Alternate Gold Rush

In 1848, James Marshall and a group of coworkers began constructed a sawmill in Sacramento Valley when they came across a shiny rock that was later identified as gold. With fear of public uproar, Marshall made his crew swore they would never spread word of their discovery. On the other side of the United States, the East coast housed over two-thirds of the population. Overcrowding, lack of food supplies, and unemployment broke out as food supplies failed to keep up with the amount of bodies present. As streets were lined with families begging for help, sickness began to spread while medical workers failed to find cures due to lack of machinery. Two years after Marshall’s discover, his crew continued to live lavishly while the rest of America struggled to make ends meet. Zachary Taylor, President of the United States, called for a state of emergency as outbreaks of typhus, respiratory infections, and meningitis broke out due to overcrowding. As the years went on, international relations formed for better or worse. For example, the Panama isthmus was created in order to connect South America to California causing migration from the west into the mid-west states. On the other hand, six states on the east coast were subjected to quarantine in order to prevent the bubonic plague outbreak from spreading. Migration regulations were put in place to prohibit residents on the east coast from entering any state west of Kentucky. In 2001, the World Trade Center was hit with an act of terrorism causing more devastation amongst the coast. As the years went on, revolution began to counter for the unfair living conditions, isolation, and disease-ridden east coast, yet riots continue today as no further changes have been made to migration regulations or health codes. Overall, due to the secrecy of the discovery of gold, California remained wealthy; the East remained impoverished and over capacitated, and the central states served as free land for farmers and ranchers to attempt to provide for the growing population.