ABSTRACT
The major part of the agricultural frontier of 1860, west of the Mississippi, was still in the very early stage of growth, where immigration was all-important and emigration was so slight as to be negligible. The even more colorful, if less heroic, California gold rush is less likely to be remembered as a stimulus to the rise of a permanent agricultural system. The polyglot population of California continued in gold-rush style through succeeding decades, and various peoples left their agricultural imprint on the state. Still earlier than the California gold rush came the first Mormon settlements in Utah, in surroundings seemingly less fitted by nature for agriculture and certainly far more inaccessible even than California. In any new area attractive to settlers the influx of homeseekers was followed by a rapid natural increase.
