 3, 1848, although California was firmly in American hands before that. The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo provided for, among other things, the formal transfer of Upper California to the United States. The California Gold Rush began at Sutter's Mill, near Coloma.[3] On January 24, 1848, James W. Marshall, a foreman working for Sacramento pioneer John Sutter, found shiny metal in the tailrace of a lumber mill Marshall was building for Sutter on the American River.[4] Marshall brought what he found to John Sutter, and the two privately tested the metal. After the tests showed that it was gold, Sutter expressed dismay: he wanted to keep the news quiet because he feared what would happen to his plans for an agricultural empire if there were a mass search for gold.[5]

tag: p

text: Discovery announced

text: However, rumors soon started to spread and were confirmed in March 1848 by San Francisco newspaper publisher and merchant Samuel Brannan. The most famous quote of the California Gold Rush was by Brannan; after he had hurriedly set up a store to sell gold prospecting supplies,[6] Brannan strode through the streets of San Francisco, holding aloft a vial of gold, shouting "Gold! Gold! Gold from the American River!"[7]

text: On August 19, 1848, the New York Herald was the first major newspaper on the East Coast to report the discovery of gold. On December 5, 1848, President James Polk confirmed the discovery of gold in an address to Congress.[8] Soon, waves of immigrants from around the world, later called the "forty-niners," invaded the Gold Country of California or "Mother Lode". As Sutter had feared, he was ruined; his workers left in search of gold, and squatters took over his land and stole his crops and cattle.[9]

text: San Francisco had been a tiny settlement before the rush began. When residents learned about the discovery, it at first became a ghost town of abandoned ships and businesses,[10] but then boomed as merchants and new people arrived. The population of San Francisco exploded from perhaps about 1,000[11] in 1848 to 25,000 full-time residents by 1850.[12] Miners lived in tents, wood shanties, or deck cabins removed from abandoned ships.[13]

text: Transportation to California

text: In what has been referred to as the "first world-class gold rush,"[14] there was no easy way to get to California; forty-niners faced hardship and often death on the way. At first, most Argonauts, as they were also known, traveled by sea. From the East Coast, a sailing voyage around the tip of South America would take five to eight months,[15] and cover some 18,000 nautical miles (33,000 kilometres). An alternative was to sail to the Atlantic side of the Isthmus of Panama, take canoes and mules for a week through the jungle, and then on the Pacific side, wait for a ship sailing for San Francisco.[16] There was also a route across Mexico starting at Veracruz. Many gold-seekers took the overland route across the continental United States, particularly along the California Trail.[17] Each of these routes had its own deadly hazards, from shipwreck to typhoid fever and cholera.[18]

text: Supplies and goods needed

text: To meet the demands of the arrivals, ships bearing goods from around the world came to San Francisco as well. Ships' captains found that their crews deserted to go to the goldfields. The wharves and docks of San Francisco became a forest of masts, as hundreds of ships were abandoned. Enterprising San Franciscans turned the abandoned ships into warehouses, stores, taverns, hotels, and one into a jail.[19] Many of these ships were later destroyed and used for landfill to create more buildable land in the boomtown.[19]

text: Northern California strikes

text: Within a few years, there was an important but lesser-known surge of prospectors into far Northern California, specifically into present-day Siskiyou, Shasta and Trinity Counties.[20] Discovery of gold nuggets at the site of present-day Yreka in 1851 brought thousands of gold-seekers up the Siskiyou Trail[21] and throughout California's northern counties.[22]

text: Settlements of the Gold Rush era, such as Portuguese Flat on the Sacramento River, sprang into existence and then faded. The Gold Rush town of Weaverville on the Trinity River today retains the oldest continuously used Taoist temple in California, a legacy of Chinese miners who came. While there are not many Gold Rush era ghost towns still in existence, the remains of the once-bustling town of Shasta have been preserved in a California State Historic Park in Northern California.[23]

text: Gold was also discovered in Southern California but on a much smaller scale. The first discovery of gold, at Rancho San Francisco in the mountains north of present-day Los Angeles, had been in 1842, six years before Marshall's discovery, while California was still part of Mexico.[24] However, these first deposits, and later discoveries in Southern California mountains, attracted little notice and were of limited consequence economically.[24]

text: Indigenous driven out

text: By 1850, most of the easily accessible gold had been collected, and attention turned to extracting gold from more difficult locations. Faced with gold increasingly difficult to retrieve, Americans began to drive out foreigners to get at the most accessible gold that remained. The new California State Legislature passed a foreign miners tax of twenty dollars per month ($580 per month as of 2017), and American prospectors began organized attacks on foreign miners, particularly Latin Americans and Chinese.[25]

text: In addition, the huge numbers of newcomers were driving Native Americans out of their traditional hunting, fishing and food-gathering areas. To protect their homes and livelihood, some Native Americans responded by attacking the miners. This provoked counter-attacks on native villages. The Native Americans, out-gunned, were often slaughtered.[26] Those who escaped massacres were many times unable to survive without access to their food-gathering areas, and they starved to death. Novelist and poet Joaquin Miller vividly captured one such attack in his semi-autobiographical work, Life Amongst the Modocs.[27]

text: Earlier discoveries of gold

text: The first gold found in California was made on March 9, 1842. Francisco Lopez, a native California, was searching for stray horses. He stopped on the bank of a small creek in what later was known as Placerita Canyon, about 3 miles (4.8 km) east of the present-day Newhall, California, and about 35 miles (56 km) northwest of Los Angeles. While the horses grazed, Lopez dug up some wild onions and found a small gold nugget in the roots among the onion bulbs. He looked further and found more gold.[28]

text: Lopez took the gold to authorities who confirmed its worth. Lopez and others began to search for other steambeds with gold deposits in the area. They found several in the northeastern section of the forest, within present-day Ventura County. In 1843 he found gold in San Feliciano Canyon near his first discovery. Mexican miners from Sonora worked the placer deposits until 1846, when the Californios began to agitate for independence from Mexico, and the Bear Flag Revolt caused many Mexicans to leave California.[28]

text: Forty-niners

text: The first people to rush to the goldfields, beginning in the spring of 1848, were the residents of California themselves—primarily agriculturally oriented Americans and Europeans living in Northern California, along with Native Americans and some Californios (Spanish-speaking Californians).[29] These first miners tended to be families in which everyone helped in the effort. Women and children of all ethnicities were often found panning next to the men. Some enterprising families set up boarding houses to accommodate the influx of men; in such cases, the women often brought in steady income while their husbands searched for gold.[30]

text: Word of the Gold Rush spread slowly at first. The earliest gold-seekers were people who lived near California or people who heard the news from ships on the fastest sailing routes from California. The first large group of Americans to arrive were several thousand Oregonians who came down the Siskiyou Trail.[31] Next came people from the Sandwich Islands, and several thousand Latin Americans, including people from Mexico, from Peru and from as far away as Chile,[32] both by ship and overland.[33] By the end of 1848, some 6,000 Argonauts had come to California.[33]

text: Only a small number (probably fewer than 500) traveled overland from the United States that year.[33] Some of these "forty-eighters",[34] as the earliest gold-seekers were sometimes called, were able to collect large amounts of easily accessible gold—in some cases, thousands of dollars worth each day.[35][36] Even ordinary prospectors averaged daily gold finds worth 10 to 15 times the daily wage of a laborer on the East Coast. A person could work for six months in the goldfields and find the equivalent of six years' wages back home.[37] Some hoped to get rich quick and return home, and others wished to start businesses in California.

text: By the beginning of 1849, word of the Gold Rush had spread around the world, and an overwhelming number of gold-seekers and merchants began to arrive from virtually every continent. The largest group of forty-niners in 1849 were Americans, arriving by the tens of thousands overland across the continent and along various sailing routes[38] (the name "forty-niner" was derived from the year 1849). Many from the East Coast negotiated a crossing of the Appalachian Mountains, taking to riverboats in Pennsylvania, poling the keelboats to Missouri River wagon train assembly ports, and then travelling in a wagon train along the California Trail. Many others came by way of the Isthmus of Panama and the steamships of the Pacific Mail Steamship Company. Australians[39] and New Zealanders picked up the news from ships carrying Hawaiian newspapers, and thousands, infected with "gold fever", boarded ships for California.[40]

text: Forty-niners came from Latin America, particularly from the Mexican mining districts near Sonora and Chile.[40][41] Gold-seekers and merchants from Asia, primarily from China,[42] began arriving in 1849, at first in modest numbers to Gum San ("Gold Mountain"), the name given to California in Chinese.[43] The first immigrants from Europe, reeling from the effects of the Revolutions of 1848 and with a longer distance to travel, began arriving in late 1849, mostly from France,[44] with some Germans, Italians, and Britons.[38]

text: It is estimated that approximately 90,000 people arrived in California in 1849—about half by land and half by sea.[45] Of these, perhaps 50,000 to 60,000 were Americans, and the rest were from other countries.[38] By 1855, it is estimated at least 300,000 gold-seekers, merchants, and other immigrants had arrived in California from around the world.[46] The largest group continued to be Americans, but there were tens of thousands each of Mexicans, Chinese, Britons, Australians[47] French, and Latin Americans,[48] together with many smaller groups of miners, such as African Americans, Filipinos, Basques[49] and Turks.[50][51]

text: People from small villages in the hills near Genova, Italy were among the first to settle permanently in the Sierra Nevada foothills; they brought with them traditional agricultural skills, developed to survive cold winters.[52] A modest number of miners of African ancestry (probably less than 4,000)[53] had come from the Southern States,[54] the Caribbean and Brazil.[55]

text: A number of immigrants were from China. Several hundred Chinese arrived in California in 1849 and 1850, and in 1852 more than 20,000 landed in San Francisco.[56] Their distinctive dress and appearance was highly recognizable in the goldfields. Chinese miners suffered enormously, enduring violent racism from white miners who aimed their frustrations at foreigners. To this day, there has been no justice for known victims. Further animosity toward the Chinese led to legislation such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and Foreign Miners Tax.[57][56]

text: There were also women in the Gold Rush. However, their numbers were small. Of the 40,000 people who arrived by ship in the San Francisco harbor in 1849, only 700 were women.[58] They held various roles including prostitutes, single entrepreneurs, married women, poor and wealthy women. They were of various ethnicities including Anglo-American, African-American,[59] Hispanic, Native, European, Chinese, and Jewish. The reasons they came varied: some came with their husbands, refusing to be left behind to fend for themselves, some came because their husbands sent for them, and others came (singles and widows) for the adventure and economic opportunities.[60] On the trail many people died from accidents, cholera, fever, and myriad other causes, and many women became widows before even setting eyes on California. While in California, women became widows quite frequently due to mining accidents, disease, or mining disputes of their husbands. Life in the goldfields offered opportunities for women to break from their traditional work.[61][62]

text: Homosexuality

text: The disproportionate number of men to women in San Francisco created an environment for homosexuality and gay cultures to flourish.[63] The Barbary Coast was a district where men went to gamble and pay for sex from female impersonators and women alike.[63] Described as the "city of bachelors" [63] men often went to the Barbary Coast district to pay for prostitution and pleasure with other men.[64]

text: Legal rights

text: When the Gold Rush began, the California goldfields were peculiarly lawless places.[65] When gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill, California was still technically part of Mexico, under American military occupation as the result of the Mexican–American War. With the signing of the treaty ending the war on February 2, 1848, California became a possession of the United States, but it was not a formal "territory" and did not become a state until September 9, 1850. California existed in the unusual condition of a region under military control. There was no civil legislature, executive or judicial body for the entire region.[66] Local residents operated under a confusing and changing mixture of Mexican rules, American principles, and personal dictates. Lax enforcement of federal laws, such as the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, encouraged the arrival of free blacks and escaped slaves.[67]

text: While the treaty ending the Mexican–American War obliged the United States to honor Mexican land grants,[68] almost all the goldfields were outside those grants. Instead, the goldfields were primarily on "public land", meaning land formally owned by the United States government.[69] However, there were no legal rules yet in place,[65] and no practical enforcement mechanisms.[70]

text: The benefit to the forty-niners was that the gold was simply "free for the taking" at first. In the goldfields at the beginning, there was no private property, no licensing fees, and no taxes.[71][72] The miners informally adapted Mexican mining law that had existed in California.[73] For example, the rules attempted to balance the rights of early arrivers at a site with later arrivers; a "claim" could be "staked" by a prospector, but that claim was valid only as long as it was being actively worked.[65][74][75]

text: Miners worked at a claim only long enough to determine its potential. If a claim was deemed as low-value—as most were—miners would abandon the site in search for a better one. In the case where a claim was abandoned or not worked upon, other miners would "claim-jump" the land. "Claim-jumping" meant that a miner began work on a previously claimed site.[74][75] Disputes were often handled personally and violently, and were sometimes addressed by groups of prospectors acting as arbitrators.[69][74][75] This often led to heightened ethnic tensions.[76] In some areas the influx of many prospectors could lead to a reduction of the existing claim size by simple pressure.[77]

text: Development of gold-recovery techniques

text: Four hundred million years ago, California lay at the bottom of a large sea; underwater volcanoes deposited lava and minerals (including gold) onto the sea floor. By tectonic forces these minerals and rocks came to the surface of the Sierra Nevada,[78] and eroded. Water carried the exposed gold downstream and deposited it in quiet gravel beds along the sides of old rivers and streams.[79][80] The forty-niners first focused their efforts on these deposits of gold.[81]

text: Because the gold in the California gravel beds was so richly concentrated, early forty-niners were able to retrieve loose gold flakes and nuggets with their hands, or simply "pan" for gold in rivers and streams.[82][83] However, panning cannot take place on a large scale, and industrious miners and groups of miners graduated to placer mining, using "cradles" and "rockers" or "long-toms"[84] to process larger volumes of gravel.[85] Miners would also engage in "coyoteing",[86] a method that involved digging a shaft 6 to 13 meters (20 to 43 ft) deep into placer deposits along a stream. Tunnels were then dug in all directions to reach the richest veins of pay dirt.

text: In the most complex placer mining, groups of prospectors would divert the water from an entire river into a sluice alongside the river, and then dig for gold in the newly exposed river bottom.[87] Modern estimates by the U.S. Geological Survey are that some 12 million ounces[88] (370 t) of gold were removed in the first five years of the Gold Rush (worth over US$16 billion at December 2010 prices).[89]

text: In the next stage, by 1853, hydraulic mining was used on ancient gold-bearing gravel beds on hillsides and bluffs in the goldfields.[90] In a modern style of hydraulic mining first developed in California, and later used around the world, a high-pressure hose directed a powerful stream or jet of water at gold-bearing gravel beds.[91] The loosened gravel and gold would then pass over sluices, with the gold settling to the bottom where it was collected. By the mid-1880s, it is estimated that 11 million ounces (340 t) of gold (worth approximately US$15 billion at December 2010 prices) had been recovered by "hydraulicking".[89]

text: A byproduct of these extraction methods was that large amounts of gravel, silt, heavy metals, and other pollutants went into streams and rivers.[92] As of 1999[update] many areas still bear the scars of hydraulic mining, since the resulting exposed earth and downstream gravel deposits do not support plant life.[93]

text: After the Gold Rush had concluded, gold recovery operations continued. The final stage to recover loose gold was to prospect for gold that had slowly washed down into the flat river bottoms and sandbars of California's Central Valley and other gold-bearing areas of California (such as Scott Valley in Siskiyou County). By the late 1890s, dredging technology (also invented in California) had become economical,[94] and it is estimated that more than 20 million ounces (620 t) were recovered by dredging (worth approximately US$28 billion at December 2010 prices).[89]

text: Both during the Gold Rush and in the decades that followed, gold-seekers also engaged in "hard-rock" mining, that is, extracting the gold directly from the rock that contained it (typically quartz), usually by digging and blasting to follow and remove veins of the gold-bearing quartz.[95] By 1851, quartz mining had become the major industry of Coloma.[96] Once the gold-bearing rocks were brought to surface, the rocks were crushed and the gold separated, either using separation in water, using its density difference from quartz sand, or by washing the sand over copper plates coated with mercury (with which gold forms an amalgam). Loss of mercury in the amalgamation process was a source of environmental contamination.[97] Eventually, hard-rock mining wound up becoming the single largest source of gold produced in the Gold Country.[89][98] The total production of gold in California from then till now is estimated at 118 million ounces (3700 t).[99]

text: Forty-niner panning for gold

tag: ul

text: Sluice for separation of gold from dirt with water

text: Excavating a river bed after the water has been diverted

text: Crushing quartz ore prior to washing out gold

text: Excavating a gravel bed with jets, circa 1863

text: Profits

text: Recent scholarship confirms that merchants made far more money than miners during the Gold Rush.[100][101] The wealthiest man in California during the early years of the rush was Samuel Brannan, a tireless self-promoter, shopkeeper and newspaper publisher.[102] Brannan opened the first supply stores in Sacramento, Coloma, and other spots in the goldfields. Just as the rush began he purchased all the prospecting supplies available in San Francisco and re-sold them at a substantial profit.[102]

text: Some gold-seekers made a significant amount of money.[103] On average, half the gold-seekers made a modest profit, after taking all expenses into account; economic historians have suggested that white miners were more successful than black, Indian, or Chinese miners.[104] However, taxes such as the California foreign miners tax passed in 1851, targeted mainly Latino miners[105] and kept them from making as much money as whites, who didn't have any taxes imposed on them. In California Most late arrivals made little or wound up losing money.[106] Similarly, many unlucky merchants set up in settlements which disappeared, or which succumbed to one of the calamitous fires that swept the towns that sprang up. By contrast, a businessman who went on to great success was Levi Strauss, who first began selling denim overalls in San Francisco in 1853.[107]

text: Other businessmen reaped great rewards in retail, shipping, entertainment, lodging,[108] or transportation.[109] Boardinghouses, food preparation, sewing, and laundry were highly profitable businesses often run by women (married, single, or widowed) who realized men would pay well for a service done by a woman. Brothels also brought in large profits, especially when combined with saloons and gaming houses.[110]

text: By 1855, the economic climate had changed dramatically. Gold could be retrieved profitably from the goldfields only by medium to large groups of workers, either in partnerships or as employees. By the mid-1850s, it was the owners of these gold-mining companies who made the money. Also, the population and economy of California had become large and diverse enough that money could be made in a wide variety of conventional businesses.[111]

text: Path of the gold

text: Once extracted, the gold itself took many paths. First, much of the gold was used locally to purchase food, supplies and lodging for the miners. It also went towards entertainment, which consisted of anything from a traveling theater to alcohol, gambling, and prostitutes. These transactions often took place using the recently recovered gold, carefully weighed out.[112][113] These merchants and vendors in turn used the gold to purchase supplies from ship captains or packers bringing goods to California.[114]

text: The gold then left California aboard ships or mules to go to the makers of the goods from around the world. A second path was the Argonauts themselves who, having personally acquired a sufficient amount, sent the gold home, or returned home taking with them their hard-earned "diggings". For example, one estimate is that some US$80 million worth of California gold was sent to France by French prospectors and merchants.[115]

text: As the Gold Rush progressed, local banks and gold dealers issued "banknotes" or "drafts"—locally accepted paper currency—in exchange for gold,[116] and private mints created private gold coins.[117] With the building of the San Francisco Mint in 1854, gold bullion was turned into official United States gold coins for circulation.[118] The gold was also later sent by California banks to U.S. national banks in exchange for national paper currency to be used in the booming California economy.[119]

text: Near-term effects

text: The arrival of hundreds of thousands of new people in California within a few years, compared to a population of some 15,000 Europeans and Californios beforehand,[120] had many dramatic effects.[121]

text: A 2017 study attributes the record-long economic expansion of the United States in the recession-free period of 1841-1856 primarily to "a boom in transportation-goods investment following the discovery of gold in California."[122]

text: Development of government and commerce

text: The Gold Rush propelled California from a 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.[123]

text: Large-scale agriculture (California's second "Gold Rush"[124]) began during this time.[125] Roads, schools, churches,[126] and civic organizations quickly came into existence.[123] The vast majority of the immigrants were Americans.[127] Pressure grew for better communications and political connections to the rest of the United States, leading to statehood for California on September 9, 1850, in the Compromise of 1850 as the 31st state of the United States.

text: Between 1847 and 1870, the population of San Francisco increased from 500 to 150,000.[128] The Gold Rush wealth and population increase led to significantly improved transportation between California and the East Coast. The Panama Railway, spanning the Isthmus of Panama, was finished in 1855.[129] Steamships, including those owned by the Pacific Mail Steamship Company, began regular service from San Francisco to Panama, where passengers, goods and mail would take the train across the Isthmus and board steamships headed to the East Coast. One ill-fated journey, that of the S.S. Central America,[130] ended in disaster as the ship sank in a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas in 1857, with approximately three tons of California gold aboard.[131][132]

text: Impact on Native Americans

text: The human and environmental costs of the Gold Rush were substantial. Native Americans, dependent on traditional hunting, gathering and agriculture, became the victims of starvation and disease, as gravel, silt and toxic chemicals from prospecting operations killed fish and destroyed habitats.[92][93] The surge in the mining population also resulted in the disappearance of game and food gathering locales as gold camps and other settlements were built amidst them. Later farming spread to supply the settlers' camps, taking more land away from the Native Americans.[133]

text: In some areas, systematic attacks against tribespeople in or near mining districts occurred. Various conflicts were fought between natives and settlers.[134]Miners often saw Native Americans as impediments to their mining activities.[135] Ed Allen, interpretive lead for Marshall Gold Discovery State Historic Park, reported that there were times when miners would kill up to 50 or more Natives in one day.[136] Retribution attacks on solitary miners could result in larger scale attacks against Native populations, at times tribes or villages not involved in the original act.[137] During the 1852 Bridge Gulch Massacre, a group of settlers attacked a band of Wintu Indians in response to the killing of a citizen named J. R. Anderson. After his killing, the sheriff led a group of men to track down the Indians, whom the men then attacked. Only three children survived the massacre that was against a different band of Wintu than the one that had killed Anderson.[138]

text: Historian Benjamin Madley recorded the numbers of killings of California Indians between 1846 and 1873 and estimated that during this period at least 9,400 to 16,000 California Indians were killed by non-Indians, mostly occurring in more than 370 massacres (defined as the "intentional killing of five or more disarmed combatants or largely unarmed noncombatants, including women, children, and prisoners, whether in the context of a battle or otherwise").[139] According to demographer Russell Thornton, between 1849 and 1890, the Indigenous population of California fell below 20,000 – primarily because of the killings.[140] According to the government of California, some 4,500 Native Americans suffered violent deaths between 1849 and 1870.[141] Furthermore, California stood in opposition of ratifying the eighteen treaties signed between tribal leaders and federal agents in 1851.[142]

text: The state government, in support of miner activities funded and supported death squads, appropriating over 1 million dollars towards the funding and operation of the paramilitary organizations.[143] Peter Burnett, California's first governor declared that California was a battleground between the races and that there were only two options towards California Indians, extermination or removal. "That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the two races until the Indian race becomes extinct, must be expected. While we cannot anticipate the result with but painful regret, the inevitable destiny of the race is beyond the power and wisdom of man to avert." For Burnett, like many of his contemporaries, the genocide was part of God's plan, and it was necessary for Burnett's constituency to move forward in California.[144] The Act for the Government and Protection of Indians, passed on April 22, 1850 by the California Legislature, allowed settlers to capture and use Native people as bonded workers, prohibited Native peoples' testimony against settlers, and allowed the adoption of Native children by settlers, often for labor purposes.[145]

text: After the initial boom had ended, explicitly anti-foreign and racist attacks, laws and confiscatory taxes sought to drive out foreigners—not just Native Americans—from the mines, especially the Chinese and Latin American immigrants mostly from Sonora, Mexico and Chile.[56][146] The toll on the American immigrants was severe as well: one in twelve forty-niners perished, as the death and crime rates during the Gold Rush were extraordinarily high, and the resulting vigilantism also took its toll.[147]

text: World-wide economic stimulation

text:
Chilean wheat exports to California from 1848 to 1854 (in qqm)[148]

Year
Grains
Flour

1848
3000
n/a

1849
87,000
69,000

1850
277,000
221,000

1854
63,000
50,000

tag: table

text: The Gold Rush stimulated economies around the world as well. Farmers in Chile, Australia, and Hawaii found a huge new market for their food; British manufactured goods were in high demand; clothing and even prefabricated houses arrived from China.[149] The return of large amounts of California gold to pay for these goods raised prices and stimulated investment and the creation of jobs around the world.[150] Australian prospector Edward Hargraves, noting similarities between the geography of California and his home country, returned to Australia to discover gold and spark the Australian gold rushes.[151] Preceding the Gold Rush, the United States was on a bi-metallic standard, but the sudden increase in physical gold supply increased the relative value of physical silver and drove silver money from circulation. The increase in gold supply also created a monetary supply shock.[152]

text: Within a few years after the end of the Gold Rush, in 1863, the groundbreaking ceremony for the western leg of the First Transcontinental Railroad was held in Sacramento. The line's completion, some six years later, financed in part with Gold Rush money,[153] united California with the central and eastern United States. Travel that had taken weeks or even months could now be accomplished in days.[154]

text: Longer-term effects

text: California's name became indelibly connected with the Gold Rush, and fast success in a new world became known as the "California Dream."[155] California was perceived as a place of new beginnings, where great wealth could reward hard work and good luck. Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation:

text: The old American Dream ... was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin's "Poor Richard"... of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream ... became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter's Mill.[156]

text: Overnight California gained the international reputation as the "golden state".[157] Generations of immigrants have been attracted by the California Dream. California farmers,[158] oil drillers,[159] movie makers,[160] airplane builders,[161] and "dot-com" entrepreneurs have each had their boom times in the decades after the Gold Rush.[162]

text: Included among the modern legacies of the California Gold Rush are the California state motto, "Eureka" ("I have found it"), Gold Rush images on the California State Seal,[163] and the state nickname, "The Golden State", as well as place names, such as Placer County, Rough and Ready, Placerville (formerly named "Dry Diggings" and then "Hangtown" during rush time), Whiskeytown, Drytown, Angels Camp, Happy Camp, and Sawyers Bar. The San Francisco 49ers National Football League team, and the similarly named athletic teams of California State University, Long Beach, are named for the prospectors of the California Gold Rush.

text: In addition, the standard route shield of state highways in California is in the shape of a miner's spade to honor the California Gold Rush.[164][165] Today, aptly named State Route 49 travels through the Sierra Nevada foothills, connecting many Gold Rush-era towns such as Placerville, Auburn, Grass Valley, Nevada City, Coloma, Jackson, and Sonora.[166] This state highway also passes very near Columbia State Historic Park, a protected area encompassing the historic business district of the town of Columbia; the park has preserved many Gold Rush-era buildings, which are presently occupied by tourist-oriented businesses.

text: Cultural references

text: The literary history of the Gold Rush is reflected in the works of Mark Twain (The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County), Bret Harte (A Millionaire of Rough-and-Ready), Joaquin Miller (Life Amongst the Modocs), and many others.[27][167]