forty-niners

Cultural  

1. Those who flocked to California in 1849 in search of gold, which had been discovered there in 1848. Reportedly, there were about eighty thousand of them.

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Example Sentences

The discovery of gold at Sutter’s Mill in 1848 is one of the defining moments in California history, with roughly 300,000 forty-niners flocking here to make their fortune from the U.S. and abroad.

From Los Angeles Times • Dec. 4, 2024

Several forty-niners glimpsed precious metal as they dragged themselves over the mountains.

From The New Yorker • Nov. 6, 2016

There were no native oysters in the San Francisco Bay when forty-niners like Morgan first arrived and went looking for them.

From Scientific American • Oct. 2, 2015

Mr. Kelley Sr. likes to repeat a piece of wisdom handed down from the forty-niners: it was not the gold miners in California who got rich, it was the people who sold the shovels.

From New York Times • Oct. 15, 2011

Later, when the real forty-niners came, men o' red blood, vigilance committees were organized an' the camps got sort o' human.

From The Boy With the U.S. Miners by Rolt-Wheeler, Francis