Editing Oregon Trail (section)

===California gold rush===
{{Main|California Trail}}

In January 1848, James Marshall found gold in the Sierra Nevada portion of the [[American River]], sparking the [[California gold rush]].{{sfnp|Peters|1996|p=[https://archive.org/details/seventrailswest00pete/page/109 109]}} It is estimated that about two-thirds of the male population in Oregon went to California in 1848 to cash in on the opportunity. To get there, they helped build the Lassen Branch of the Applegate-Lassen Trail by cutting a wagon road through extensive forests. Many returned with significant gold which helped jump-start the Oregon economy. Over the next decade, gold seekers from the [[Midwest|Midwestern United States]] and [[East Coast of the United States]] dramatically increased traffic on the Oregon and California Trails. The "forty-niners" often chose speed over safety and opted to use shortcuts such as the [[Sublette Cutoff|Sublette-Greenwood Cutoff]] in Wyoming which reduced travel time by almost seven days but spanned nearly {{convert|45|mi|km}} of the desert without water, grass, or fuel for fires.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://americanwest.com/trails/pages/oretrail.htm |title =  Oregon Trail |website = American West |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20101205115352/http://americanwest.com/trails/pages/oretrail.htm |archive-date = December 5, 2010 }}</ref> 1849 was the first year of large scale [[cholera]] epidemics in the United States, and thousands are thought to have died along the trail on their way to California—most buried in unmarked graves in Kansas and Nebraska. The adjusted<ref>{{cite web |quote=The 1850 U.S. California Census, the first census that included everyone, showed only about 7,019 females with 4,165 non-native females older than 15 in the state. To find a "correct" census there should be added about 20,000 men and about 1,300 females from San Francisco, Santa Clara, and Contra Costa counties whose censuses were lost and not included in the official totals. |url=http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1850a-01.pdf |title=U.S. Seventh Census 1850: California |access-date=August 18, 2011}}</ref> 1850 U.S. census of California showed this rush was overwhelmingly male with about 112,000 males to 8,000 females (with about 5,500 women over age 15).<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www2.census.gov/prod2/decennial/documents/1850a-01.pdf |title=U.S. Seventh Census 1850: California |access-date=August 18, 2011}}</ref> Women were significantly underrepresented [[Women in the California gold rush|in the California gold rush]], and sex ratios did not reach essential equality in California (and other western states) until about 1950. The relative scarcity of women gave them many opportunities to do many more things that were not normally considered women's work of this era. {{citation needed|date=December 2021}} After 1849, the California gold rush continued for several years as the miners continued to find about $50,000,000 worth of gold per year at $21 per ounce.<ref>{{cite web |url = http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/greeley/railroad_to_pacific.html |title = An Overland Journey from New York to San Francisco in the Summer of 1859 |last = Greeley |first = Horace |website = www.yosemite.ca.us |access-date = October 13, 2017 }}</ref> Once California was established as a prosperous state, many thousands more emigrated there each year for the opportunities.