Welcome to Golden Gulch Mining Camp
Gold Rush Simulation

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Welcome to Golden Gulch, miners! You will have many opportunities to strike it rich during our question rounds, math activities, and difficult decision making rounds. Beware of the fate cards! Some of you will be overjoyed with your good fortune, while others of you may face a string of bad luck!

Saturday Night Activities


Saturday night was special for the miners. They went to town, met their friends, swapped stories, raised a little ruckus, and generally entertained themselves.

You will earn extra Gold Nuggets by completing an activity, or you can dream up another project related to gold or gold rushes.
  • Gold Rush iMovie video or trailer 
  • Read a book about some aspect of the Gold Rush and write a Book Report (see your teacher for some adventure book titles)
  • Gold Rush Math: Activities #1-5
  • Write a Gold Rush adventure story
  • Write a letter from a miner's point of view about mining life
  • Build a model of a cradle or long tom
  • Make a diorama of a group of miners engaged in some mining activity
  • Draw a detailed picture and create an Explain Everything to describe the scene 
  • Design Thinking Challenge: Think of an innovation that would help the miners in any aspect of mining life and build a prototype.
  • Write a poem or haiku
  • Research some aspect of the Gold Rush and create a keynote presentation

Mining Company Markers

Your team will need to come up with a company name and logo before you can stake a claim in Golden Gulch.

Mining Equipment

In the early days gold was easy to find. All you needed was a knife, pick, shovel and a pan. Gold nuggets could be pried from rocks. Dirt shoveled from creeks and rivers could be swirled in a pan to find gold.

Life in a Mining Camp

Many people arrived in California expecting to immediately become rich and live a life of leisure. They didn't quite get what they expected.