In which decade did the discovery of gold nuggets in California's Sacramento Valley trigger a mass influx of fortune seekers in what became known as the Gold Rush?

It wasn't long after one lucky miner spotted the first gold nugget in early 1848 that massive waves of hopeful speculators began to descend on the area. By the end of the following year, the non-native California population of the area had increased from 1,000 to 100,000. By the 1852 peak of the Gold Rush, an estimated $2 billion worth of precious metal had been extracted.

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